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Vakulum t1_j8rbmni wrote

Question on general at the community regarding tracking your household spending:

What categories do you use? I always start tracking my expenses but then either have way too many categories making it tedious af or too few categories do the data isn't that useful.

Why advice on a set of categories working well for you?

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mandox1 OP t1_j8srmxe wrote

Since I only use a single checking account and single credit card for all of my purchases, I sort the purchases by vendor type: grocery stores, retail shops, etc. These essentially become my major categories and I then break them down further if necessary.

Purchases may get lumped together if a single store has crossover between product types (think of grocery stores selling food items and personal/grooming items, etc). I won't itemize receipts in these cases. It really comes down to how diligent you want to be with the data, and as you said it can become tedious.

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