20 Years Of Tracked Spending And How It Helps Me Plan For The Future

[Truffade]

I suggested it before but maybe the mods might consider it again. Is there scope for a sub-forum somewhere between Money Makeover and Retirement where we could post our financial situations and our retirement objectives, that then could be critiqued and commented on by posters?

I'd certainly be willing to post my situation there. I don't 'need' a Money Makeover but I could certainly do with some strategic life\lifestyle advice.

 

[ClubMan]

I'd certainly be willing to post my situation there. I don't 'need' a Money Makeover but I could certainly do with some strategic life\lifestyle advice.

Why not just post it in the Money Makeover forum and clarify in your post the nature of the specific feedback that you're seeking?

Of course, there's always the possibility of an XY problem in such circumstances. It's very common on Askaboutmoney and elsewhere...

XY problem - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[redstar]

When retirement is on the horizon it can be exciting and scary at the same time!
At 61, i'm trying to fine tune where-i'm-at and when the best time is for me to exit stage left.

The scary part is, as others have said, giving up a good income, great bonus, excellent health insurance cover and instead having to fund it all myself. Knowing how you spend is vital to taking control of that.

Retirement has to happen at some stage, so better to go in a time of my own choosing when still in decent health instead of when someone else says its time for you to retire.

Theres more of life to do and enjoy and discover and i'm excited about that.

 

[Truffade]

Why not just post it in the Money Makeover forum and clarify in your post the nature of the specific feedback that you're seeking?

Of course, there's always the possibility of an XY problem in such circumstances. It's very common on Askaboutmoney and elsewhere...

XY problem - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks ClubMan - will do that. I'll organise my thoughts and post something soon.

 

[Cervelo]

I think the overriding thing I take from your posts is that you are in control - (1) you understand your finances deeply, (2) you know what you want out of life and you are able to marry the two together harmoniously.

Yes I think for me it comes down to tempering my expectations to what I can actually achieve or maintain while on this journey

I wanted this discussion to be about retirement and all that is included with that word but as I've said before in the thread even though I've technically retired early, what I've actually done in simple terms is stop working and hopefully live the rest of my life on a finite amount of money
But I feel the thinking or the way I see things or how I live can be of benefit to others who are struggling with this and other areas of their lives

There's an interesting discussion here started by Colm Fagan but I'll be honest and say it's too technical for my little brain when they go into the nitty gritty details and I'll be very honest and say I'm not the one one who invests in the stock market, that's Mrs C's little puppy and she is very good at it, But I am involved with it as it is something we talk about a lot and monitor closely but not excessively

Until the state pension kicks in we have two main investments, My PRSA which is with Zurich in the Prisma 5 & 6
I look at that twice a year and expect to leave it that way until very close to OAP age, it will do what it does in the background
With regards to the stock portfolio, where most people our age are focused on growth, we're more focused on maintaining the value and income.
Off the top of my head probably a 40/40/20 of dividend/growth/risk profile of the stocks that we choose, we don't invest in ETF's
And though where we're not getting the return of the PRSA overall, it's doing what it's supposed to be doing and we're happy with the returns

And this is where the tracking plays an important roll, as you say it allows us to "marry the two together harmoniously"

 

[Cervelo]

Retirement has to happen at some stage, so better to go in a time of my own choosing when still in decent health instead of when someone else says its time for you to retire.

This is it, we're not getting any younger and as much as we like to think that we can slow things down, time marches on
And you have a simple choice, to either prepare for this eventuality or not and it's the people that prepare for this that get the most from it

 

[RichInSpirit]

Interesting post and fair play to logging expenditure for years....

Fair play to anyone who wants to log every euro they spend. I know what I spend in my head. I know what and how much I have in our bank accounts and investments in my head.
Anymore detail would drive me mad.

