That's what I used to do, but I switched to Josh's strategy a couple years ago.[1] It doesn't "blow up" git-status. If some new piece of software creates a new directory with a bunch of random stuff in it, git-status will just show you the directory since it is is untracked, and not everything in it.

[1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/dotfiles/blob/965383e6eeb0bad4...