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Personal Accounting: Do You Do It? How? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all,

So I started YNAB a few years ago, and found myself enjoying the accounting aspects more than the budgeting aspects. When the price kicked up, I thought I'd explore the personal accounting space some more.

So I started using GNUCash and learned about double entry accounting. Which was fun sometimes, less fun other times. I liked that I could use Git with the save file, didn't like entering every. single. transaction. manually. I could never figure out the bank sync.

Eventually, I switched to Quicken, and have been mostly OK with it so far (on Mac). Though I'm still not used to using Reports and the like for personal analytics, the mobile app is clunky, and I occasionally run into wonky bugs with sync or with the general app.

How do you all go about tracking funds in accounts, if at all?

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I work in accounting and I think that double sided entry is overkill for my own private finances. The offset account is always going to be the bank one way or another.

I don't look at it often, but when I do it annually, I basically just dump the bank data from the previous year into a spreadsheet. Then sort it into categories using a filter. That's enough to give me a decent overview of my costs and adjust my budget accordingly. When doing that, it's easy to spot which categories have changed.

I keep my utilities and mortgage on payments on separate accounts so it's not like I can ever accidentally spend that money on groceries etc.

The only thing I look out for is the grocery card. If I've increased spending it's probably fast food, so I try to cut back on that. Occasionally I review insurances and phone services, stuff like that. I don't think I'd benefit much from using a lot of time registering each and every receipt.