I'm very much the same, even though I track my spending I'm not analysing it on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis
Like you I know in my head roughly where I am at with my spending, you get used to the numbers especially with the essential spending and I'm sure most people of a certain age are like this, in that they just know from habits what roughly their day to day spending is

I've on reduced / uneven income at the moment and I am using a spreadsheet to track my income and spending. Just started very recently.

Doing the sums in my head doesn't come instinctively to me.

I was very quickly "adding" stuff together while supermarket shopping lately and my bill was way higher than I estimated. That is just one example of where I fall down on budgeting.

Without some sort of spending tracking / budgeting I wouldn't have a clue how much was in my bank account.

So a big thumbs up for tracked spending from me.

 

[Louisval]

Thanks @Cervelo for these important insights.

I 100% agree on the importance of having a budget.

As you've gone into such detail on the finance side of things, I'm curious as to how closely you track that other precious resource, your time! Are there any insights that you are able/prepared to share in this regard? [I suppose what I'm really seeking are insights on how, as a relatively young man, you benefit from/use all that spare time that I'm so envious of!]

 

[euroDilbert]

Thanks @Cervelo for your posts and commentary here.
Inspired by this, I've started tracking all my income and expenditure from Jan 1st and look forward to seeing what it shows at the end of the year and in the future.

As the vast majority of my transactions are now digital in one form or another, I started using an app to record them. Although a spreadsheet could work, this saves a lot of manual entries, and means I don't miss any transactions. The very few cash ones can be entered manually. I hope to be around to report my own conclusions in 20 years !

 

[Persia]

Whst app are you using to track transactions?

 

[misemoi]

An post have a good one that you can link your accounts to with the main banks. It auto-categorises based on the name of the retailer and you can update and it goes back and recategorises.

 

[euroDilbert]

Whst app are you using to track transactions?

I looked at a few of them - the supported banks, pricing and options varied widely. I already decided I wouldn't use just Excel.
I didn't want to spend too long on trials, so my first task was to check that they supported all the accounts I use regularly.
They all seem to use the same few 3rd-party services that provide the links to the actual bank/CC account data.
Most of them could handle the main banks, however I found the outlier was my Avantcard account.

In the end, I went with (oddly-named) Toshl which so far handles everything seamlessly, has been around for quite a while and is reasonably priced.

Others I looked at were An Post, Spendee, Wallet (Budgetbakers - not Google), Lunch Money, YNAB. It didn't take long to eliminate some of these as they either didn't work reliably with my accounts (even in a trial setup) or didn't handle Avantcard. Your needs may be different.

 

[Cervelo]

As you've gone into such detail on the finance side of things, I'm curious as to how closely you track that other precious resource, your time! Are there any insights that you are able/prepared to share in this regard? [I suppose what I'm really seeking are insights on how, as a relatively young man, you benefit from/use all that spare time that I'm so envious of!]

Thanks Louisval,

Time is indeed a precious commodity and once spent can't be bought back, one of the main reasons for doing what I'm doing is nobody knows what tomorrow holds for them and over my working life, I'd say there wasn't a year go by when I wasn't attending a funeral of somebody connected to me either in family, friends or through work and the majority of those people never got to enjoy a retirement
And given that heart disease and cancer are prevalent in both my parents families, I didn't want to end up in the same situation, so....

Been "retired" early or not is going to mean different things to each of us, for me in the early days, and every now and again it pops it's head up,
I struggled with that life long question referred to in post #98 "The purpose of life" but one day it hit me while cycling in Spain in 2017 and enjoying "the mañana habit", the purpose is just to enjoy yourself but more importantly, try and make everything you do, be as enjoyable as possible

So for me been time rich allows me to slow down and enjoy and savour life but not only that it also lets me reconnect with a simpler way of living that you're just not able to connect with when you're on the hamster wheel, the time to choose what to do, when to do it and how you go about doing it or to put it another way, it gives me full control of choice and as anybody who's retired will tell you, they wonder now how they managed to fit in a full time job

 

[Cervelo]

Thanks @Cervelo for your posts and commentary here.
Inspired by this, I've started tracking all my income and expenditure from Jan 1st and look forward to seeing what it shows at the end of the year and in the future.

