If you are someone who keeps a spreadsheet of your spending, can you share how you categorise things?

[Sighohbarn]

This might be a bit niche, but I know I'm not the only one who tracks every spend. Some categories are easy: groceries / rent / Christmas / school / children

Some categories I'm not sure if I should lump together: I have internet separate from mobile phones. But I have house and car insurance together as insurance.

Do you lump power and water together as utilities? I don't.

Is going out for a coffee a separate category to getting pizza delivery on the Friday night, or is that the same?

What about a camping trip? Do I need an all-encompassing 'fun' category that covers coffee, pizza and camping?

How do you do it?

(Hoping this thread doesn't get crickets)

This is my budget and categories

Me 3100
DP 4100
CB 280
Total 7480
Housing
Mortgage: 1900.
Insurances(life, house): 150
Property tax: 40
Total Housing: 2090
Utilities
Electricity 150
Waste collection: 30
Broadband & TV: 70
Mobile phones x3: 60
Total Utilities: 310
Food & Groceries
Groceries & household food: 500
Dining out / takeaways: 200
Total Food: 700
Transportation
Fuel: 250
Car insurance & tax: 150
Maintenance & NCT: 100
Public transport / Parking: 20
Total Transport: 520
Education & Kids
School books, uniforms, fees: 50
Activities, sports, clubs: 50
Pocket money/treats: 60
Total Kids & Education: 160
Entertainment & Lifestyle
Family outings, hobbies, gifts: 200
Subscriptions, books, etc.: 60
Miscellaneous expenses (haircuts,nails): 60
Personal spends: 200 x 2 = 400
Total Entertainment: 730
Savings & Miscellaneous
Emergency fund / Savings: 2,000
Holidays (monthly allocation): 500
Clothing: 200
Miscellaneous buffer: 260
Total Savings & Misc.: 2960
TOTAL MONTHLY SPENDING: 7,480

I lump the life and house insurances together as they came from the same source and were sorted with the mortgage.

We are in Ireland so we have no water bills or council tax.
a coffee would come out of personal spends
dinner out as a family from the dining out/takeaway budget. If I go for lunch with a friend, that comes from personal.

We don’t go camping but we save 500 per month for holidays. That covers all aspects of the holiday. But we have leeway with the miscellaneous buffer and eating out budget there too.

Oh, your system is thorough. I like it.

I like the way you have categories and subcategories. That makes sense.

I will come back when I can open it to give them fully, but mine has evolved over years to now have categories that I track actual spending, some have a headline figure to try and keep to but not all.

I have an actual month and forecast workbook; and a separate archives workbook. The archives has a sheet per year and current month just ended is added to the bottom once the month rolls over and I update the formula at the top to average over the correct number of months (I have a total line and an average monthly line for both the budgets and actual spends per category).

Each month has its own sheet in the actual and forecast workbook. The current month starts with the actual rolled over totals but the rest are linked to the previous end of month totals so any changes are seen across the months (so a big splurge in Jan sales shows up as overdrawn in Feb once Feb bills go out, for example).

I only categorise actual spent money, not forecast spends. As I find that easier to see. So I have a running account going down the sheet (now covers current a/c, credit card, and overseas current a/c - any cash or Revolut transactions are reflected in current a/c as 0 in cash line but actual cost in category line.

My main categories are eating out (both meals and coffees but not any where it is a work thing); groceries for me; clothes; petrol; pharmacy; beauty; Dr; DD; DD travel; public transport (incl personal flights); car; gifts; home bills; overseas bills; insurance; house; garden; entertainment; official entertainment (the work eating out and work travel); home spends on groceries etc; holidays;

I definitely have a general “misc” category (it used to be Amazon but now it’s more general).

And as I am currently overseas for a 4 year stint, I still have some home bills to cover but also have bills where I am and want to keep those separate. But water, electricity, gas, phone and internet are all included in both. Insurance covers car, house and health insurance both places and for Uni student DD all together.

And I allocate savings but not in my categories, as I have a separate spreadsheet for those given the variety of places they go, so I want to track those overall.

It sounds a bit complicated but not for me and it has evolved over nearly 20 years from a simple column each for of my current a/c and credit card to today.

My spreadsheet is ridiculously complex, I'm an accounts nerd that tinkers with my cashbook and cashflow forecast almost every day.

I categorise my expenditure into fixed outgoings and variable and work a kind of P&L every month so I know what my basic expenses, mainly housing costs are before spending on day to day.

Fixed outgoings:
Mortgage
Utilities and Council tax
Tv, broadband and phone
Insurance

Variable outgoings:
Household (cleaning stuff and appliances)
Food and alcohol
Going out
Fuel and parking charges
Pets
School
Clothing
Toiletries
Beauty treatments

Other variable outgoings (more ad hoc):
Holidays
Car purchase
Mortgage overpayments

I have a full cash book that I split receipts down into different columns, especially supermarket spends that are made up of food, household, toiletries, pets and sometimes clothes. I do split out the alcohol costs too just for my reference to see how much we're spending every month on wine and beer.

