2600 days of every dollar tracked

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assumer
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2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

I began religiously keeping track of my expenses and income (including petty cash) for every single transaction 2600 days ago on 2007-04-05 using a custom excel spreadsheet. I was 20 years old. I am now 27 years old. This is where every dollar I spent and made came from, with significant life events highlighted. I know this may not be necessarily actionable, so I understand if mods want to shut this thread down, but I think it could offer some insight for others and perhaps I could get some advice as well.

Personal note: I am excited about the future and finally my educational investments paying off.

Without further adieu:

Click for larger
Image


Summary:

Total $$ spent = $236,000.
Total $$ made = $316,000.
Net worth = $80,000.

Biggest expenses: Lodging & Education.
Biggest income: Work & Inheritance.

Image

Image

Image

Investment started: March 2011 (learned about bogleheads; first IRA opened)
Investment CAGR: 11.92%
Total assets CAGR (including checking, savings, etc.): 7.06%

Image

I'm still young, but what have I learned?
  • Minor expenses like gifts, entertainment, etc. do add up over time but not significantly. Your biggest expenses (house, car, education) will dwarf the little things. The latte factor is totally worth it to me. Your new kitchen renovation will cost as much as a lifetime of lattes, so enjoy your darned Starbucks treat!
  • Surprises such as inheritances can really change your financial picture. You never know what's going to happen.
  • Bars are fun but expensive. I've spent a total of $17.5k on alcohol in my life ($12.5k in bars, $5k in stores).
  • My sense of freedom and happiness is dependent on my net worth. I don't care what anyone else says; I felt a lot better and with less anxiety when I was out of the red. I am even happier now that I actually have disposable income.
marielake
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by marielake »

Good for you. So, now what--do you have savings plan and financial goals? Wish I'd had them at your age; now I'm playing catch up and keeping my fingers crossed.
awval999
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by awval999 »

I'm 28 so I enjoyed your chart.

I appreciate you coming out and posting the alcohol #4 and the amount. Truthfully, I'm probably there or higher. I recently made the decision to go from Jack Daniels to Evan Williams and Stoli to Smirnoff. I'm a craft beer drinker as well. It's kinda crazy to think about the dollar amount of alcohol spent, at home, out on the town in the City, and on vacations.
ccieemeritus
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by ccieemeritus »

Thanks for posting the data.
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Zabar
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Zabar »

Thanks for posting.

It's interesting that you consider gambling an income category rather than an expense category that's temporarily negative. :twisted:
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Zabar wrote:Thanks for posting.

It's interesting that you consider gambling an income category rather than an expense category that's temporarily negative. :twisted:
The reason is that i was part of several card counting teams so it was closer to investing or work the way i did it.
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Toons
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Toons »

Suggestion,invest that after tax 17k spent on alcohol per year in an index fund for a couple years,just sayin :happy
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Calm Man »

A very unique effort. I hope you stop daily tracking of expenses.
whoMe
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by whoMe »

Wow, this is really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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InvestorNewb
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by InvestorNewb »

17k on alcohol stood out for me..although over 7 years it's really not that bad - especially given you were a student for part of the time. I'm probably up there as well.

In some ways, I'm glad I don't keep track. Do you have any regrets about keeping track? (i.e. I shouldn't have spent this much on x...)

Tracking everything is a very laborious task in itself. Are you done tracking? If not, wouldn't it be better to devote energy to something else? I'm impressed that you tracked everything over that many years/days, but it seems overkill to me.
Last edited by InvestorNewb on Sun May 18, 2014 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

Toons wrote:Suggestion,invest that after tax 17k spent on alcohol per year in an index fund for a couple years,just sayin :happy
Even better, I'm going to take a couple of thousand and buy some alcoholic beverage companies, knowing what teetotalers lurk on these boards will make for some very profitable investing. :moneybag :greedy :sharebeer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

