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)

I think there is value in getting a lot of detail initially - for a full year ideally - and using ghat to identify your problem areas and places you want to focus

after that you can perhaps simplify the data gathering

You see I'd say the opposite - I'd want to start with fairly big "pots" and then dig down into the detail of ones that I wanted to know more of.

But then I know I wouldn't want to do full details for a year (or even six months) as I'd consider it a waste of time, and would rather focus on areas that needed more consideration.

I guess the key point is that OP needs to find a system that works for her, and gives her whatever information she wants.

I think we have the same principle - find what the big problems are - It wasn’t until we broke the sainsburies spend down and the combined it with other stuff that we could see some big patterns - sometimes just looking at big buckets can lead to you missing stuff - but it is as you say whatever works and doing something tends to be the answer rather than looking for a perfect system

Some of it depends what you want to count or compare. I have a “weekly shop”
categorisation - which might include cleaning stuff or the odd bit of stationery or new cups as long as it comes in the main supermarket delivery. I also have “top up food” and “takeaways” and “food at work”. Then if I want to reduce cost I can easily see that I could halve our takeaways or remember to take lunch into work or keep the “main shop” under x. I am less bothered about categorising exactly what is food and what is cleaning products because I’m less interested in how much “cleaning” costs me.

I have YNAB and have a category for everything as I find it easier to track.
For example I have a future to save for category and then sub categories for exactly what I need it for.
i also have a wish farm category with sub categories of random things I'd quite like to buy at some point but they're not priorities until I can fund the next few months of everything else (which makes up my emergency fund).
I love YNAB.

Just checking - are the YNAB genuine poster recommendations? Not botmarketing? I'll have a look.

I think I am someone who needs everything in minute detail while I get the lay of the land, and later on I'll reduce the detail as I know it all better.

I recommended YNAB and I'm a genuine poster, lots of posts over the years on the IVF board if you want to verify 😁

I use Jiosoft.

For years I used Microsoft Money, but then lost access when Windows 11 came out.

Jiosoft is very similar in look and feel and allows me to record and categorise income / expenses, manage credit card & bank reconciliations etc.

It also allows me to export detailed info to a spreadsheet which I then Pivot into a Lifeplan. The latter works out my budgets until I am 100 🤣😂, based on various ‘what if’ scenarios around inflation for different categories, interest rates etc.

Very nerdy but Jiosoft gives me total control over my current budget and the Lifeplan helps me understand the potential impact of big decisions like house purchase, age of retirement, etc. etc.

Haha! I know what you mean but if you can get your head around it, YNAB does tend to make you a bit evangelical about it.

I'm genuine - I rarely name change so if you advance search my name, you'll find posts going back to... I've just checked...June 2010. I changed my name to this one back then.

It helped me 'get' budgeting where no spreadsheet fully did. However you could do the principles of YNAB with a spreadsheet if you wanted. At the risk of sounding again like a bot there is a 35 day free trial I think..

Same here - regular user! There's a YNAB support thread you can look at if you like.
Like a pp said, you can use the principles. I read the book first and then watched lots of the videos.

Another YNAB fan here but I use the ‘old’ version. I did try the new one but just couldn’t get on with it. Old YNAB is no longer supported but I found a hack online to keep my original version working (though you must have your original activation key) and even installed it on my MacBook.

When it comes to spending categories, I do drill down to quite a bit of detail, but broadly I have:

Monthly fixed essentials: things like utility bills on monthly direct debits that usually don’t change much more than once a year. These categories usually end up at zero at the end of the month.

Monthly variable essentials: things like groceries, medical, fuel, clothes etc. These are things that I budget for every month but can end the month in positive or negative balances. They usually balance out by the end of the year but I can adjust them if needed.

Annual essentials: this is where I budget for annual costs like car insurance and tax, house insurance etc. so there is always money there for them when they fall due.

The above are all absolutely essential. They could still be cut if needed by shopping around for better deals (which I do every year anyway), and grocery/clothes etc. spend can be decreased if necessary, but it’s basically the stuff that we can’t avoid spending money on, the absolute essentials.

Final category is what I call ‘discretionary spending’: this is the fun stuff. Holidays, Christmas, birthdays, alcohol, all entertainment like Netflix etc.
I find it very useful to have this category. When we were hit with a complete loss of income during lockdown, I was able to simply stop funding this whole category.

I find it useful to have this as my ‘big picture’, so that I know exactly what we would need to live on, rather than what we want to live on.

We have all the bills separately.
We have each car in the budget which calls on a separate spreadsheet with the cost of insurance, tax, mot, breakdown cover - 1/12th of this total is included in the monthly budget.
Home insurance is separate
Fuel for one car is included in the car budget as it's not used for commuting. We have a commuting line too which for me was the train fare and my partner it covers his fuel and parking.
You can do drop down lists of you have a column for "type" you can then filter and it will show up all the costs associated with "house" "food" "social and so on. You can do look up tables quite easily too so you would have a drop down menu to select from.
"Sumif" statements are easier than you think to include so you could have a total and then a total for each type if you only ask it to sum the total of each category.
We don't tightly budget but we round up all the bills and this covers our level of socialising - the odd coffee, pint or meal.

I find it takes a bit of time to set up a spreadsheet but after that they take care of themselves if you need any help with the formulas etc

Lol, you sound like the nerd I would like to be. I love figures but not too good at Excel. Maybe I should teach myself during retirement 😂

I'm a YNAB user too. I have main categories like Monthly Bills and then they are broken down under that into:

Council Tax
Energy
Water
TV License
Internet and TV subscriptions
Mobile Phones
Life & mortgage insurance

Everyday Expenses has categories like groceries, haircuts, pets and things for the kids.

Abode is broken down to include the mortgage, house repairs, decorative things like cushions, window cleaner etc

Fun is entertainment, eating out, pocket money for the kids and a small 'splurge' allowance for DH and me as well as Amazon Music and an events category where I save up for big ticket things like concerts or a football/rugby match.

Car is the AA, petrol, car maintenance, car tax and insurance.

Gifting has two categories - giftage and giving (which includes charity donations) and Christmas.

Savings - obvious one!

Investing - Vanguard and personal pension

Holidays is savings to go away but also separate categories for cat and dog boarding and airport parking.

Then I have yearly bills where I put small monthly amounts towards things like home insurance (which I pay yearly), Microsoft and the car service.

Lastly I have a 'wish farm' where I chuck any bits of extra money for something we'd like but isn't essential - currently a bike rack for the car.

I separate everything into smaller categories so I can really see where my money is going and also move it around - e.g. forgot that school trip needs paying for so I'll reduce the entertainment budget to cover it. YNAB has been a game-changer for me.

We use Excel, for monthly outgoings it is my phone DH phone, his car insurance, my car insurance etc, then during the month we have supermarket, eating out, my fuel, his fuel, holidays, household etc. it’s so we can work out over a year how much we’ve spent on whatever.

Place marking

I like your categories @Goldpanther and the idea of saving for this year's hols & next year's (+ spending money).

After years of more detailed budgetting I now only do:

weekly spends (covers most day to day essentials. Used to be split into household, entertainment and miscellaneous)
transport
DDs and SOs on their own lines.

Since simplifying my records it seems easier to budget, which I don't fully understand but am embracing!

A set amount each month goes to a savings account where I budget for:
car
replacements
Christmas
boiler service
various insurances

and each of these has a set amount.

I also pay into an ISA monthly.