Re:Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
by buzzkillington on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @08:12PM
(#23253534)
>0. Forget about tracking things down to the dollar, or even the tens of dollars. That level of precision is unnecessary. If a coffee here or there is going to break your budget, it's already broken and you need to go in to panic mode.
A coffee is $5 give or take.
If I have one every day that's $1,825 a year. If I splurge and have two every other day that's $2,737. That's a lot of money.
The simplest way to budget is to just give yourself a set amount of cash every morning and keep spending it until you run out. You get immediate feedback because you can see how many banknotes you have left.
Funnily enough I think that's the main reason why there's a war on cash.
Re:Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
by anitil on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @11:28PM
(#23254545)
Yes a coffee every day is worth tracking, my emphasis was more on 'here or there'. I would say any ongoing payment is probably worth tracking unless it's truly trivial
A coffee is $5 give or take.
If I have one every day that's $1,825 a year. If I splurge and have two every other day that's $2,737. That's a lot of money.
The simplest way to budget is to just give yourself a set amount of cash every morning and keep spending it until you run out. You get immediate feedback because you can see how many banknotes you have left.
Funnily enough I think that's the main reason why there's a war on cash.