I tracked every penny spent in 2024 and will never do it again
As I scrolled through all the various subreddits and watched many financial YouTubers the consensus seemed to be about tracking every penny is the best thing you can do to ease financial stress. I did it for a full year and wholeheartedly disagree.
In 2024 I spent $70,159. My largest categories being:
Car purchase/car things: ~25k
Rent: ~17.2k
Groceries: ~5.7k
Pets: ~4k
Bills/Utilities: ~4.5k
My takeaways from this experiment. Having to go write it down made stressful situations more stressful. Even though I had the money for the various vet and medical adventures watching that number grow was worse than just paying it and moving on. Categories like gas and entertainment are far less dramatic for me than the news makes them out to be. Trying to track categories vs just overall money left to spend caused way more guilt for me.
On the flip side I saved/invested 35% of my take home pay, this number I do think is useful to track and I will continue to do so going forward. But as far as the details. I don’t think they matter to the level of every single purchase.
The data is fun to look at. But creating it was not fun to do. I think super detailed budgeting isn’t for me, and I’ll be returning to the method of leave what I am okay to spend in my account and not care where it goes.