As the vast majority of my transactions are now digital in one form or another, I started using an app to record them. Although a spreadsheet could work, this saves a lot of manual entries, and means I don't miss any transactions. The very few cash ones can be entered manually. I hope to be around to report my own conclusions in 20 years !

Your welcome euroDilbert,

For me it's the spreadsheet, I'm old school and don't break habits of a lifetime easily but there is one area that an app can't compete with the spreadsheet or at least I think it won't and that's the level of detail you can add to each transaction

Each entry on my yearly spreadsheet has a note where I add the store, the item, and the date and maybe a few words about the transaction if there was something different about that transaction compared to normal

For example try and remember what a transaction was for 5 years ago with the basic details of what a bank or credit card statement gives you
And also the act of inputting the details into a spreadsheet can help with the minutia of that spend

Good luck with it all and I hope see you back here in 20 years for an update

 

[euroDilbert]

Each entry on my yearly spreadsheet has a note where I add the store, the item, and the date and maybe a few words about the transaction if there was something different about that transaction compared to normal

Most of mine get sufficient detail from the bank transaction details - some are more limited. The big plus for me is that they're all there - I don't have to remember or "get around" to adding anything. They're also auto-categorised - if it's wrong I can easily change it + it automatically adjusts to my "corrected" category the next time.
However I can also add a note to each entry if I want + I can add photos e.g. a paper receipt or even the item in question.

See you in 20 years.....

 

[Louisval]

Thanks @Cervelo

Very interesting answer. Live long and prosper!

 

[Premos]

Did that for about 7 years when my children were younger and we were on a small budget, found it great to control our budget but also to see where we could spend more. Stopped in 2015, though I track our savings. Was planning to start again in 2020 but our life got messy. I think I will start again this year, encouraged by this thread.

 

[Cervelo]

Very interesting answer. Live long and prosper!

Peace and long life!

 

[Clamball]

The fact that you have no children @Cervelo is in this scenario of controlling spending a major factor. Both you and Mrs C are able to make joint decisions that impact your finances and each of you only need to persuade one other person around to making a change in the family finances.

Mr. Clamball and I are within a decade of retirement unless we decide to go earlier, but it is the children who are the wildcard. In our specific case we are facing into an adult child living with us permanently due to health issues. So our financial planning is difficult with a spendy wildcard of an adult child, who we need to house and ensure has excellent health insurance well into the future.

 

[Shelby219]

Just to echo previous posters comments, fantastic and quite a riveting post there Cervelo,

My reading of your posts is a-kin to a really good book and not wanting it to end.

I'm in the camp of KOW's post (16) nailed it to a T.

Have hit 60, and want out, but have stressed about the decent salary coming to and end.

Wife is of the opinion, and I know she's right , doesn't want to leave a bundle to the tax man after kids receive the threshold inheritance amount.
But, having worked day and night to get where we are, and accumulate what we have, jumping off the ship and spending it whilst not being replenished goes against the grain and has been filling me with dread, trust me, we``ve had a few ding dongs in the LS house hold over it. Found it easier to deal with giving up a 20 a day habit than thoughts of coming off the regular pay scale.

Reading about your experience has tbh cleared considerable brain fog. Fair play to you.

@LS400 if you are remotely in a position to retire and step away from work do it now, one thing you won't get back is time. I was in a similar position a few years ago but just kept saying" one more year and they won't be able to run the business without me" now 4 years later my wife/partner of 46 years is gone after a year fighting a terminal illness. I have all the money I need and know one to share it with. What I would give for those few years back. So do it now and don't end up with regrets. Sorry for a depressing post but sometimes we get preoccupied with money and forget what are the important things in life.