Hello again,

In an effort to simplify my life I have once again decided to tweak my budget. I tweaked the budget in the past a few times to make life easier. I am once again a full time student so I have a very limited budget. I have been able to stay under my total budget in most months so I decided to get rid of the sub categories.

I now only have six categories in my budget on Mint, as follows:

Home

Shopping

Auto

Food

Utilities

Everything else

I used to have sub categories under each of the main headings e.g. under Utilities I had Electricity, Phone, and Internet. I now live in student housing where the internet is included in the rent and there is not a separate charge. Electricity is covered up to a certain amount and we pay the overage so I only get a bill if we go over the limit.

Since these things are bundled into one payment I no longer have the need to track each bill individually. I spend about the same amount on most other things every month and the really important thing is for me to remain under my total budget as well as each category so do not see the point of checking each sub category as well.
Having things this simplified will also make it a lot easier to categorize transactions as they post in Mint because sometimes they are incorrectly classified. It will also be easier to track my progress in each category since I only have to deal with five major ones plus the ‘everything else’ category.
What are you doing to make your financial journey easier?