Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget
by dmix on Friday November 13, 2015 @11:07PM
(#10564403)
How much time do you spend each day doing this? I'd love something similar but the commitment concerns me. Also what if you miss a day (or two) and don't remember all purchases?
Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget
by morgante on Saturday November 14, 2015 @09:38AM
(#10565802)
Maybe 5 minutes a day? I actually automatically download most purchases from my credit card's website, so no effort is put into those.
Then I spend probably an hour at the end of the month doing a retrospective on how accurate my estimates were.
Except I combine the daily rate with a running treasury (each day starts with the previous day's ending balance). All expenses must be paid out of the treasury, so if I want to purchase something I have to save up for a while.
Importantly, the 'treasury' is separate from my actual savings, which are deducted at a constant rate from my daily income.
The really fun part comes with estimation: I have several years of data now, so I've been able to develop a pretty complex spreadsheet which predicts my network over time. Every month I compare where I thought I was going to be and where I'm at, adjusting estimates to get more accurate over time. It's gotten to the point where I can pretty reliably predict my net worth to within $100. (One time, I even got it right down to the cent, from 6 months out.)