Do you ever get tired of being the nerd

[LivingAlmostLarge]

As I sit here for 2 hours plus working on paying our bills, downloading all e statements for the year, recording our budget, sorting the year and it's still not even close to being done, then I need to back up our electronic copy, all my tracking and spreadsheets take time, managing credit card rewards, booking travel with rewards, everything I realized I'm getting tired. I'm getting a bit burnt out with everything. I think there are other things occupying my mind and time and I'm just exhausted. I took over years ago and due to the nature of what DH and I do, it makes way more sense for me to do it and I've done it for years. pretty much since we met in 2000 and i relinquished control for about 3 years 2010-2013 (I had two kids and I had mommy brain). And even then now things are screwed because my DH opened stuff in his email and name for the kids and I have to struggle with managing it.

DH doesn't care and that might be part of it. But then I guess if he took over my controlling nature would come through again and I'd want to do it again.

What do you guys do? Or feel?

[rennigade]

We stopped doing a budget/tracking expenses years ago. We save a lot and live below our means...what's the point of tracking spending?

What e statements are you downloading? Do you really need them? Tax documents yes, everything else, probably not.

Hell my wife stopped using a checkbook register. Doesn't even track it anymore. She rarely ever dips below $7k so she doesn't care. I couldn't care less either if she tracks hers. We have separate checking and I still track mine. Then again, my balance is much lower than hers.

Do you really need a spreadsheet for everything? I do a yearly one last day of each year. I keep track of my own nw each month, but even I know it's stupid. There's no point, it wouldn't make a difference if I tracked it or not. It doesn't stress me out so I continue.

If you're saving a lot and your bills are paid, I say chill out. Sounds so corny but life is too short to worry about every aspect of your finances, especially if you guys are doing a good job saving/investing and living below your means.

[bjl584]

I save and invest a lot. I am cash heavy. I only have mortgage debt.
About as far as I take things are to balance my check book and track my assets and liabilities on an Excel sheet once a month.

[Drake3287]

My wife accuses me of enjoying this paper work! I guess I just like to be organized. I also spend quite a bit of time doing it all. I even balance our check books every month. I don't write checks often but we use our cash reward Visa card for almost all our purchases and bills so I treat these like writing a check. Instead of writing check #1223 or what ever, it's simple a notation of it being a Visa purchase. Each month all of these purchases have to match up so I can pay the credit card bill in full. Time consuming but it pays in the long run with real cash and the money is sitting there waiting for the bill when it arrives. Haven't paid a cent in finance charges in years.

My kids laugh at how I still do things but I can tell you to the penny how much money I have in every account. And if an account comes up short or over, I have to find the mistake. I'm guessing many people here are similar.

[disneysteve]

I don't get tired of taking care of the finances as it's something I enjoy doing. I'd suggest doing as much as you can to automate it all. There are only a couple of bills that I manually pay. All of the rest are either charged to our credit card or automatically drawn from our checking account. You can automate a lot of your investing if it's stuff you do on a regular ongoing basis.

As for using CC rewards, I do struggle with trying to maximize the value of the rewards. I try to not get too crazy about that and just go for it even if it's not the absolute best use of the points every time.

One of my favorite quotes, which applies to so many situations including this one is this: Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sometimes you need to let good enough be good enough.

[kork13]

Sometimes you need to let good enough be good enough.

This is a great way to sum up my thoughts.

I used to be far more detailed. Before I got married, I downloaded every statement, tracked every cent of expenses, and optimized every penny. As we got married, and especially after we started having kids, I realized that it wasn't worth the time, and most of that fell off.

Now, it's alot simpler. I really only do 4 basic things:
1) Maintain a basic spending/savings plan. It's not a budget & I don't check our spending against it... It's merely a planning tool with estimates for what we normally spend, merely guiding the amounts that we auto-deposit into savings/investments. I only update it when something significant changes (income up/down, large recurring expense changes, etc.)... So maybe 2-3x a year.
2) Actively monitor checking account level, to prevent overdraft or excess. This is the only really involved thing I do. Most of our finances are on auto-pay, direct deposit, etc. But our spending varies pretty wildly some months (+/- $2k or more), so I keep a running tally of what should be coming in/out of our checking account, and ensure we maintain a $1k-$2k buffer in there. When we're forecasted to be distinctly above or below that, the gap or excess moves to/from savings. I do these checks maybe once a week.
3) Semi-annual net worth monitoring. I log current balances, and otherwise mostly ignore the accounts because they're all on autopilot.
4) Opportunistically optimize CC rewards (I notice a special deal to use them, or have a special reason, so I do (like with Discover gift card bonuses). Otherwise, it just gets converted to cash value every so often (random intervals, maybe every 3-9 months).

