Update: I thought tracking every penny was overkill until my grocery total came to $412 for the month
Everyone in here keeps saying you have to log every single purchase, and I used to think that was way too much work. So for the past 3 months I just tracked my big bills and let the small stuff slide. Last week I finally added up just the groceries from my bank app and got $412 for October alone. I was expecting maybe $280. Turns out it was all the little runs to the corner store in my neighborhood, like $9 here and $14 there, that I never counted. I'm not saying I was wrong to push back on penny tracking, but I was wrong about what was actually eating my budget. Does anyone else track just one category at a time, or do you really do all of them?