51–57 of 57 posts
I definitely like it. Because I like Civilization, and because I like when you think about the direction and velocity of your (net worth, savings, call it what you want) rather than "what rules should I put in place and follow?" I've been tracking my spending (cash not withstanding) since 2003, and my favorite part is looking at net worth changes per month, and how they change over time. For example, if I look at 7 y…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Welcome to the Bay Area.
That's not just the Bay Area. That's living paycheck-to-paycheck, and it happens everywhere. Sometimes even to "wealthy" people, if they find themselves cash poor (money tied up in retirement, home equity or other property, or investments).
But in the end, this seems exactly like normal envelope method accounting software, but without bank integration and with a daily view. You just have one big envelope for "Daily spending" which can be anything. You still keep an envelope for each bill, and you still keep an envelope for each irregular bill and big ticket item.
A system like YNAB could eclipse this by simply adding a daily view, and reinforcing their point about keeping your estimated spending categories few and broad. You could switch to YNAB (or whatever) seamlessly, and have your bank transactions pulled in automatically.
Am iImissing something?
What's a "checking balance"?
I actually have a pretty similar approach. (To be honest, Civilization's economic system is not exactly novel.) Except I combine the daily rate with a running treasury (each day starts with the previous day's ending balance). All expenses must be paid out of the treasury, so if I want to purchase something I have to save up for a while. Importantly, the 'treasury' is separate from my actual savings, which are deducte…
How much time do you spend each day doing this? I'd love something similar but the commitment concerns me. Also what if you miss a day (or two) and don't remember all purchases?
Then I spend probably an hour at the end of the month doing a retrospective on how accurate my estimates were.
I definitely like it. Because I like Civilization, and because I like when you think about the direction and velocity of your (net worth, savings, call it what you want) rather than "what rules should I put in place and follow?" I've been tracking my spending (cash not withstanding) since 2003, and my favorite part is looking at net worth changes per month, and how they change over time. For example, if I look at 7 y…
Might I ask what software you use to do that, if any?