How many of you track your finances?

[james.hendrickson]

Guys - thought I'd get a pulse of the group's financial management practices here.

How many of you guys are doing BOTH budgeting AND tracking your net worth?

If so, do you find its helping you build wealth?

[disneysteve]

I don’t track our net worth. I track our portfolio value. That doesn’t include the value of our home or cars or jewelry or anything else. Just cash, stocks, and bonds.

[srblanco7]

We use spreadsheets to track our portfolio value, our asset allocation, and estimate our income taxes. We have not budgeted for many years - we pay ourselves first and give ourselves permission to spend the remainder.

[EasyMoney00]

I track our portfolio once a year. I do keep a running tab monthly on mine.

As far as tracking spending, we do not. I'll start in approx 5 years. We'll be around 45/46 years old and we do want to retire around 50. We'll have a better idea then what our yearly nut is.

[kork13]

I've got a few tabs on a spreadsheet ... one for "budgeting" (more of a rough saving/spending plan + a day-to-day cashflow projection), another tab for net worth tracking (semi-annual updates), another tab for estimating future savings/investment growth, and so on.

I think the intentionality of the savings/spending plan has helped in general terms, mainly in helping me to be deliberate about how I'm saving/investing money for us, and having a rough idea of where our money goes each month. The net worth tracking is honestly useful only for patting ourselves on the back & seeing where we've been (it's purely backward-looking).

I tracked my spending in detail when I was young/single, but once I got married & became confident in what we spent on the normal, I gave up on it. I doubt I'll ever go back to it, at least being as detailed as I once was.

[Fishindude77]

I track our annual spending kind of after the fact, don't really limit ourselves to a budget. Information is useful come tax time as some things can be written off as farm expenses.
Track our annual income as it varies and comes from multiple sources.
Monitor investments routinely.

[disneysteve]

I track our annual spending kind of after the fact.

Same here. I have a list I maintain showing our average monthly spending for each bill but it is historical, not predictive. We don’t do any sort of forward budgeting. It also has some broad general categories like “Marriott Visa” without regard to what was charged to that card. I don’t break it down by groceries and gas and insurance premiums and travel or anything else.

I update this list each time I pay a bill so I’m able to see if our average monthly spending is trending up or down or staying about the same.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Budgeting comes naturally for me to not spend more than I make so no tracking needed. For tracking net worth I use a spreadsheet that I created. But I'm now thinking about buying Quicken.

[Fishindude77]

Same here. I have a list I maintain showing our average monthly spending for each bill but it is historical, not predictive. We don;t do any sort of forward budgeting. It also has some broad general categories like ;Marriott Visa; without regard to what was charged to that card. I don;t break it down by groceries and gas and insurance premiums and travel or anything else.

I update this list each time I pay a bill so I;m able to see if our average monthly spending is trending up or down or staying about the same.

Since we are retired and in more of a preservation and spend mode -vs- accumulating and saving, my end goal is basically to track our burn rate.

[disneysteve]

Since we are retired and in more of a preservation and spend mode -vs- accumulating and saving, my end goal is basically to track our burn rate.

Exactly. Although I actually did the very same tracking before retirement. That let me know how much we spent annually which was critical to knowing when we could afford for me to retire.

[ua_guy]

I've already created my new spreadsheet for 2025! For the past 10+ years, every month, I track money in and out. I sit down at the end of every month and make sure everything is paid and money is transferred between accounts where it needs to go. Helps keep a high level view of what I'm spending, what I'm saving, and any moved forward every month.

I don't line-item budget for everyday expenses, but have a good idea of what normal spending looks like because I track my card spending, that's how I pay for almost everything. If I want to get down to detail, the card's banking site provides a categorical breakdown if needed.

[cypher1]

Three separate spreadsheets; main one for active banking (checking/savings accounts), net worth tracking, and third for parent's banking. The only app I keep on my phone for investments is a portfolio management widget for tracking my index funds or general market news. I really limit certain investing/banking apps on my phone, with the exception to Paypal. I mirror my portfolio management/transactions on Morningstar site when accessing from my PC.

As for monitoring where all my spending goes for a budget or monthly basis, I really don't track or pay attention since I'm already investing ~50% of my gross pay in various areas. I suppose if I needed to know, I could check on my main two credit card accounts to get a quick overview.