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Indeed. Only last week I imported a year's bank statement (one single file downloaded manually) into Google Sheets (worked perfectly first time). Then I spent a
by austinjp 10y ago
Indeed. Only last week I imported a year's bank statement (one single file downloaded manually) into Google Sheets (worked perfectly first time). Then I spent an hour scanning it by eye and constructing dirt-simple regexes to extract outgoings into categories. As a check I compared total outgoings vs total regex-extracted outgoings; it was out by £400 for the whole year, which I can tolerate.
It told me exactly what to needed to know: I spend a surprising amount on eating out, and a surprisingly small amount on holidays. Budget for the year: spend 50% less on eating out.
Two hours work total. Not perfect, but a piece of cake, and very valuable.
- 4ndr3vv 10y agoDevils Advocate: Ah! but now you have a budget, you need to track it to make sure you're sticking to it - how do you know if you're spending 50% less on eating out this month if the data arn't there in-front of you to check?
- lm2s 10y agoI felt like the parent comment didn't meant 50% exactly, just an approximation. So, if it were me, I'd just keep that in mind when deciding to go out to eat.. After 1 or 2 months it's easy to see if I'm on track to the ~50% or not and adjust accordingly.
- db48x 10y agoI guess he'll find out next year when he repeats the exercise :)
- austinjp 10y agoTrue. My pragmatic approach: 50% of the times I have the urge to eat out, don't do it :)