Expense Tracking

[Jenny1974]

I keep a fairly detailed budget.  However, we have a category for grocery/household that seems to become a catchall for anything spent at Walmart/Target/Grocery Store/etc.  Sometimes when I'm updating our budget (I download our credit card transactions and categorize and then drop into my budget), I'll see a Walmart charge (for example) and know that I bought an item of clothing or gift for someone and I'll carve that out to it's appropriate category.  However, in general, if it's a charge to one of the aforemention places, I just categorize it as grocery/household and move on.  Over the last several months, this category seems to have grown and I'm trying to come up with a reasonable system for keeping track of the these non-grocery items that I buy at these types of stores.   Do you keep all your receipts and do a breakout from that?  Or do you just keep receipts that have any of these non-grocery items included?  Just trying to work out a system to better track this category without spending hours trying to break it all out.

[4alpacas]

When I was trying to reduce my grocery bill, I tracked everything by category purchased on my grocery bill.  Then, I systematically attacked the categories that I deemed most troublesome (food that was bad for me, impulse purchases, and food waste).  It took over six months, but I kept a spreadsheet for over a year of all of my "grocery" spending.  I kept a stack of receipts next to my computer to deal with all at once (it is tedious). 

[RWD]

We keep our receipts. I usually enter them the same day into GnuCash. For grocery store receipts I usually put all the non-food stuff under my Supplies category (or sometimes Pets, Gifts, etc.) and then everything else falls under the Groceries category.

[FireHiker]

I use an app on my phone to track everything as I buy it (broken out into categories) and then transfer that data to my main excel sheet later. That way instead of "Target, misc" I have it broken out to "household supplies, kid stuff (ie, present for birthday party they attend), clothes, pets". I may have more categories than some people do, but it's been helpful for me to get more detailed and then work on eliminating problem areas. I haven't done the same with food yet, but I think I will try that later this year or next year.

[Optimiser]

We use YNAB (classic) and split out expenses like this to their appropriate categories. I try to do record it immediately while it's still fresh in my mind. DW keeps the receipts and records them every week or so, (read: when I nag her about it).

[MoonLiteNite]

I use mint to collect raw data, so for things like walmart, target, 711, etc, what i do is is leave them as "shopping".
During the month if i use any of those "shopping" locations, and i do not buy 100% food, i note the expense for "clothes" or "video games" or whatever the amount and cat was for onto my personal spreed sheet.
Once a month i export all my data into my personal spreed sheet to the "food" section. Then i subtract all the other stuff that may have been mixed up. Easy to find since it is already listed in that month, just look up.

I guess for some people that may be a bit annoying, but i go shopping MAYBE twice a month, and 90% of the time it is 100% food.

edit:

And i use mint to collect raw data since i started to collect credit cards like pokemon.... got very annoying to view 15 different credit card statements every month and having 1 or 2 transactions on each one haha

edit:


You can see the clothes line there.

Also i have a "work food" this is food i only eat cause i work too many damn hours. And i like to keep that different from my "eating out with my friends" food. So i use the same idea to keep those apart. I will note the rare times i eat out with friends  and put it in "eating out" and the total "work food" is everything else.

[Frankies Girl]

I use Mint, and I use the notes section and put in exactly what I purchased. If there were enough specific items in there to split out, I'll do so - grocery, clothes, kitchen junk - otherwise it will be labeled as "household" or "grocery" for sorting purposes. I rarely use the shopping category since it is so generic.

[rantk81]

I gave up trying to do detailed expense tracking. It was just too much of a time commitment.

Now I spend about 5-10 minutes a months entering info into a spreadsheet. This is basically how I do it.

1. All of my income goes directly into one of my checking accounts (the same one).
2. I put most of my expenses onto credit cards (based on the most advantageous reward.)
3. Out of my primary checking account, I pay all expenses (credit cards, ATM withdrawals, checks)
4. At the end of month, I get my statement for my primary checking account.
5. From my primary checking account, I figure out how much I paid toward "credit card bills", "atm withdrawals", "checks paid", "electronic payments" and put these categories into a row in a spreadsheet.  I do not include electronic withdrawals/payments that are just transfers to other accounts (like investments.)

Then I just graph the amount month-by-month of "credit card + electronic payments + checks + atms"...
There are bumps because of "large one-time expenses" such as property taxes, or a big hvac replacement I did last year.... but over time, the graph gives me a good idea of how much I'm spending.

For me, the time investment vs. reward of tracking things into individual categories doesn't really make sense for me.

[Nate R]

We use YNAB, and break up receipts into categories. So a Walmart trip will have groceries, alcohol, cat litter/food, househood goods, household consumables, etc.

It DOES take a bit mroe time, but has really helped me understand how much I spend on FOOD vs paper towels vs say pillows or sheets, etc.

[Bumperpuff]

I use Excell to track my expense then check it against my Credit Card statements at the end of the month.  I break enough to be useful, but not so much as to be impractical.  For instance I have a groceries category then have "fruit and vegetables", Alcohol, meat, dairy, and misc as sub-classes.  I do the same for eating out, recreation, housewares, travel, and other expenses.



You just need to figure out the balance between detail and effort you're comfortable with.

[Ebrat]

This is one of the reasons I switched from a spreadsheet to YNAB. I try to enter things into the app right away (usually rounding a bit for simplicity), otherwise I save the receipt and do it later.

[BoonDogle]

I used to go through the extra effort to break them into separate categories: food and household supplies.  I decided it was not worth the effort and started budgeting them together.  If I buy clothing or gifts I will still break those out, but that is not as common.  So all food and HH end up in the same line on my budget.