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Crystal
Moderator
11408 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 05 2010 : 06:03:39 AM
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| I had a thought when I first read this thread, but wanted to wait and see what our more expert YMOYL and finance people thought. Here is my idea and this is what I do: I don't reconcile. I DO keep track of spending. I DO track it all into monthly spreadsheets. AND I do analyze whether I truly meant to spend that much in a particular category and whether it was in alignment with my values and fulfilling considering life energy spent. I DON'T reconcile it all with my bank account etc. That would drive me nuts and I have never done it. I also round up my daily tracking of expenditures to the nearest dollar. That drives my bookkeeper friends nuts. But it keeps me sane. So, for instance, instead of recording $.69 for Widget A, I record $1.00. Reconciling my bank statement takes place as a separate activity from YMOYL tracking. It's not kosher, but it works for me. |
Our vision is for a friendly online simple living community. |
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janharker
Senior Member
757 Posts |
Posted - Jul 05 2010 : 1:26:45 PM
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| I do things the same as Crystal. I have a separate page on my spreadsheet for income. And another page for monthly net where I can have fun creating graphs and charts. I never round numbers; if I did that I couldn't put in the penny that I found on the ground. I like adding up found money, small amount that it is. |
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BohoBelle
Associate Member
Australia
167 Posts |
Posted - Aug 19 2010 : 4:20:48 PM
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I'm with Crystal. We track out expenses as they occur using iphone app iXpense. Then at the end of the month we both go through our debit card bank statement and cross off everything line by line as we see it on our iphone. At this time we add the debit card etc expenses we forgot about - like a grocery or fuel bill. We also then add our income to our iphones looking at the amounts deposited in our bank acct.
We then add up both of our iphone expense and income totals using excell (with track a few things seperately that we're interested in, at the moment it's alcohol and food so we can see if we are getting value and to see trends over the year) and the best part - we get the figures and add it to our wall chart.
We also do one more calculation, a monthly expense average. Our expenses go up and down so much that we wanted an average (over a year) of what our expenses are so we can have a some what smooth line to aim for with our cross over point.
Good luck Ted and remember that the point is to look at value and find your cross over point. It's not really about perfectly balanced accounts.
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jrb3
Moderator
USA
2404 Posts |
Posted - Aug 20 2010 : 07:09:29 AM
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I'm not with Crystal on this one. I've found that I and my household need the "to the penny" accuracy and resulting insight. I know how much the average leakage is (DW doesn't actively track her spending), and that's sufficient for planning purposes.
Now, the bank statements reconcile on their own cycle. I do the tabulation with what I know of, and adjust at the end of the year to reflect what little came in after I "close the books" on a given month.
Joseph |
Joseph Beckenbach
From each *voluntarily* according to their ability, to each *unimposed-upon* according to their need.
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Month-end balancing
