One of the common deficiencies in my budgeting ability, that I've noticed, is the inability to get line-item information (e.g. "Bought 6 _____ for subtotal of _____") instead of full purchases.
What I have now:
- $X spent at grocery store.
- $Y spent at restaurant.
What I would love:
- $X.a spent on beer, $X.b spent on milk, $X.c on Sales Tax
- $Y.a spent on drinks, $Y.b spent on tip, $Y.c on Sales Tax
Things I don't know now:
- How much did I spend on sales tax?
- Item costs from store to store?
- Identifying times where I'm buying the same item at the wrong store
- Finding impulse purchases, bad spending habits, etc at a level that's not just "You shop here".
- Identifying trends in my shopping categories so that I can buy in bulk and save. If I bought 4 jars of Peanut Butter over the past 3 months, and could've gone more easily to Costco to get an economy size, I'd like to know that.
Has anybody been able to overcome this knowledge gap? I currently track all of my household's purchases in Mint, and I do regular review of everything on a twice monthly basis, but I still feel like that doesn't actually help me out very much.
Is there any software available for tracking this sort of information? Do any of the other budgeting suites have the ability to track this stuff?
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Edit: Reading through the discussion, I think I should clarify: Having the data is not a means to an end, the data is the goal. I'm an analyst by trade and by hobby, and was hoping that there was some sort of service or methodology whereby I could collect this data without having to manually input it. I had no idea how the backend of expenses worked, so I wasn't sure if this was something that existed and I just didn't have access to it.
Submitted February 12, 2018 at 11:39AM by wooly_bully http://ift.tt/2ExoZHt
