You don’t even need to be precise for net worth, whereas double-entry accounting needs to be.

For personal finance the problem is almost always very obvious ($3,000 on candles) and all the spreadsheets and budgets won’t change that.

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InitialLastName 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I find there area few things the budgets and spreadsheets help with from a personal finance perspective:

- Values vs reality: A $3000 candle budget is fine, but if you're spending $10/work-day on candles it might be easier to see when that accumulates and you can compare it against your longer-term aspirational goals. This is especially true for less tangible expenses like subscriptions where it can be difficult to see "I'm spending $3000/year on candles I never burn" from ground level.

- Planning and decision-making: It's easier to make good life decisions (e.g. "should I take $job" or "can I buy $house") if you have an accurate accounting of your life expenses.

	▲	mpyne 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, before we picked up YNAB more than a decade ago we never had issues with $3k of candles disappearing in the budget, but we still struggled to save money. When we started using YNAB and entering our spending into it, it was like a hockey-stick diagram on our household net worth. And this isn't even double-entry accounting (which I've adopted for my own personal spending). One thing I'll say is that the way we use YNAB seems different from most other people: we hand-enter every transaction, we don't import it afterwards from the bank. Then we reconcile what we thought we spent vs. what the bank says we spent. In this way we have to be a bit more intentional about what we're spending money on since there's not some kind of big monthly exercise to make the numbers line up and then a "we'll try to be better next month". Instead it's more like an envelope system where we are tracking budget categories as the month goes by.

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SkyPuncher 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My wife and I have moved all of our personal, individual spending to a dedicated card each. Sure, some stuff still makes it into other cards, but the simplicity makes budgeting so much easier. Even if we only accurate capture 90% of our spending, we close enough to targets that it doesn’t matter.

My general rule is a simple system that works well enough is better than a complex, but precise system.

We build our budget with this slop in mind, so anything left over is bonus.