Calm Man wrote:A very unique effort. I hope you stop daily tracking of expenses.
I was thinking the same thing. If the OP is unattached, the OP can use the pie charts as a talking piece when wooing their future girl/boy friend. :twisted: That ought to make for an interesting conversation.
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sadinvestor
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by sadinvestor »

Impressive. I wish I would have done that. Earned a lot fast and spend it even faster.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by nisiprius »

Very interesting, thanks. I wish I'd made a chart like that. Oddly enough, it's now about 3/4 a year that I've been making a chart of the balance in our checkbook, and I find that extremely informative and wish I'd been doing that all along--or that banks did it for you, the way Vanguard does.
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pennstater2005
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by pennstater2005 »

How did you have time to drink while tracking expenses that closely :happy
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DTSC
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by DTSC »

Wow, you spent more on booze than taxes. How do you swing that?
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Toons
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Toons »

Grt2bOutdoors wrote:
Toons wrote:Suggestion,invest that after tax 17k spent on alcohol per year in an index fund for a couple years,just sayin :happy
Even better, I'm going to take a couple of thousand and buy some alcoholic beverage companies, knowing what teetotalers lurk on these boards will make for some very profitable investing. :moneybag :greedy :sharebeer

:sharebeer
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dumbbunny
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by dumbbunny »

I think you are "on the right track" to track your income and expenses. I have been doing my expenses since buying a house in 1990 and it has revealed to me my good and bad habits. It is also good for reviewing total costs for owning a house, vacations and the like. Sometimes we tend to forget true cost.

When I spent money on beer and cigars, I would deposit the same amount of money into an envelope and eventually into one of my mutual funds. It made me think those pleasures were twice as expensive and it slowed down my rate of consumption. I think.
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Rob5TCP
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Rob5TCP »

Wow - that is wild. I do something similar though not on your scale.
All my purchases over 5/10 I charge and enter into MS Money. It takes about an hour or two each month and I get similar reports. It's not accurate down the last cent, but close enough for me, without
the extra work.
I have been done this for many years now.
For the first year, I also tracked small cash purchases, but now I just lump them into an approximate monthly sum ($100-$200).
It is amazing when you look at income and expenses over time.
freddie
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by freddie »

You need to plot your expenses over time so you can see how they changed for various points of your life. I have a feeling your college costs look different than your current ones
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Thanks for the compliments. Some responses:
freddie wrote:You need to plot your expenses over time so you can see how they changed for various points of your life. I have a feeling your college costs look different than your current ones
So I do a moving average of specific categories. Here is a moving average with a window of 300 days and a period (y axis) of 30 days for Food, Alcohol, and Utilities. I haven't tracked total expenses as a moving average though.

Image
Toons wrote:Suggestion,invest that after tax 17k spent on alcohol per year in an index fund for a couple years,just sayin :happy
InvestorNewb wrote:17k on alcohol stood out for me..although over 7 years it's really not that bad - especially given you were a student for part of the time. I'm probably up there as well.
$17,500. A lot right? Not really. Over 7 years that's $200 / month. When a round of drinks for 5 friends could be $50... when friends of mine regularly spend $70 per night at a bar... it's not a lot.

This includes bars, clubs, vacations, hosting parties, enjoying some scotch, etc.

Could I have put that $17,500 in an index fund? Sure. Maybe it would have made $11,000 profit. But for what? The amount of memories, excitement, friendships, stories, bonding, girlfriends, etc. I would be giving up would not be worth it. Especially smack dab in the middle of my 20's. I have regrets in my life, but that's not one of them.

So I would have a net worth of $100k right now instead of $80k. Big deal. I am pulling in $10k - $20k per month. I expect that to rise. I might hit the $100k mark a month or two earlier. I might hit $1million a few weeks earlier. So what.

"But assumer, $17k compounded over 30 years is a gajillion dollars!"

I expect to amass and invest millions of dollars over my lifetime. That's a drop in the bucket.
Calm Man wrote:A very unique effort. I hope you stop daily tracking of expenses.
InvestorNewb wrote:In some ways, I'm glad I don't keep track.

