DH says everybody keeps track of their finances by logging receipts

[shewhowines]

After another long night of DH huffing and puffing "doing the finances", we had the age old discussion of him saying he needs to, because that is the only way and most people do it like that (his mum does), and me saying 90% of people don't do it his way.

He makes me keep every receipt and he logs every single item we buy, on a complicated spreadsheet. He uses this to forecast our expenses so that he can transfer money if necessary. Can I just add, he is not controlling as to what I spend. It's just if I spend it, or get money out, I must keep the receipt. The system obviously works, but it is sooo time consuming. I wouldn't mind, but then I have to put up with him moaning.

I say that most people work retrospectively. They scan through their credit card bill to make sure there are no errors, and correlate this with their bank statement. Money can be transferred if necessary, at that point.

I am right aren't I? Nobody keeps their receipts and meticulously logs every bloody transaction.

Crowler not that I know of

I do exactly what your DH describes. It works really well and only takes 5 minutes every day. If you just take 5 minutes everyday and not leave lots of receipts once a week it is a doodle.

I used to do it retrospectively but it doesn't really work if you want to keep a good track on your day to day spending.

I do it, meticulously, with my work account. That is partly because I pay squillions to an accountant to do my tax (am a limited company) and it cuts down on the squillionage.

I don't do it with my personal account.

Neither of us do it with the joint account.

I would bet the farm - complete with rare-breed animals and a llama park - that Mr Inferior, a man who works with money for a living yet whose own finances make Greece look like a miracle of solvency - does not to do this.

I have never heard of this.

We use online banking & have phone apps for the 2 banks we use.

No, I don't know anyone who does this.

I do keep all my receipts (for taking things back and in case I am ever subject to one of those errors where a 2.00 purchase ends up going through as 200 - it's never happened yet though) but I don't look at them - I just bung them in a box. I do scan through my bank statements and credit card bill to make sure I recognise all of the purchases. So my checks are for fraud/error purposes rather than budgeting.

My DH does this.
I hand over all receipts (Debit, Credit, ATM) & cheque book & he shuts himself in the office with the occasional "You forgot to write down 59p on Amazon on 22nd July, please confirm".
He's not mean, but likes to know the exact state of our financial affairs.
I couldn't be bothered to do it though.

Are you me eastwick ?

I do this. I use an app and computer program called YNAB - you need a budget. You can get a free 30 day trial. It's brilliant and in the 18 months I have been using it, our savings have increased massively.
I know to the penny how much money we have! . I may be slightly anal, though...

I think that the real eye opener is how much you spent on little things you don't even notice - coffees, magazines etc- nothing wrong with that inherently, but I prefer to stop that spending and do something else with the money instead like buy expensive clothes

I do this too, with an app/website called Toshl. It's making a massive difference to the amount we are spending which is important as we're currently saving for a new house and need to have a deposit by March.

I think that when it's just 70p on a mars bar here, £1.50 on a coffee there, that we didn't quite realise how fast it added up. This way I can see how fast and slow it down if necessary.

DH supports this, but can't be bothered doing it himself - I just ask him every night what he's spent, he tells me (normally 'nothing') and I enter it.

I'm another YNAB user and I love it. I feel in control of our finances for the first time ever. Every night I log our transactions for the day (usually from receipts because we'd never remember exact amounts), but I actually find it fun

Dh uses gnu cash and downloads the online baking statements into it then sense-checks and categorises every transaction. But he doesn't track cash, just asked that I put most things on cards so we can see where our money goes. I like this in theory (and will have to do it myself when my business is up and running) and its a bit faster than entering every detail of every receipt.

Dad does it your dp's way: it takes him hours.

I use a phone app called toshl for this (it's available for apple or android, and you can export stuff from the web version). I just put cash £10 or £23 sainsburys or whatever, and it subtracts from my monthly income so I can see instantly what I have left. I wouldn't track small cash purchases, mainly because I don't use cash if poss. It's really handy and not time-consuming - I just do it as I'm paying at the till.

I compare the total to my bank account and as long as they are about the same I know I'm OK. Because I'm logging it, if there's an oddity I can export the details from toshl and compare it to my online bank account and spot the problem. And you can use tags and see diagrams of what your biggest expenses are! But you don't have to go that far. I LOVE data

OP my DH does this, he's very meticulous about our finances and updates his spread sheets and checks the bank accounts everyday. He trained himself to do this after we almost faced finacial ruin ever since he's started doing it a few years ago our finances have been better than ever.
It's a pain but only a small one and can make a big difference, it certainly stops my DH worrying.

