Tracking Expenses

Through a mixture of good fortune and a realistic eye to the future when I will need to live off savings and passive income, funds in retirement provide for what I need and pretty close to all I want.  Electronics has made tracking a lot easier.  My bank transactions can be called onto the screen.  All money goes into a single account, leaving only some shifts in investment accounts as other sources of income, or in some months loss.  Expenses come out of a few places.  We have a joint credit card, which I use almost exclusively for what I purchase, I have a secondary card used for a few selective purchases, my wife has two cards which she uses for herself.  So on or about the 17th of every month, the credit card authorizations of the previous month get retrieved on my laptop.  With a sheet of loose-leaf paper, I log each expense from the bank account and from each credit card, put the dollar amounts into categories on an Excel spreadsheet, and then put the loose-leaf sheet into a folder with prongs behind the previous month's data.

Each quarter, half-year, and end of year I let Excel excel at what it does.  I know how much I spent and what I spend money on.  This being the end of the half-year, I spent about $53K, some 20% on travel, an unusually high amount.  Visit daughter in SF, no hotel fees, and upcoming anniversary treat of a trip to France with a lot of pre-paid expenses for everything.  This greatly skews the amount I spend and its distribution.  Health insurance premiums were about 10%, and that does not include my monthly Medicare contribution which comes as a direct deduction from my monthly Social Security deposit.  I pay a lot for the supplement but I need to have the most comprehensive insurance I can get.  My wife pays just a bit less.  She carries dental insurance.  I spend less on dental care than the insurance would cost, so any crowns or implants which have not been needed in recent years, would be paid out of savings.  If any amount surprised me, it is Home Maintenance, which takes more than 10%.  One significant landscaping project this spring.  But the real tote board comes from the power company.  They get about $250 each month, a bit more in winter when gas heating expenses arise. The lawn gets mowed, the pest control agency keeps the bugs and mice from causing major damage.  Water expenses have been nominal.  Trash removal not nominal, but not extreme.  It adds up.  With our mortgage long since satisfied, we come in at far less a percentage of income than experts advise budgeting, even when taxes are added to that, and we have no Home Owner's Association to maintain commonly held property or tell us what we can or cannot do beyond the terms of our Deed, which I've never read.  But house upkeep expenses surprised me more than any other in the calculation.

Some expenses are deceptive.  I spent a couple thousand on entertainment because I put the $300 a month Comcast bill into that category.  While we get cable TV and Internet, which probably are entertainment, we also get phone service which is not.  And perhaps internet access is really more of a utility than entertainment, depending on how the devices are used.

We spend about $150 a month on gasoline, nearly all of that my car.  And that's without a daily commute.  And gasoline expenses when I am traveling to places with overnight stays go into the travel category, so the real amount probably exceeds that.  This is primarily for local driving and day trips.  What you spend your money on says a little about you.  My car is my freedom.  I am driving somewhere every day, usually multiple times a day.  I go to stores, the library, the synagogue, OLLI, parks.  Very few drives to places more than an hour's distance, despite my inclusion of three day trips each half-year.  Getting out of my house with some frequency, no matter where I go, has become a priority and my time in my Camry offers some pleasure while it takes me where I want to go.  And that means regular fill-ups.

Eating out locally, with the much more expensive restaurants when travelling assigned as travel expenses rather than dining, added up.  Dinner with my wife runs about $50, but only done twice.  More typical are going out for coffee, WaWa Hoagiefest, going out for breakfast about once a month, much less costly but considerably more frequent than a dinner at a restaurant.  My wife maintains a Dunkin debit card, refilled every couple of months.  Sometimes we don't want to cook so ask the pizza place around the corner to deliver, though less often by data than I would have estimated.  While I spend very little cash, when I pay that way it is typically for coffee or a sandwich or part of a tip.  Cash withdrawals are logged in a separate column, some $600 this half-year, but what gets paid in cash is never really tracked.  Probably the slices of pizza for lunch or the pastries from Booth's Corners Farmers Market.

So those are my expenses.  Other than recent travel, nothing notably indulgent.  Open for occasional petty indulgences.  Committed to keeping my house maintained and my access to health care financially secure.  And supporting the common good with a blend of donations and taxes.

Financial Data

My imprint was to track every penny.  Until I got a regular ample salary, I looked at expenses big and petty closely.  Eventually I could count on a paycheck that exceeded what I desired to spend, putting much of it first into bank accounts, then later into growing investments.  While always frugal, I avoided serious budgeting.  Minor financial reviews came at tax time.  By the time kids needed big tuition, we could pay a considerable fraction with loans for them that would not saddle them forever.

As I got to retirement, hiring a financial advisor in anticipation, the loose data came my way periodically.  Guidance on investments and tax savings, for sure.  Guidance on budgeting or spending never.  Once here, I allocated the Financial category of my Semi-Annual projects to tracking spending, for which I've now completed my third years.  On or about the 17th of each month I log what got charged to each of three credit card statements and my checking account onto an Excel Spreadsheet.  

The figures for 2022 got tabulated.  I spend a fortune on taxes, about 40% of my total expenditures, though some of it was large one-time payments for converting tax deferred IRA accounts to Roth Accounts.  About 12% of my expenses went to contributions, lots of them, nearly all under $100.  Enough to raise a hand in support of most anyone's worthy effort, not enough to make any of them viable.  Health insurance took a big chunk.  While I allocated a lot to entertainment, most of it was not really my amusement.  The bulk was a monthly Comcast Bill assigned to that category, which I think of as cable TV but is really internet and landline telephone access with a certain fraction enabling television.  Seems like more than it really is.

We did not travel a lot, one fairly big trip, though not an exotic one.  Some short car trips with a few nights each at hotels and eating out.  Yet even with this limited indulgence, the total approximated the totals that I spent at the supermarkets and for consumer goods.  The gas stations got about $1000, probably more since when I purchased gas during a road trip, I assigned that gas to travel rather than fuel.  Home maintenance took about 8%.  Having utilities, trash pickup, somebody other than me doing the lawn, some landscaping, pest control, the plumbers.  Hard to tell what would be done by a Homeowner's Association assessment if we lived in one of those sprawls that we encountered on a trip to Florida, but it would be a big assessment.  But I definitely like living where I do even if its upkeep generates a considerable annual expense.  My car payments added up, now about one-third done.  And insuring everything, particularly our health, generated some notable fees.

With 2022 now tabulated, the only changes I would pursue are probably less on taxes, maybe more on travel.  The monthly Excel entries have now come off my Semi-Annual initiatives, though like monthly donations, or gardening, other former targeted tasks that have come off the list, they have become habitual and continue.  New spreadsheet for the next entry.  New folder to keep the paper data.  But no big changes to my standard of living now that I know what it costs to live this reasonably comfortably way.