Since I was dissatisfied with our 2023 profligate spending I am going to spend a few minutes each week reviewing our total outlay.
Many people asked what process or tools I used to track expenses.
For many years I used Mint.com, but if you aren’t aware… Mint.com will cease operation on March 23, 2024. Intuit, who bought the website in 2009 and ran it into the ground, recommends moving your data to Credit Karma with reduced functionality – which seems to be all the stuff I hated about mint with none of the stuff I liked. (Screen shots and shade included in post.)
So I am going a different route – This is How I Track Expenses.
How I Track Expenses
tldr; I use a combination of Empower and an Excel spreadsheet.
Back in the day when we were in our heavy accumulation days I had a fairly expansive spreadsheet that involved tracking expenses daily as recommended in the book Your Money or Your Life. (Amazon says I purchased this book on January 1, 2009.) This was very useful to establish a baseline and help internalize conscious spending habits.
But nowadays using an app gets you 99% of that with minimal effort. For this I am using Empower (Personal Capital is now Empower – I have an affiliate relationship with them.)
I have been using Empower for years for their investment and portfolio tracking tools, but have been using their budgeting and expense tracking stuff for a few months now… and this is better than mint.com by far.
Additionally – Since my primary concern is spending in just a couple areas (Amazon and Costco) I am putting those expenses under a microscope in a small spreadsheet.
Empower example
I have all of our spending accounts linked in Empower so all data is pulled in automagically from our bank accounts and numerous credit cards. Each transaction is assigned a category, and this has been fairly accurate for the most part. In the Transactions tab I can view each expense line by line, make adjustments to categories (1000x faster than mint), or split transactions across multiple categories (Costco is usually part groceries part other stuff.)
This is nice and all, but I”m a visual thinker and prefer to look at total category expenses. The Budgeting tool is great for this… I can view the big picture and click down to each individual category or transaction. Any changes update the charts immediately.
How are we doing on total Amazon spending? Clicking on the General Merchandise (aka Miscellaneous) category produces a breakdown by vendor… in February we spent $255.40 at Amazon, which on an annual basis would be a reasonable ~$3,000. I can work with that.
If I desired I could go deeper – breaking each Amazon transaction into subcategories… coffee goes to groceries (or perhaps spa services), tools goes towards home maintenance, etc… but this is a sufficient level of accuracy for what I aim to do.
Although my examples here are on a monthly basis I can view data over any time period – weekly, yearly, etc…
Spreadsheet Example
From Empower, plugging all of our expenses into a spreadsheet with a quick comment is easy. This gives me a way to see a greater breakdown on some categories (e.g. Amazon) at a glance. I could add this information as a note in each Empower transaction, but this is faster for me.
Since Amazon and Costco are my main focus I highlighted those total expenses at the top, and also did a simple forecast since spreadsheet math is easy.
Numbers don’t perfectly match between Empower and the spreadsheet because I haven’t updated it completely for the end of February spending, but even 90% alignment is good enough.
Stuff I didn’t like about mint.com
For the most part Mint’s expense tracking stuff worked fine – it is why I started using it back in the day. When Intuit bought them it seems like they tried to cram a bunch of revenue generating stuff into the mix – insurance recommendations, bank account promotions, etc… None of that was well targeted or even useful.
They also tried to give insights on spending or provide cheeky guidance. This was almost always wrong or at least misguided.
Here are some examples in screenshot form.
That time our spending dropped when the entire country was on covid lockdown
That time we didn’t own a car and paid $0 for auto insurance
That time mint tried to save us <0.001% of our quarterly budget
It all adds up and pretty soon you are talking about real money
Up 163%? Wow… amazing. Also false.
Mint.. the great demotivater
In summary – I’m almost glad mint shut down as it encouraged me to try something new.
Summary
Since we were a little overzealous with purchases at Amazon and Costco in 2023, I decided to pay a little more attention to our spending in those areas. If we are going to spend an extra $1k per month, I would rather put that into business class travel than random stuff that offers no life benefit.