Mine sort of grew organically, which is the worst way to develop a workbook but I can't be faffed with changing it all now.

1. I have columns for categorised expenditure, with drop-down choices (pink & blue)
2. The daily spreadsheet logs all the outgoings and income, giving me a running balance. The coloured entries are purchases & payments on credit.
3. A pivot table summarises everything by month (orange)

This has been going for six years. If I were starting now, I'd probably go for one of those banks like Monzo that automate it.

I itemise all incoming payments (wage, child benefit, expenses etc). Then I itemise all outgoings payments, do every direct debit and standing order that is fixed.
Then I have 3 categories for spending and another for fuel (which is pretty much fixed).
The spending categories are groceries, purchases and eating out. Groceries is obvious, pretty much all supermarket spends. Purchases includes buying on Amazon, entrance fees for days out, random toys or clothes for the kids, make up and skincare for myself. And eating out is takeaways, lunches, ice cream on days out etc.
For these categories I log my weekly spend after the fact to try and stay accountable to my budget. Any left over gets saved but this is rare!

My budget's so tiny compared to yours, @Statsquestion1 😂

Feel free to use it as a template and adapt if you want @GarlicSound

I use YNAB. It's £80 per year but so worth it. They also do a free 34 day trial https://www.ynab.com/sign-up

I have a really detailed budget. So every direct debit has it's own line, and they are grouped under which half of the month they fall in (we get income twice per month) and in date order. I split my groceries into each shop I buy from because I'm trying to reduce my spending from local convenience stores as they are more expensive. I have categories for social spending, travel, savings goals, upcoming annual or quarterly bills, etc.

YNAB has a website and an app, which means you can easily enter transactions as you spend money and see your true available money before it hits your bank account. You can also link your accounts to YNAB, so it pulls through the transactions.

It's great because say I know that in April I'm going to be paying £300 for some theatre tickets, I can not only save towards that each month, but I also then get a lower 'available budget' that takes it into account. So I'm not spending money I'm trying to save, even though the money is still in the same bank account.

You can also set goals for funding, etc.

For 22p per day, I wouldn't be without it. If you do try it for the 34 days and want to sign up, PM me and I can give you a referral code so you get an extra month free (but tbh, you could probably find one by googling - everyone gets a referral link they can use, and I'd get a free month too).

Message from MNHQ - we've removed the image here as we had it flagged that it contained some identifying information

I have car insurance under car expenses - it’s the cost of running the car

internet and mobile together as comms

coffee, pubs, pizzas all together

camping is holidays. Pizza on holiday - I think is holiday

Gigs and festivals

Amazon spend could be books - I use the library a lot more now , birthdays, household goods,

The categories are based on noting down everything and seeing what is big or makes easy sense to be separated

so we had to separate alcohol and household goods from the basic supermarket shop as it was big so we needed to drill down into that category. That means we can see meat and cheese and coffee spend also - DH goes through each supermarket receipt

we keep the detail so we have “car” but we can look at petrol and servicing and insurance that make up car - we have 2 sheets - one with every purchase tagged and then the summary that uses the tags to sum up the category

the process works I suspect no matter what the detail - of the spreadsheet - gathering the info and looking at it and think about each thing

This is really useful.

This is a new project for me due to a big life change. I'm learning as I go. I am also realising that making changes later on is going to be annoying. Ideally I want to get it right from the start.

Yes to the poster with drop-down menus! I need to add those.

What do you all do if you make one payment that contains things in separate categories? School stationery and groceries both in one shop?

I'm also still deciding between one tab per year, or one tab per month.

Yes, I've removed identifying info and numbers but I've left everything useful. Hope it helps? If anything doesn't make sense just ask.

This is our spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pa-bdD5ZMXSYv2uTWl1MJtxCBaQVsfbh9HWFx9tk0L0/edit?usp=sharing.

I often end up with both gifts and groceries in the supermarket - so the total goes in the cash line, and I split that total between groceries and gifts in the categorisation side. Or spend in the chemist between meds (pharmacy) and beauty.

Split them out - like I say DH splits the supermarket spend by category

I also use YNAB as a pp says above. It prompted me to have categories with sub categories. I went really detailed to start with but I now lump together 'utilities' as water and gas and I've stopped breaking groceries down into food, cleaning, pet etc.
I also have life insurance and home insurance in one.
I have (broadly) -

Needs - includes groceries, bills (broken down further), insurance, childcare, car (also broken down further into fuel Inc any parking, tax & insurance and a future car savings fund).

Wants - includes eating out (dining and coffee), treats for kids, clothing, running stuff, holiday fund, home decor things.

