Ever tried using Wesabe? or Mint?

Also how much easier would things have been if you had auto OFX/XML feeds from accounts? Would you have done anything differently if these were available?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a ‘not-clubcard’ on which small businesses – grocers, butchers, bars – could load your receipt details and metadata about items bought. You’d then take it home and feed it into your spreadsheat and reconcile it with your bank, taking time to enjoy the double entry accounting system.

There would be benefits to small businesses in such a scheme, many of them the same as those which the like of TESCO achieve; prediction of demand, opportunities for cross-marketing promotions and brand loyalty.

Benefits for the consumer could be realised through mashing the data with other data. For example, total food and drink bought with miles that food has traveled, units of booze per month or total calories purchased per month.

1. Nope. I’ve been burning through my savings in the first two months to make sure there is a bit of a buffer in the company account.
2. The cash tracking was not very much hassle. The hard bit was figuring out how to arrange and analyse the data once I had it.
3. I think that I was less likely to make small cash transactions, because I knew I’d have to write it down. It at least made me think twice. I found with the time recording that there was a much stronger effect – I had to note down every time I changed context, so I simply stayed doing the same thing for longer.
4. I thought I spent more on booze and a lot less on holidays. The data is slightly unrepresentative of a typical month because it was over the summer, when holidays tend to feature more heavily. The other thing that surprised me was how consistent my spending on most things was from month to month – the area chart shows this quite well.

I’d be interested to know how things pan out if you decide to do something similar!

Questions for you:
1. Do you save anything? (I appreciate income is not on this)
2. How much hassle was it to do?
3. Do you think you changed your behaviour by recording it? (ala the Hawthorne effect)
4. Were there any surprises? Are you going to adjust your spending on anything?

Nick

p.s. I’ll share the differences in my spending with you the next time I see you.