Tracking everything is a very laborious task in itself. Are you done tracking? If not, wouldn't it be better to devote energy to something else? I'm impressed that you tracked everything over that many years/days, but it seems overkill to me.
Why do you say you hope I stop, Calmman?

Well, the amount of time it takes at this point, now that my system is in place, is about 15 minutes a night. I think I just spent 5 minutes typing out this post. That's half a sitcom. The amount of time people waste compared the amount of time I spend on tracking my personal finances is nothing.

Also let's be honest. The amount of time and energy people spend discussing the minutia of asset allocation, etc., is no better than the time I've spent on this (forgetting the fact that I actually enjoy it!).

Oh, for the record, I have a 1-fund portfolio for retirement (Vanguard Target Retirement) and a 1-fund portfolio for savings (Vanguard Lifestrategy).
InvestorNewb wrote:Do you have any regrets about keeping track? (i.e. I shouldn't have spent this much on x...)
Hmm there are some interesting things I might regret. Not the amount of money I spent on food, but rather the breakdown. I regret the amount I spent at restaurants rather than putting that money towards gourmet groceries, for example.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

marielake wrote:Good for you. So, now what--do you have savings plan and financial goals? Wish I'd had them at your age; now I'm playing catch up and keeping my fingers crossed.
Forgot to respond to your question in my post.

Right now I am focused completely on the income side of things. I am investing a lot of time energy and money into my business.

A few years down the road I want to get a mortgage on a really nice house, but that's only if I end up making a lot of disposable income.

I have the expenses side of things down pat now, and understand my own habits and what makes me happy.

The part I need to work on now is how to generate more income for my business.

Also I haven't taken a vacation in a long time since I started my Ph.D. so I want to do that and make that a regular yearly thing, which is another financial goal. It was worth it not taking vacations though, because it allowed me to buckle down, focus, and finish my doctorate in only 3 years. But now it's time to enjoy some fruits of my labor.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by slippingsloth »

This took amazing effort. I appreciate you sharing it with us. The delayed gratification for educational attainment is something as another professional(MD), I completely relate to and admire. Good luck.


Enjoy the latte factor. This board is filled with people who take pleasure in pointing out places where you can save.... but I agree with you the beer/coffees of life make the small moments worth living and arent much when held up against tuition and housing in the grand scheme. In the end as long as I end up with just 1 wife, I will be happy enough financially :P
Alistair
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Alistair »

Perhaps people are interested in the links in 'Banks that categorise your expenses', where this helpful analysis is done for you...

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtop ... 2&t=138429
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Alistair wrote:Perhaps people are interested in the links in 'Banks that categorise your expenses', where this helpful analysis is done for you...

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtop ... 2&t=138429
Good. I'm actually a big fan of Mint.com and use it to make sure I don't miss anything from my credit cards. I use credit cards for everything (pay off in full every month; amass many points and miles) and basically spend about 15 minutes manually porting over the day's expenses from mint to my excel sheet. But mint has some really good features itself and is super easy to use.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Wildebeest »

Thanks for sharing. I am very impressed by your ability to keep count and I love the graphs and pie charts.

I am concerned that your expenses of alcohol of food and alcohol have been rising recently. Have you considered to keep check of your calories burnt and weight in these charts?

Also what is up with the increase in utilities?

For my own edification I would love to know what your PhD is in and what business is you started. Do not feel obliged to answer.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by dumbbunny »

assumer wrote:When a round of drinks for 5 friends could be $50...
Or more in the case of my 30 year-old stepson. He told me about a game he used to play with his Happy Hour friends. Everyone drinking and eating at the table puts their credit card in the middle of table. When the bill comes, they ask the waitstaff to pick one credit card from the middle of the table. The card that is picked pays the bill - He calls it Credit Card Roulette.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Wildebeest wrote:Thanks for sharing. I am very impressed by your ability to keep count and I love the graphs and pie charts.
You're welcome.
Wildebeest wrote:I am concerned that your expenses of alcohol of food and alcohol have been rising recently. Have you considered to keep check of your calories burnt and weight in these charts?