Then my favourite category of all - true expenses. These are things I know are coming so a little go towards them each month. Items in this category include:
Health and dental
Cards and gifts
Xmas 2026
Pet fund to cover any treatments or house sitting etc
New phone fund (for in a couple of years)
Home maintenance (essential works or improvements)

I then have a 'goals' category which is just a nice to have list. In it are things like:
New wardrobe for DD
Tattoo for me next year
A hen do I'm attending this year

It's working for me at the moment but I expect I'll change my approval over time!

I also use YNAB and have a category for everything. There is nothing I lump together. So insurances are all separate. I also have ‘pots’ for things I don’t regularly use like garden maintenance.

Ive found over time I’ve added more and more pots as I’ve understood my spending more. Even YNAB has a pot to save for the annual fee.

I think my main categories are Home running costs, insurances, subscriptions, car running costs, Christmas/birthdays, mobile phones/internet, pets and associated costs, holidays, savings, personal/fun money, any debt like PayPal or CC, charity, incidentals and home/garden maintenance. Within these categories are sub sections like under home costs things like mortgage, community charge etc.

At times I’ve added categories like when we were doing renovations but then hide them again as they are only needed for a limited time and not ongoing.

we split expenses so we have a holiday the spend would be allocated against different categories eg
travel - cost of hotel/flight eg
snacks out- eating oiut on holiday
entertainment - ticket to museum/show eg
We track all spends and each category has a budgeted amount. We set these at the beginning of the year based on inflation, change in utility tariffs, holiday plans for the year etc. We also have a buffer category as there is always something that you have not planned for.
dh is a retired finance director and sets up the spreadsheets, but we discuss and agree on amounts.

I honestly think you would benefit from YNAB. You can go to the supermarket and spend £50:
£10 groceries, £10 for your parents, £5 for toilets, £25 on that frying pan you need. In YNAB, you split the transaction and allocate each amount to the different categories. Your account will show the three categories, the split, and the total.

You naturally get a new tab for each month. You can add, rename and hide categories as you choose, so you can evolve it.

I used one tab with 4 columns per month, going on endlessly year after year. I split the sheet so that the columns in the left/categories at the top were set.

Youve got lots of good examples, but something that made a big difference was doing more forecast spending - so having all the direct debits for every month already marked in, with Christmas and holiday budgeting added etc. That was all at the top of each month with the forecast amount left over calculated. Then below that i kept track of actual spending as it went through.

I keep it as simple as possible.
1st category is House costs, where all house bills listed separately
2nd is Food (but not meals out or takeaways they’re classed as fun)
3rd is Ponies - basically all their bills!
4th is savings (both contributions to savings and when spending from them)
5th is fun - I have a fun budget which covers everything from training sessions on the ponies to night out to new clothes

I think you need to think about the granularity of categorisation you want to have.

More categorisation obviously gives you more information but takes longer to maintain. There is no point setting up an all singing and dancing system that doesn't actually work for you long term.

In the case of your example about what you would do if you bought food and school stationary in a supermarket trip, you could either split out the shop into "Food" and "School related", or you could take the view that you would only do this if the stationary spend was significant, or you would just always put it under food as it was unlikely to be a large enough amount to worry about and/or it would be balanced out with something else later on.

I'm going to keep watch of this - it's my new year resolution this year to be more financially organised.

I paid for two subscriptions of YNAB and could not get my head around it at all. Maybe I should give it another try - it's the habit of tracking that I need to master first so perhaps basic initially would better suit that.

I also use YNAB after 8 years of using a spreadsheet. I found I was great at planning the budget on a spreadsheet, but not sticking to it, and then when I reviewed at the end of the month I was always over budget.

My categories in YNAB are a bit weird, but work for me...

BILLS aka must pay each month
mortgage
Council tax
Gas electricity and water
HMRC 🙄
Interest and Fees
TV phone and internet
AXA Insurance
DH car
Loan
Nursery Fees
Window Cleaner
Food

PERSONAL SPENDS
Baby stuff
Gym
M&S top ups
Baby JISA contributions
Emergency Fund
Clothing

NICE TO HAVE
Garden and interiors
Home maintenance
Misc

HOLIDAYS
2026 holiday
2026 spending money
2027 holiday
2027 spending money.

Bills have to be paid, so I need to have money for them, personal spends are budgeted for, so don't feel guilty when I spend that money. Nice to have is £1k pot for each so I can dip in when needed. And then holidays are self explanatory.

We don't do takeaways, and coffee out, paying for parking etc would come from misc. M&s top ups is anytime I pop to the shop to get something I forgot.

I've flipped and flopped between lots of categories to fewer. I find things like bills are the same cost every month so happy to lump together. Then apart from clothes, top up shops and things for the baby I don't do much discretionary spending at all.

Depends how old you are but I'd include a Work costs as well. Helps you see what you save if you retire or what will no longer be a cost.

Maybe just highlight those rather than be their own category. So, train fares, lunches, work clothes etc.