I think it's the opposite for me, using cash makes it way easier to get an idea of how much I spend. I use the ATM three times per month with 100 pounds each so 300 pound/month in normal expenses. With card I would need to to an addition of everything per month.

My credit card bill this month is £500, That seems easier than "i had n trips to the ATM plus I think I had £30 in my wallet from last month and I got £25 from donna for the booze we bought in France over the summer"?

Not only that, I can download a monthly spreadsheet of all my transactions, pivot them into a simple table and so on and so forth. Data out the wazoo. £105 a month on tube fares. £235 a month on lunch. £17 on fuel. Knowing where I spent it is as useful if not more so than how much I spent in total.

Then of course there is the free money I get from spending on a card. It all seems like a no brainer. And I never need to go to an ATM. And most the time I just lean my wallet against a card reader and mosey onwards.

I'm not sold.

My bank (Danske Bank) even does that for me. When I log in, it shows a bar chart of spending categorized for the previous 30 days (housing, transport, food etc).

Changing the range changes what transactions are summarized, and what transactions are shown in detail below the graph. Clicking a graph category further filters and shows the transactions that match, with the graph changing to more specific sub-categories (rent, water, electricity etc if I click housing).

The categories are set automatically, but can be overridden or a transaction can be divided between several, and that remembered for future transactions.

I'm impressed that a bank produced this system!

I wish a UK bank did that! (Maybe one does, but I haven't heard about it....)

True, but when the time comes where you need to cut expenses for some reason, do you know where that 300 pounds is going? That is the advantage he was getting at.

I download my transactions weekly from my CC company and can easily see I've been spending way too much money eating out the past two months.

> On the plus side, using a card gives --you-- everyone a good list so you can see what you've spent

FTFY.

The modern world seems to be one in which business, governments, and hackers know exactly what we are doing.

True ;-)