Also what is up with the increase in utilities?
Haha actually I do keep track of both calories and weight in another excel sheet along with my weightlifting which is a part-time hobby of mine. I haven't combined them and run any correlation analysis :).

So these are all because I just graduated in December with my Ph.D. and moved to a higher cost of living area to start my business. For the first time in my entire life, I am no longer living on a $1,700 per month stipend. If you look at the moving average, and the dates with the original net worth chart, you'll notice that the increase in the amount I've spent on food, booze, and utilities is precisely when I graduated.

This is because I am making a conscious choice to go out more, enjoy time with my friends, and not be so frugal with food and entertainment. I am not eating more, and am not even spending more on restaurants (see my moving average chart). I am spending more on groceries that I want and starting to get into cooking.

I was very responsible during my schooling and pretty much got generic brand everything and only sale items. Now I am loosening up more and spending a few hundred more a month on the quality food that I want. And it's actually better for me (vegetables and protein are more expensive than carbs and fat) and so I am actually healthier. With booze, I recently moved to a location with a lot of my friends, and also I have more time to go out with them now that the Ph.D. is over, so I am really enjoying myself a lot. I am going to bars and being much less stingy when we are out.

So I understand the concern, and want to make sure myself that things don't keep trending upwards, but it's a conscious choice as of late.
Wildebeest wrote:For my own edification I would love to know what your PhD is in and what business is you started. Do not feel obliged to answer.
Will PM you tomorrow when I have more time, but I don't want to reveal more about my identity on a public forum.
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SunsetKid
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by SunsetKid »

Good Job, very interesting.
I don't track things nearly to that extent, but have been doing a yearly review of assets to see net worth, and it helped me understand my situation better over the last 6 years. :moneybag

The detail in yours made me think you must be in financial/accounting , no need to respond, just laugh at me to yourself if I'm wrong.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by slippingsloth »

How much work do you put in to maintain this? Or do your accounts automatically sync to your spreadsheets?
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by etowers »

Wow thanks for posting this. I really appreciated your sharing this and the little insights like enjoying the latte moments. I only started tracking my expenses last year and it's been a real eye opener. I estimate that I could have bought a house outright with the amount I spent in clothes, bags and jewellery in the last 5 years. You sound like you've got your head on right and congrats on your successful business so far. I would be interested to follow this thread and see how you pan out in life.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by LeeMKE »

What gets measured gets improved. - Drucker
The mightiest Oak is just a nut who stayed the course.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by madbrain »

Which software did you use for tracking ?
I also track every dollar (and cent) using Quicken.
It doesn't take all that much time, especially since I attempt to spend as little as possible in cash, and I have automatic downloads of my bank accounts/credit cards. Mainly it's reconciliation that takes a bit of time, and splitting bills like Costco that often have items of multiple categories.
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Old Guy »

Too much alcohol. It will increase your health costs down the road.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

slippingsloth wrote:How much work do you put in to maintain this? Or do your accounts automatically sync to your spreadsheets?
madbrain wrote:Which software did you use for tracking ?
I also track every dollar (and cent) using Quicken.
It doesn't take all that much time, especially since I attempt to spend as little as possible in cash, and I have automatic downloads of my bank accounts/credit cards. Mainly it's reconciliation that takes a bit of time, and splitting bills like Costco that often have items of multiple categories.
I started with just openoffice. Then I transitioned to excel 2010 format (xlsx) due to nicer looking graphs, multithreading support, and some faster functions (sumifs works faster in excel than openoffice).

I use mint.com to consolidate all my credit card transactions and spend about 15 minutes at the end of the day manually typing in the transactions from mint to my excel sheet.

