[Arainach]

I agree that this works at the income level of most of the HN audience. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you may have more need to closely track exactly what your money is going to (of course, you'll also likely have the least spare time to spend on such tracking). At the income level of most tech workers/the HN audience, however, I agree with your system. My spreadsheet is similar to what you describe - savings/checking accounts, investment accounts, and balance of all credit cards/mortgate/loans that give me a single number of "net worth". So long as its trending significantly positive, I don't care about the details.

[Waterluvian]

Yup. And at the per-theme level if I notice an anomaly I just check it. “Oh my chequing took a $1500 dip in its usual pattern… let’s skim the account… ah yea there it is, we bought that sectional for the patio.”

[lotsofpulp]

>So long as its trending significantly positive, I don't care about the details.

I find that once I normalize against the price movements of my goals, the significantly positive trend becomes much less significant. Since I am relatively young with likely a couple decades or more work left in me, I like to benchmark against a low cost broad market equity index ETF.