Now mint.com is going away… Since I have been using Empower for years for their investment and portfolio tracking tools, I started using their other tools for budgeting and expenses tracking. It is great – way better than mint in my opinion. It’s worked well these past couple months for importing all of our transactions and making it easy to quickly and efficiently understand where the money goes.
I also use a small spreadsheet to more closely look at the Amazon and Costco expenses (and the rest since I’m looking at the data already anyway.) This is probably a short-term thing as it seems like Empower is meeting all the main needs/goals.
If you aren’t already, give Empower a try (if you do try it, we may get a small commission.)
If you are using it, let us know in the comments what you think.
If you are using a different tool, let us know that too.
How do you track expenses?
Empower Personal Wealth, LLC (“EPW”) compensates Go Curry Cracker! for new leads. Go Curry Cracker! is not an investment client of Personal Capital Advisors Corporation or Empower Advisory Group, LLC.
I also used Mint (since 2009!) for tracking and Empower/PC for net worth plus an annual reporting/repository spreadsheet. I’ve been pleased that the Empower tracking/categorizing is pretty good. It gives you more flexibility than Mint did to rename, but they could use some better AI. I have to recategorize several recurring transactions as it doesn’t recognize the same transaction with a different reference number. Mint’s trends analysis was a bit more powerful, but was always screwy, like labels being off by a month, etc. I can do anything I need to in seconds with a pivot table, so no big loss. If I didn’t have long history with Empower, I probably would have moved to Monarch.
I’ve looked into heavily and the two best options I’ve found would be co-pilot (if on OSX / iPhone) [they can pull all your amazon transactions directly from Amazon] or Monarch if on everything else (Amazon functionality is supposed to be on the roadmap).
I am not big into budgeting so I too use Empower to get a snapshot view, but if I wanted to go deeper I’d definitely use co-pilot or monarch. Bonus – both claim they can import old Mint data.
Unfortunately for me Empower is going the way of Mint. Once Personal Capital was bought out I’ve started experiencing a lot of data corruption.
In the past I could send Personal Capital a trouble ticket that would be fixed within a day. Now it takes weeks to fix things. I hope they get things back on track soon, I would hate for Empower to go away.
I do agree, Mint was worthless.
I use Tiller. I like it most of the time.
I also now use Tiller after mint abandoned us. It aggregates data DIRECTLY into your spreadsheet, which is really powerful. It takes a little longer to get things setup, but allows full customization of your financial spreadsheet. For casual use I wouldn’t recommend it, but for someone looking for long term granular control over finance data I haven’t found anything better. Just make sure you are a computer programmer spreadsheet minded type person.
I’ve looked into it and it is intriguing, but confusing. Can you explain if/why I would want to use Tiller over a combination of Empower for combining and exporting data to a custom spreadsheet? If you are a computer programmer spreadsheet minded person, why not do it yourself? There are also a lot of excel tools out there.
I just started using Rocket Money about two months ago. I still don’t have it completely set up, but I think it will work OK for a single guy.
I too like Empower the most. I tried Monarch and Rocket but each of those had issues connecting with my bank and rendered them useless to me.
I’m glad Intuit killed off Mint as well. Ever since I read about how Intuit lobbies our government to keep us from filing taxes for free so they can keep selling TurboTax, I do what I can to get people to stop using their products:
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free
OLT and FreeTaxUSA are good alternatives to TurboTax. This year I used OLT to file my taxes, which included a K1, 1099-R, etc. With TT it would have been $90. With OLT it was free.
PREACH!
I very much dislike the lobbying
In the past I have used TT because it saves me hours of time manually entering brokerage account transactions for schedules B & D
I’ve made my own excel spreadsheet that looks like form 8949 so easy copy paste of transactions and have gotten no complaints. Will check out OLT though!
I ended up using OLT this year… worked great and the price was right
I was always interested in Tiller even before Mint shutdown…but never had the time to fully look into it. The impending doom made me find the time, and I’m enjoying it.
It’s not for someone that wants everything done for them. Almost everything needs to be configured (including how to categorize expenses). There are tools to help, but there are no generic rules. And it’s not free….it’s $79/year. The subscription fees cover all their costs…they have no private investors and don’t sell to data brokers.