I use dropbox (and copy.com) to keep things synced across multiple computers.
Last edited by assumer on Mon May 19, 2014 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Old Guy wrote:Too much alcohol. It will increase your health costs down the road.
Noted. I am easing back now on the volume and focusing on quality of things I enjoy now that I'm no longer in my early 20's.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

SunsetKid wrote:The detail in yours made me think you must be in financial/accounting , no need to respond, just laugh at me to yourself if I'm wrong.
Close enough. Engineering with a love of the mathematics of business and finance (as noted by my enjoyment of the math learned on bogleheads regarding investing, and also the surprisingly similar math that goes along with card counting, which I used to do semi-professionally).
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by sscritic »

I love the graph over time. As I read it, you drank a lot in 2008 before the crash. You are drinking a lot now. Should we be selling everything? Are you?
bigred77
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by bigred77 »

Peterjens wrote:
assumer wrote:When a round of drinks for 5 friends could be $50...
Or more in the case of my 30 year-old stepson. He told me about a game he used to play with his Happy Hour friends. Everyone drinking and eating at the table puts their credit card in the middle of table. When the bill comes, they ask the waitstaff to pick one credit card from the middle of the table. The card that is picked pays the bill - He calls it Credit Card Roulette.
I always tried to get my friends to play credit card roulette because 1.) I usually drink more than them and 2.) For some reason I just thought it was cool.

I convinced them to play twice. Both times it was my card that got picked. I no longer try to convince people to play credit card roulette.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

sscritic wrote:I love the graph over time. As I read it, you drank a lot in 2008 before the crash. You are drinking a lot now. Should we be selling everything? Are you?
Clearly correlation = causation :)

Drinking a lot back then was the year I (and all my friends) turned 21, which was also my senior year of college which was on cruise control at that point, and I lived down the street from bars.

Drinking a lot now is because I just graduated, have been celebrating, and recently moved near old college friends.

Hmm maybe they are bad influences on me...

It's really interesting to see my moving average charts compared to life events. For example, the amount of money I spent on restaurants is correlated with when I was in long term relationships. The amount of money I spent on takeout was based on where I lived, etc. etc.
Last edited by assumer on Mon May 19, 2014 9:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

bigred77 wrote:I always tried to get my friends to play credit card roulette because 1.) I usually drink more than them
Ah mathematically, your expected value of the amount you'd spend on a uniform random distribution of cards selected when you drink more than them is net positive for you!

Edit: But very high variance, especially with large tabs :-\
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

Alright since people seem to be interested in this, here are some more charts derived from the underlying data (which has 8000 datapoints right now).

I created these charts after reading a bunch of threads on this forum discussing what a good "savings rate" should be, especially for someone young. Also based on a bunch of threads discussing what a good percentage to spend on housing should be (I hover around 25%).

1) Savings rate over time:

Image

2) This is the same as (1) but instead of my savings rate based on my total income, this is my savings rate just based on working:

You'll notice that the savings rate dropped is much different in January 2013 between charts (2) and (1) since I excluded the inheritance.

However, it was still a positive savings rate because I had recently moved to a lower cost-of-living area.

Image

3) Exact same chart as (2) but instead of just red for spending, actually breaking it down into the categories:

Image

4) Instead of percentages, now (3) is broken down into dollars:

Image

5) This chart excludes the savings and just breaks down how my spending changed. So the difference between this chart (5) and (3) is no bright green (savings) category.

Image

Notice the increase in "Vehicle" and "Shopping" categories in December 2013 which is when I moved and had to buy a car and furniture.
red5
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by red5 »

I like it. I have been tracking our expenses in detail since late 2008, although I only spend about 5 minutes a week by typing into Excel dollar amounts from receipts. It may not be for others but I'm a numbers guy and am interested in seeing the results.
jbh42
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by jbh42 »

Hard to believe you spent $2662.00 for health in a span of 2600 days. That is approx. $374.00/year
for insurance, dental, eyes and medicine. You are very fortunate.
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assumer
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Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

jbh42 wrote:Hard to believe you spent $2662.00 for health in a span of 2600 days. That is approx. $374.00/year
for insurance, dental, eyes and medicine. You are very fortunate.
I had healthcare through my school during my B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.

