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When I was a broke teenager in the 1970s, $500 magically appeared in my bank account. My miserly father who had the same name, had deposited it and it went into my account by mistake. He was already a millionaire and a control-freak who used money as his means of "control" over us.
I said nothing and quietly enjoyed the money.
The same thing happened to me with my father in the 80s. But our names are nothing alike, for one thing, I’m a girl. We both had accounts at the same credit union and his paycheck somehow got deposited to my account. I told him and we fixed it though. We weren’t millionaires and my dad was a great guy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fishbrains
Why?
How does knowing how much frozen food vs fresh vegetables you purchase enhance your life in any way? Does it make any appreciable difference being able to track your sales tax to the penny?
I don’t do this to the degree of the poster you quoted, but I like doing this too. I track where I spend all my money. Must be a personality thing. I just like running reports, figuring out if I’m spending more or less on something, adjusting the budget if need be, etc. Recording that stuff literally takes minutes a week. I’m also a bit of a minimalist and a neat nick… so personality. But being so detailed with finances has made me pretty successfully financially on a modest salary.
Was your bank like "I don't think we did....", me "go look at check #XX, the two numbers to the right of the decimals were transposed."
I don't track it anymore because I inherently know where we are financially at all times. After 40 years of managing household finances, it's 2nd nature. Plus, we are retired and I don't have the need to budget like I did in our early years.
The only hiccups come from DH and Quicken wouldn't solve that... I think I've broken his financial bad habits.
That transposition would cause a nine cent error. We learned about transposition errors in accounting class. Transposition errors are always off by a nine. It's a function of our base 10 number system. I earned extra credit in accounting class by showing the math behind it.
I'm a very young millennial, almost gen z. I do not have a checkbook and I never have. My bf did get a checkbook when he opened his bank account (I didn't). We used that to pay the rent at our old place (had to be done by check) and recently used it to mail a deposit to the gutter guys (they did not take credit cards, that was annoying) and that's literally it.
I don't know how to balance a checkbook. I can write a check but that's about it.
It's not complicated. In the era before credit cards became the de facto method of payment, balancing your checkbook was necessary to figure out how much money you had in your account to avoid bouncing a check, i.e., having it rejected for insufficient funds. To balance your account simply meant to add any deposits to your account and then subtract any checks you had written to find the actual remaining funds. That's it. It's basic addition and subtraction.
There's something more powerful with a check than direct pay. If I mailed a check dated a certain time and postmarked. It may take 1-2 weeks to get to the payee but it doesn't matter, I still mailed the payment on-time. Gives me about 1-2 extra week of grace period b4 payment.
With many payments such as taxes and business CC, I mailed the payment out by stamps and usually takes about 1 week to clear for business CC. For IRS, it could take 4-6 weeks for them to cash it.
How does knowing how much frozen food vs fresh vegetables you purchase enhance your life in any way? Does it make any appreciable difference being able to track your sales tax to the penny?
"Any appreciable difference"? Not to anyone else, no, I suspect. "Enhance", I'd say yes, because I know what I can afford, and now that I am retired, I can live comfortably and without much uncertainty on a limited, relatively fixed income. I believe that many people are living beyond their means (and are effectively living off of other people's backs). I have no long-term debt and don't like borrowing, and haven't had any personal loans or mortgages for decades. Not ever borrowing money may not be the smartest thing to do in the current "the way the economic system works" world, but I prefer it.
Once you properly categorize transactions in a personal finance software system, much of the data rolls up easily and automatically into canned reports. Some reports are very useful for future projections/expense planning, and others are less useful: "who'd a thunk that I spent more in sales tax so far this year than I spent on this year's property tax."
When I worked in IT, part of my role was data management & filtering, so properly categorizing data is second nature. Quicken remembers the sub-categories for an entered transaction, so for subsequent transactions, it's pretty much a matter of hammering in the new numbers read off of the receipt. For example, for a food transaction, my sub-categories are Bariatric Nutrition, Dining out, General groceries, Grocery meat, Healthy Food, Unhealthy food, and Spoilt or uneaten food. Rightly so, most would look at these categories and probably think, "who the hell cares?!?" I'm just categorizing the expenses to fit my needs and whims - some of the expenses can/should be reduced, some indicate waste, and some indicate unavoidable but plannable future expenses. I also load upcoming recurring income & expenses into Quicken's calendar, which drives reminders and feeds predictive future net worth reporting.
As a friend once said, "I withdraw thousands in cash from my checking account every month, but I've no idea where/how I spent it." Ever heard a retiree say, "I've got to come out of retirement 'cause (pick your hated president of choice) ruined the economy!" - I'm hearing it a lot lately, but hold back on saying what they probably don't want to hear - "bet you've no idea what you can really afford, where your money's going and where you're wasting it!"
Several times during my work career, I have stepped away/out (a few times by choice, once involuntary), and my income dropped drastically. If/when your life changes from where you have a comfortable living and you only casually mind your expenses to one where every dollar counts, it helps greatly to know where every dollar is going - especially for upcoming expenses.
The first time I stepped away/down (pre-Quicken/MS money), I tracked what I could via an Excel spreadsheet. Then MS Money came along, and I used it because I'd gotten into the habit of tracking. Then Quicken took over the personal finance software market - I got it and continued tracking, even though my income was comfortable.
I just like to know what personal money particulars I can because sometimes, "ya never know what's going to happen" - for a good buying opportunity to pop up or time to tighten the belt. The last time I bought a car was during the COVID auto price cratering - used, paid for in full, and an amount I knew I could afford.
Last edited by ncwheeling; 10-07-2022 at 12:46 PM..
To save money, you should just stop buying spoiled food.
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It's simple + /- 