What I like is the process they took to provide the transaction data. They populate a spreadsheet I already own with all the transactions. To start, I added all my Mint transactions into the “transactions” sheet after moving around columns to fit their model. I can directly control the data. They provide a few other spreadsheets for budgeting, debt payoff, categorization, etc. Beyond that, there’s a huge community-supported library of spreadsheets for all sorts of things such as: estimated quarterly tax, spending analysis, retirement planning, home inventory tracker, and dozens more.
And all of that runs on your computer in spreadsheets you control. You can tweak anything, create your own reports, make new spreadsheets. The majority of what Tiller is doing is pulling financial data for you and providing a space for the community to share their solutions….which is perfect for me.
Another one that I really wanted to like was LunchMoney. It’s created by a solo female entrepreneur that provides an API-first approach to the data. That service provides both the slick front-end graphs, transaction viewing, etc and an API I can use to routinely pull my data into my own spreadsheets automatically. However, they don’t support Fidelity…and probably won’t. It’s too expensive for them to add a new financial aggregator to pull data. It would have been nice to support a small developer, but it also has to make sense for my use case.
As I posted above, I don’t understand how Tiller is better than Empower exported to a custom spreadsheet, especially if I’ve been using one with Mint data for years. If you have the spreadsheet skills to use Tiller, why not make your own or customize one of the many spreadsheets out there? Isn’t making the spreadsheet half the fun? I’ve automated the data import, translate summaries into a Sankey chart making website format, use pivot tables to sort out miscategorizations, and whatever else I want to do. It even looks like Tiller uses Google Sheets.
You’ve automated the transactions data import from Empower to your spreadsheets? I didn’t realize Empower had the functionality for that and I’d be interested in that code. :)
In that case, it’s pretty much the same and you should continue doing what you’re doing.
I export an Empower .csv into a spreadsheet that reformats the data into a pivot table. Good enough for 1-3 times a year for a deep dive. I can do the weekly/monthly stuff well enough through Empower’s interface.
Looks like I’m not missing anything, but glad Tiller works for others.
I used and loved Empower for years for tracking spending and investments…. until it stopped playing nice with Fidelity! Because of changes to Fidelity security requirements, Empower will not connect. Since my main credit card is with Fidelity, my spending no longer imports (and I tried the work-around they suggested). And customer service is even worse than when it was Personal Capital. I’m looking for alternatives for spending tracking.
I suggest looking through this subreddit for posts about Fidelity: https://www.reddit.com/r/mintuit/
There are tons of threads about switching away from Mint/CreditKarma.
I have no issue uploading my fidelity info into Empower.
On other hand, uploading details from my TD Bank accounts is pretty much hit or miss and no way to add missing transactions.
So, guess back to my Excel Spreadsheet.
We’ve used Empower exclusively for several years now including monthly budgetary reviews. I figure its budget tools give about 90% accuracy, which is all I need. We are Fidelity users (investments, retirement, credit cards) and have experienced no issues importing data.
I tried switching the Empower, but it’s not tracking my spending from one of my bank accounts (a Schwab One account that mixes a bank account with a brokerage account). I opened a ticket with them, and they said there was an issue they couldn’t resolve due to action codes, even though the transactions are tagged using expense categories.
I tried Fidelity FullView and had the same issue.
Interesting. I’m tracking my Schwab account with Empower and I’m not having that issue.
I gave in and just switched to Quicken-Simplifi. Anyone have any feedback?
We use Quicken and a spreadsheet. We both have a heavy finance analytics background.
I also am not too sad about Mint going away since Personal Capital/Empower is still around. However, one major void is the Bills section of Mint. P2 and I have lots of credit cards that we use to maximize rewards, and keeping track of when bills are due is not trivial. Mint was really good about showing due dates and statement balances for nearly all our credit cards, plus most utility bills. Empower has something similar for credit cards through the web interface via Banking->Bills, but it’s not nearly as good as Mint. How do you manage this?
I never used that feature in mint and found it kinda annoying that it tried to make me use it.