It only took out a small percentage of my stipend (which I did keep track of). I have never had to pay for any medical expenses besides copays for annual checkups since I eat very healthy (have to for weightlifting). I also include things such as toothpaste and haircuts in a subcategory "Health, Hygiene".

However, now I am spending about $300 / month out of pocket on the cheapest health insurance I am allowed to buy since I am self employed so that will be increasing significantly by 11-fold.

Edit: Here is my moving average of my health and its subcategories:

Image

Takeaways:
  • Up to 2010, health was fully covered by being a M.S. student. So it was correlated 100% with hygiene.
  • After that, the hygiene stayed about the same, and I had to start paying for health insurance from my stipend. It's increasing and not a step function since this is a moving average.
  • Due to some personal weird circumstances, I got a lump sum of cash to cover my entire health insurance for the final semester, and it was then paid for gradually. This is the drop in "Health, Medical" to a negative expense (since I received cash) after which it started getting paid for again.
  • I had to start paying for a gym in December 2013 since I couldn't use the university gym, so I added a new subcategory "Health, Fitness"
  • The cost of "Health, Medical" is starting to significantly increase. Time will show that going up a LOT.
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runner9
Posts: 2260
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:49 pm
Location: Ohio

Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by runner9 »

nisiprius wrote:Very interesting, thanks. I wish I'd made a chart like that. Oddly enough, it's now about 3/4 a year that I've been making a chart of the balance in our checkbook, and I find that extremely informative and wish I'd been doing that all along--or that banks did it for you, the way Vanguard does.
We track in Microsoft Money, thought not as closely on category it does make a net worth over time of any/all/some account over any time period selected.
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Clearly_Irrational
Posts: 3087
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2011 3:43 pm

Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Clearly_Irrational »

I used to used Quicken and Excel to do something similar but I switched to Mint in 2009 and it's been great. You lose a little control but it automates nearly the entire process and that's made it so much easier. I can still export the raw data if I need to do something not supported by the website.
Carson
Posts: 854
Joined: Fri May 09, 2014 3:26 pm

Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by Carson »

Love this, thanks for sharing. I say keep it up!

I'm a corporate finance geek by trade, so can't help but do the same thing. Export my transactions into excel and categorize. Like others, doing this takes just a few minutes a week. But the amount of time I spend making charts and what not is probably a bit too much. I do get great satisfaction in seeing what expense categories change over the years, and what things really matter in our budget.
MindBogler
Posts: 1446
Joined: Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:05 pm

Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by MindBogler »

The OP has been very forthcoming with spending habits. I find his willingness to share results of this personal experiment and the condescending nature of some of our members both to be quite enlightening. No where in the OP did I see a request to fix his budget or cast judgement on life choices. Unfortunately, the more I participate on this forum the more I struggle to continue even reading it. There are many useful gems to be found although too frequently one has to wade through heaps of pretentious sarcasm and condescension. An unfortunate state of affairs, in my opinion.
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assumer
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:11 pm

Re: 2600 days of every dollar tracked

Post by assumer »

MindBogler wrote:The OP has been very forthcoming with spending habits. I find his willingness to share results of this personal experiment and the condescending nature of some of our members both to be quite enlightening. No where in the OP did I see a request to fix his budget or cast judgement on life choices. Unfortunately, the more I participate on this forum the more I struggle to continue even reading it. There are many useful gems to be found although too frequently one has to wade through heaps of pretentious sarcasm and condescension. An unfortunate state of affairs, in my opinion.
Appreciate the kind words. It's easier to criticize / destroy than create. It's also easy to criticize others' choices without having to look at your own. How many on here have spent $30k on a car that others could criticize if they wanted. Glass house and all that, ya know.
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