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Spending Analysis: Last Year

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@cmplxty
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Hi fellow Lions,

Today I performed a book-keeping step that is critical I think, but many people might not do unfortunately. Surprise me and prove me wrong! :D.

Every Penny

One of the things that is important for anyone who has a family is managing finances. It's not a glamorous topic and it certainly can be challenging and stressful but at the same time it's vitally important. One of the absolute best things my wife and I have done is consolidated all of our spending onto a single credit card. This ensures that we can keep track of everything and only the bills that don't get paid through direct withdrawal from our bank account get put on here. There are some minor exceptions though such as spending money at a small business like the wood we bought from a local saw mill and similar small business things. Otherwise, everything goes onto the credit card!

The biggest thing you can see is that we spend a lot of money on merchandise. That's expected though, having our own online small business ourselves, we have to purchase a lot of things for that. Thankfully it's profitable because it's a lot of work. How much profit isn't completely known since we haven't sat down and done the full books for it but that is coming in the next few weeks, but there is profit.

Now some might say it's annoying or weird that I don't show all of the numbers but frankly I don't want to share every single detail of what goes on and I think I want to keep some information protected. However, the exercise was a good one! I'm glad that we didn't really spend a whole lot on restaurants and entertainment. The travel expenses is from when we went to Florida last January and the costs associated with that so that was pretty good to see. The funny cost was the 6.57 automotive category. Since we both have new cars (base models, nothing fancy, just not old) our costs were minimal. Not fun for me and my DIY love but still appreciated! The majority of the restaurant costs were probably associated with our Florida trip as well since we had to do a fair amount of eating out. Not too bad but could have been lesser. We do a lot of cooking at home so that's good we were able to keep it down.

The everyday spending was mostly gas, groceries and some home essentials. I did a brief drill down into some of the transactions related to that and saw that it also includes our cell phone bills. Not all bills were put into that category strangely so too bad we can't adjust it in the website for transactions going forward. Not too invested in doing that though lol.

You'd be surprised how quickly the smaller transactions add up! It's not nearly that bad compared to how some others we know that spend money but it's always a healthy exercise to perform.

A big chunk of the Other category are things involved with the business. There is a lot of packaging and other small things that we buy in order to add to the packages. The little touches keep people buying lol.

Thankfully my brief overview of the transactions throughout the year, the most expensive charges we bought were not very frequent and mostly for the vacation we took! Good to see that there were only two transactions over a thousand dollars. Doing this type of stuff makes sure that we keep ourselves responsible and on task with not only becoming debt-free but saving money for the future and opportunities for investments. Some of my friends that I told about things like Hive (and it's former name) and crypto a few years ago when I was learning about them are kicking themselves for not listening to me. I'm not a super shill for crypto but we need to accumulate at least some crypto in order to just ride the wave.

Do you?

Do you try and manage your finances in this type of way? Do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea to place all of your transactions on one card?

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