Beyond that, I've learned to let go of the details & trust that it's all under control. We have plenty of buffer in savings, we're living on less than half of our income, and generally in a great place financially. So it's become no longer worth the time & stress involved to keep super-close tabs on it all.

[myrdale]

Don't let it pile up so you have to do everything at once.

I pay bills on Sunday. I record my expenses on the last Friday of the month. I balance the previous month's expenses on the 15th.

Of course that isn't strictly applied, but that is the general schedule which I follow.

[ua_guy]

I'm getting a bit burnt out with everything. I think there are other things occupying my mind and time and I'm just exhausted.

This is what stands out to me the most. Burnout has a way of permeating everything, even the enjoyable things or things which once provided a sense of structure and control. I'm not here to provide life advice, but I think the sooner you are able to manage the source of burnout, the better!

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I'm not budgeting per se. haven't in years, but i recently missed a CC payment by a day because we were out of town and I forgot to pay it. I usually download the statements once a month (which i was 3 months behind) input the dates and amounts into this excel spreadsheet, then sit make a payment and record the payment code then not worry. I just make sure all our auto pays are smooth on the CC because sometimes things expire, then I'm good. I don't look at the statements I just make sure I don't miss the dates and stuff. The dates move a few days. I should put the CC on autopay but i don't tend to run that heavy in my checking account to cover all our expenses. And these past few months our bills have been extremely expensive since I paid our property taxes, life insurance, kids activites in full for 6 months or the year. Thousands of dollars I have set aside that I transfer in to make a payment. I also had an IRS payment to cover my safe harbor this year of another $10k.

I don't normally sweat it and usually 1st of the month i sit and pay all our bills, a habit from when I got paid 1x a month. But i've been out of town and so I've missed my monthly sitdown but I'm wondering if it's just now or can i cut more

[Katherine Reed]

Relax and take a break. Such routine can brake you down for a while, but this rhythm of life is kind of good for balance in daily challenges as for me.

[myrdale]

Relax and take a break. Such routine can brake you down for a while, but this rhythm of life is kind of good for balance in daily challenges as for me.

Yeap.

[riverwed070707]

My personal spending tracking is automated and I do not file statements, use spreadsheets, etc. Honestly, as my earning has outpaced my spending, I don't even really log into Mint very often to check their category assumptions - having a loose estimate of what I'm spending in each is sufficient for me and Mint does that well enough.

My business books on the other hand... oof. I've let that one get out of hand. Presently teaching my 14 year old how to log receipts and generating some earned income for the Roth I'd like to open for her this year I didn't log a single receipt in 2022 and the stack is large.

[myrdale]

My personal spending tracking is automated and I do not file statements, use spreadsheets, etc. Honestly, as my earning has outpaced my spending, I don't even really log into Mint very often to check their category assumptions - having a loose estimate of what I'm spending in each is sufficient for me and Mint does that well enough.

My business books on the other hand... oof. I've let that one get out of hand. Presently teaching my 14 year old how to log receipts and generating some earned income for the Roth I'd like to open for her this year I didn't log a single receipt in 2022 and the stack is large.

If she can pull in ONLY $1,000 this year and that is all you put towards it, from 16 to 65, it will grow to around $110,000 if she never puts another dime in the pot!! God I wish I knew about this stuff when I was that age!

[disneysteve]

If she can pull in ONLY $1,000 this year and that is all you put towards it, from 16 to 65, it will grow to around $110,000 if she never puts another dime in the pot!! God I wish I knew about this stuff when I was that age!

I helped our daughter open her Roth when she was 16 or 17 using babysitting money. She didn’t contribute during her college years and then started again after she started working. I think she’s got almost 30K in there already. Not bad for 27 years old.

[myrdale]

I helped our daughter open her Roth when she was 16 or 17 using babysitting money. She didn’t contribute during her college years and then started again after she started working. I think she’s got almost 30K in there already. Not bad for 27 years old.

Just curious, did she file taxes that year (when she was 16/17)? My understanding was you can't contribute more than you earned in a year?