We don't log every ítem, although DH keeps recipts because cards Get cloned a lot here.

He did log every penny at one stage when money was extremley tight. MIL, who has a note book in which she logs the price of food ítems each week so that she can convert it back To Pre-decimalisation prices To see How much it really costs asked him in a slapped face way 'Have you put that newspaper on your list' To which he said Fuck off no, it came out of the cash, which I've listed just here.

OP some people do it, some don't. If he's not being controlling about what your buy, and if you feel inclined, just put the reciepts somewhere for him To sort out. Does he have a desk you could leave them on, or a pot some where? Obvs if he was trying To control you vía the money I take a different attitude.

I havent read the whole thread (on my way out but will read it all later) but......i do this, i have an app on my phone (iSpending) we're are cutting back big time and saving as much as we can for a 'big' holiday so i started using this app a couple of months ago. Once you've set it up with your regular outgoings its just a case of recording your everyday spending. I like it because for me, seeing the actual figures in front if me kinda of encourages me to stop the frivilous spending iyswim. Works for us, more has been transferred over to savings at the end of the last couple of months than has been for a long time.

Oh and i dont log each mars bar but we have cash in the house/purse/wallet for that kind of spending but i would record the cash being withdrawn from the bank on the app

There is a big difference between having a budget and logging what you spend.

Having a budget is a proactive thing. You decide what you ought to spend on a certain area and if you get too close, you stop buying stuff. (this has been a concept quite difficult to transmit to my DH).

Logging everything you spend is just an exercise in describing what you did. Useful when you first set your budget up, so you can decide what you ought to spend. useful once you have a budget, to see if you are sticking to it.

Using receipts dates from the 1960s before we had decent information on our bank statements. It's completely unnecessary,a dn the time he spends on it probably acts as a displacement activity for doing something more useful about your expenses.

Havent read the full thread yet, sorry but does your OH have anxiety or OCD issues?

Wr have a beaker at the side of the bed for the receipts

Oh God, even when I was self-employed I didn't do this!!
I did keep receipts from large supermarket shops and from suppliers, but mostly I went on credit card bills/bank statements. I used to stuff my receipts into an envelope - oh no, sorry, they just hung around all over the place until I did my tax return, then I found them and stuck them in an envelope with the year on , but only the ones worth keeping, the others were shredded/burnt (open fire in the house).

The only time I used to log things for forecasting purposes was when I was a student - and the only logging I was doing back then (pre-computers, pretty much) was logging how much cash I took out of the bank and what the ATM said I had left, all noted in my cheque book (along with the cheques I wrote). Once I had a credit card, this system became redundant, of course.

I don't think it's typical of what most people do, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. For me, online banking kind of negates the need to be so rigid with keeping/logging receipts - I can see what I've spent right there on the screen - but I appreciate that some people are set in their ways.

My issue would be with the moaning about it. If that's what he does, fine. But don't moan to me every time you do it. Maybe you could try leaving the room whenever he does that. Do you think he'd eventually get the message?

Not an app but a website - moneydashboard.com is very useful. Links to most of the main banks - so all accounts show up on one screen, and it autotags spends for you (if they're on debit/credit card)

I liked it better at the start of the thread when everybody was saying that DH was being anal etc and that nobody they knew, did this.

The tide has turned . Too many are agreeing with DH. In fact he knows i've started this thread, and I just know that now you'll have made him worse. Now he's going to spend hours researching all those bloody apps and websites as well. Damm you all

He would like it to be more for budgeting beast but tbh its more recording it as a done deed. We don't struggle for money and we have a nice lifestyle, but we do spend what we earn. He'd like to save more but he knows i'm not stupid with money and we discuss the bigger expenditures. I think he does it that way because he has always done it that way. As did his Mum. I'd put it down to very slight ocd/anxiety.

Heathcliffe

I have a log for our joint account of all bills and when they come out (all different dates, cant be bothered to change them) and about once a week I check what's come out and update the balance to see what's left to spend / how much can go into savings.

I definitely don't do receipts though! But I do keep a rough check on whats left as we're both spending out of it and don't tell each other every time we buy things etc.

Actually I don't do this with my work account. I save those receipts for payments that I do have on the account, and when my bank statement comes in I just go through logging all spending on the spreadsheet, and coding this against real receipts/printouts where I have them. Then I file the receipts and the statement. It takes me about 10 minutes, and I hate doing it, but is worth doing only because it means that I then have a record for tax deductions.