[zie]

People will disagree with me, but.. don't?

I keep track of my expenses by CC and cash account, by the month. I don't care that I spent $5 on a coffee. I do care that for the month of January I stayed within my $X amount, and that for the year I'm on track for my savings goal(s), retirement, etc.

So I keep 2 spreadsheets, 1 is monthly, to ensure the bills get paid and the 2nd is my NW that tracks my retirement and savings goals.

[XorNot]

This is what I do as well. Everytime I've looked into the whole personal finances thing, it just turns into a lot of setup work to not usefully change anything about my life, and a significant amount of ongoing work to... Also not change anything.

[zie]

I think there IS a useful reason to count the pennies, if you are one that needs help staying within self-imposed spending limits. But even tracking it doesn't solve the actual problem, which is behavioural, it might help enough to be useful.