On that note though, while I realize there are plenty of apps that will do this sort of thing for you, I really wished there were that did it with this level of simplicity.

And I don't mean create an account for Mint or Level or any of the other bountiful budgeting services out there and merely export to a Spreadsheet. I (personally) literally only want something that can connect to my accounts, see a transaction, and update a row. Nothing in the middle.

Does it exist already?

I record all my spending manually with Expense Manager [ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.ex... ] Dead simple. Add an amount, give it a category, add a note (optional). See trends, exports to excel. Every attempt to use mint, level, etc has resulted in confusing duplicated entires or entries that don't show up until I've forgotten what they are.

This is perfect. I have one of those phone case/wallet combos and cards are right there with the phone so I can quickly enter purchases.

Thanks!

Every month i create a file (e.g. 201605.csv for May 2016) where I write date, description, amount and category, manually, using whatever editor I have at hand. The files reside on Dropbox so I can also update these via smartphone when needed. And I wrote (like 15 years ago?) a very simple Perl script that pointed at csv files will summarize expenses and income by category, and provide totals (along as percentages, i.e. stuff like

"BOOKS: 23.75 / 0.31% of total monthly expenses"

That's all. Being .csv it can be manually updated, ported wherever I can run Perl, imported in Excel or in any DB I may care for etc. If I want to run analysis I can paste together all the files and run R on these etc. etc. etc.

I have maybe 20 categories, so it's easy to assign to them and I don't have to agonize for hours about how to tag any non-recurring expenses.

This has proven to be enough for me. YMMV, of course.

Simple does it: https://www.simple.com/

It's a bit of a hassle to switch since you need to set up direct deposit and wire your money over from your existing bank. Once you've done this though if you use the debit card for purchases everything is tracked with nice graphs and decent software.

Downsides:

- No branches, it's a bit of a pain to get a cashier's check on short notice.

- Can't use rewards credit card if you want to actually take advantage of it.

I find the automated data collection and graphs is worth the 2% 'cost' of not using a rewards credit card.

For me I don't think that would work, manually handling the receipts and entering them in a program is part of the process of understanding my spending.

>> I really wished there were that did it with this level of simplicity.

The desktop version of YNAB was pretty much like this.

if you use apps. and a spread sheet to keep track of all misc. expenses then i would say too much time and effort.

my simple way is take the misc. expenses $ money right off the top when cash check. i put the cash in my pocket. $800 every two weeks. and i use cash for all misc. stuff. use the credit card for fixed monthly expenses and pay maintenance stuff like insur, etc elec. check. so if run out of cash then done till next check. and usually have left over dont usually spend full $800 i just throw it in the drawer until it piles up and then spend it on something or divert to invest. acct.