This isn't terribly far off. KlangFool refers to this method at times, and there's logic to it: whatever number remains from your gross income after removing taxes and savings is expenses. The bigger challenge is in knowing exactly where those expenses are going, of course. The more granular one gets, the more effort/time/consistency is required.
I have never documented either.
Net worth calculated in my head by adding up 5-6 numbers.
Expenses calculated/estimated by using BofA dashboard analytics. Or roughly by gross income - taxes - savings = expenses.
Very lethargic of me, and time to open up a new google sheet today.
I tried to get a better handle on how I spent on groceries in 2025, and so for the first 6 months I saved every single receipt from anyplace I bought food, and then put the individual line items into (many) buckets: fresh fruit, dried/canned fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, spices/baking, biscuits/crackers, sweets, yogurt/dairy, etc. It worked, but it was a definite pain. I discontinued in August once I saw that things were pretty consistent from month to month, over that 6-month timespan. The challenge for me was that in these larger supermarkets one's often buying non-food items too: hair care, soap, shaving items, plants, batteries, etc. The result being that one can't just tally up the credit card expenses at those stores and say "I spent this much on food".
-rw
Statistics: Posted by rakish_weasel — Fri Sep 12, 2025 11:58 am — Replies 7 — Views 491