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Very nitpicky question, but I'm curious how other people categorize this. I'm making a spreadsheet of how much I have spent where, and I have both a category for "eating out" (restaurants, going out for drinks) as well as "entertainment" (sporting events, movies). If I bought concessions at the movies/sporting event, would it make more sense to count it as eating out or entertainment? Or should it depend if it replaced a meal or was just a snack/drink? Or do most people just lump eating out and entertainment into one category anyway?
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Jun 29, 2013 15:26
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 00:35 |
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tuyop posted:What's the difference in your mind between the types of entertainment? Is there value in separating the categories? It's hard to put into words, but the difference to me is that eating out is "I don't feel like cooking tonight, so this is an easy/expensive way out of it" and entertainment is "It's Friday, lets do a Fun Thing!" - I view eating out as something we need to really get control over*, while entertainment events are pretty well managed**. Concession spending is something controllable by eating beforehand, but it also sometimes replaces meals, and is also part of the "treat" of going to a Fun Thing. Too many factors and I realize I'm way overthinking it. *19 items this month, not including today and tomorrow, nor June 1-3 (honeymoon, so we had to eat out). 19 restaurants in 25 days is insane. And I make my own lunches on weekdays, and my husband's company buys his lunches on weekdays. The 19 are all dinners, or weekend lunches, or "Oh look a smoothie place, let's buy a $7 sugar high!". ** 3 items this month
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Jun 29, 2013 16:02
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Does anyone who uses Mint know if there's a way to make it stop categorizing my auto-payments to a Best Buy credit card as purchases? It's basically double dipping since it has already counted those individual purchases on top of the whole-payment "purchase". Other than going into each transaction and saying "Hide this transaction" I can't seem to figure it out.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:18
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Rick Rickshaw posted:Will categorizing it as a "Transfer" or "Credit Card Payment" do the trick? Those categories are not counted as spending. Hmm, maybe... The option says "Always rename Best Buy as Best Buy and categorize as Credit Card Payment." yet sometimes purchases at Best Buy are just purchases. I hope it figures it out and only recategorizes the ones with "BEST BUY AUTO PYMT" in the text, but I'm worried I will forget to check up on it later and it'll start ignoring purchases I did actually make at Best Buy.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:49
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Not number specific, but formatting question. I'm curious about other budgetors' opinions on how specific to make their categories. I've been keeping a spreadsheet of my expenses for the past few months to just observe where money is going - no sweeping lifestyle changes are planned yet because things are comfy for now. But after trying to make my spreadsheet into monthly pie charts (I love chart-y visuals) it turns into just a bunch of noise because I have nearly 30 freaking lines under expenses, and 6 lines for income. I just like being super duper specific, I guess! Is there a downside to being too specific with budget categories? Do people tend to prefer one giant category for "discretionary" vs what I have been doing: personal care, shopping, outings, gaming, netflix, gifts, vacation, subscriptions.... those are all mostly discretionary by definition but I feel like they'd be a pretty hefty nondescript pie chart chunk if I combined them. Here is the sidebar part of my budget spreadsheet, and for reference my topbar headers are Jan-Dec, and then at the end is "total", "average", and (ideal/proposed) "budget" for each category.
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Sep 15, 2015 23:35
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:I just realized that there was probably a good conversation about this in the first few pages of the thread and... yeap, there it is. And you were there too! Ahaha how embarrassing. I completely forgot about that conversation, and I don't think I even have that old budget spreadsheet anymore. I guess I've always been a second guesser! As an update, these days I do count concessions as part of the "entertainment" (now referred to as "outings") activity because going in and splitting receipts is a pain in the rear end. That is also why I lump restaurants and bars together, because when we go drinking it usually starts with bar food as dinner. Thanks for the feedback all, it's reassuring to know when you're on a good track. Damn Bananas fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 14:58
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Chase no longer lets Mint auto-import your information anymore. I'm so mad. I finally got everything settled how I want it after like 4 months of tweaking. Nearly all of my & my husbands finances are through Chase somehow. Blowwwwwwwws. 
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Oct 20, 2015 23:36
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I think it's really dependent on income. Minimum wage or 6-figure earner, both have similar stomach space. You can get fancier or frugal-er for sure, but percentages won't be very proportional across the board. DINK family here, 8% goes to groceries/restaurants/bars but I am going to try to soften it down to 6 or 7 in 2016. Gas gets to be put on my company card because I run all of the daily office errands.
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Dec 28, 2015 19:51
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 00:35 |
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Two part question: I'm curious how other people with a budget spreadsheet handle this type of transaction. If you owe money after you file your taxes, do you put that payment under an expense category (Misc expense?) like any other charge, or do you make a negative entry under income? I've been doing the former the past 2 years, but I am starting to think the latter is more accurate to what it actually is. I didn't really incur an expense, my paychecks were just a little too high. That also throws a wrench in it: my paychecks last year were too high, but the $ adjustment is happening this year. My spreadsheet has a tab for each year. Would you put today's charged transaction in 2017 so that your income is reflected correctly last year? I guess the same question goes for if you got a refund: Do you add that to 2017's income because that's part of your true earnings, or 2018 because you are getting the money right now? Damn Bananas fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 18:43
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