How much time do you invest in Budgeting?

[Ex Pat]

Hey

Knowing how we spend our money is powerful because that's how we can optimize our savings rate.

At the beginning of the year, I took some extracts for last year from my bank account and from Revolut and did some analysis with an LLM to see how much I spent last year per categories.

But since, I didn't find a discipline of doing this each month.

And because it's a new habit to build, I am a bit lost. The spreadsheet @Baptiste Wicht shared is a bit too much, because I don't have yet the habit of taking the data out, in order to put it in spreadsheets.

How much time do you spend per month doing personal finance (spending) analysis?
When you started doing it, what was your motivation?
Did you find it difficult as well? Or did you manage to make it fun in any way?
Do you use an app? (I saw Mustachian Post recommending YNAB).

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

Hi

We do it once a month. We only track expenses, we do not really budget anymore. We found it was working well for us.

How much time do you spend per month doing personal finance (spending) analysis?

I would say about 30 minutes each month.

When you started doing it, what was your motivation?

I wanted to have a good view of my true expenses.

Did you find it difficult as well? Or did you manage to make it fun in any way?

No. I am a numbers guy, for me, it's actually interesting.

You can gamify your savings rate and try to make it better every month.

Do you use an app? (I saw Mustachian Post recommending YNAB).

Yes, I use a tool I have written myself (https://thepoorswiss.com/budgetwarrior-budget-net-worth/). I like having the control of my data.

I have written some import functions for Certo, Migros and Neon so that it's faster to enter these expenses.

 

[Rebecca]

I spend 15 to 30 minutes once per week manually updating my customized budget spreadsheet and track every Franc that I spend. I know many people would find that tedious but it gives me peace of mind to know exactly how I am spending and investing my money. And actually I do kind of find it fun to track and plan my expenses in detail, probably because I am a nerdy software engineer.

I started doing this about a decade ago because at that time I was experiencing a prolonged period of low income. It was essential to track every Franc to risk not running out of money and maintain an adequate buffer for emergencies. After my income increased significantly I continued to track my expenses because the habit was ingrained and I just feel better and more in control when I carefully plan spending.

Obviously it would be nice if Swiss banks offered services that automatically import expenses into budget apps but this doesn't seem to exist here unfortunately. So for now I'll continue manually entering expenses, maybe by 2040 my Swiss bank will join the modern world and offer automatic expenses imports.

 

[gaijin]

I currently don't do any budgeting or expense tracking. Since I'm a one person household and (at least in my view) already at a low end of spending, the additional time needed for budgeting or expense tracking would not result in any significant savings.

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

Obviously it would be nice if Swiss banks offered services that automatically import expenses into budget apps but this doesn't seem to exist here unfortunately. So for now I'll continue manually entering expenses, maybe by 2040 my Swiss bank will join the modern world and offer automatic expenses imports.

More and more banks offer CSV exports. I personally prefer that since this can then be imported in many apps and does not impede on privacy or incur a security risk