I just keep a list in a spreadsheet with statement close dates and payment due dates. I use Fidelity billpay for all 15 current cards and all utility bills are on autopay.
I use a simple spreadsheet model that I believe I got years ago off Vanguard. Gives me a quick snapshot of my year to year expenses and if anything gets out of hand. I don’t track every single little thing so in some cases it is just a WAG on my part, making sure it is always a higher number than we most likely spent in that category. Helps me sleep better at night.
I’ve been using YNABv4 since it rolled out for budgeting, PC/Empower for investment tracking, and MadFientist’s spreadsheet for tracking trends and goals. I was about to drop Personal Capital due to some account links being broken for weeks, but the stability seems to be on the upswing.
Stability had been great for me the past couple of years.
I can’t remember if the sync stability fixes were pre or post Empower, but for the longest time my TSP and USAA accounts weren’t updating.
I have never used Mint, but I have been using “Empower” for years for portfolio and net worth tracking. I also keep my own spreadsheets for expense tracking. Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at Empower’s expense tracking tools.
Hey Jeremy,
Just wanted to drop a quick note to say I loved your recent post. We’re also big fans of using Empower and spreadsheets for monthly tracking. However, we found ourselves needing a bit more granularity, especially during our travels. One major gripe we had was Empower’s lack of a default travel category, and even when we tried to customize it, the categorization just didn’t cut it for us. Plus, the absence of currency conversion is a definite deal-breaker when you’re on the move.
So, we decided to build a tool that allows us to track our spending more closely, especially during our adventures. We’re constantly adding new features to it, and we think it could be pretty useful for you too!
Check it out here: https://www.nomadpurse.com
Let me know what you think!
Cheers.
Mr. NN
I switched to copilot. Really liked the tool. You can import mint data.
Use my referral code N6QHE7 to get 2 months free https://copilot.money/link/fxft3eo9XoKETbgA6
I signed up with NerdWallet and so far it is so-so. I’m surprised NerdWallet doesn’t get much mention since it’s very similar to Mint but the interface is slightly less intuitive.
I mainly just need an aggregator for my credit cards and checking account balance so I can review the transactions for fraud and transfer in cash from my brokerage account when needed.
Mint.com was great but the issue was it had so many issues with syncing and also duplicating transfers as expenses, like if you transfer $3k a month to your brokerage account. I like the Credit Karma app and don’t track expenses much differently now but can understand all these new apps are useful tools.
Cannot believe more folks are not mentioning Quicken Simplifi in these comments. It’s very easy to use and has similar feel to Mint without all the stuff we all grew to hate about Mint.
I should take another look at Empowers spend tracking. I was using Mint, though less and less often. I only use 3 main credit cards and as long as I could pay each every month I didn’t need to know how much more I spent on groceries. Empower is much worse since the change. My TSP won’t link (multiple fixes tried). I’m left to use a manual account to adjust the balance from where it froze, so now my allocation details are way off. I can’t tag CU IRAs as investments instead of cash the check box does nothing. Service tickets don’t get resolved.
I was wondering, could an early retiree go nomad for at least 330 days and claim the FEIE then use that deduction to do a massive IRA conversion? Think this would be worthy of a post. Thanks again.
Yes
Hilariously, I started tracking expenses not to reduce my spending (though I had hoped it might—if anything it’s just helped to put a lid on lifestyle inflation), but to figure out how much I should be saving every year. Given this, I decided that the most granular I wanted to get with tracking expenses was on an account-by-account basis. I also felt this would be the most sustainable over the long term, versus trying to categorize expenses by type or vendor (whether manually or via some imperfect tool/app). So far I guess it’s working because I just hit a decade of tracking expenses this way. I wrote about my spreadsheet back in 2018, but the TL;DR is one row per month, with the following columns: mortgage/rent, health, and then columns for each of our credit cards and checking accounts, in our case there are only six that I input on a monthly basis. This helps me see trends from month to month and year to year, without overwhelming myself with data (that I’m unlikely to act on). For any numbers that merit further explanation, e.g. why it’s high/low, why it’s different, etc., I just jot down a quick “note” in that cell.
Your posts are always full of great advice. Thanks!