I like seeing how my spending breaks down, but I don't always feel the same way about what bills go to which categories. The four main categories I use are:
Household/grocery expenses
Spending/entertainment
Mortgage/utilities
Debt repay
Most things are no-brainers (mortgage and condo fees go in Mortgage/utilities, credit cards and student loans go in Debt repay, Netflix and travel savings go in Spending/entertainment, medical and education go in Household/grocery), but others I'm unsure about:
- Is the cellphone package a utility or a household expense? It's our only phone service.
- Is the barber a household or a spending/entertainment expense? Looking groomed is sort of a work necessity, but then so are work clothes and we pay for those out of spending money or windfall money.
- Cable/Internet package: entertainment or household? We use the Internet for a lot of practical household things, but obviously entertainment is a large part of it, and cable is all entertainment.
Where do you think I should put these items? Or do you have a completely different way of breaking things down?
How do you categorize your bills?
August 28th, 2008 at 06:08 pm
August 28th, 2008 at 06:17 pm 1219943867
August 28th, 2008 at 06:51 pm 1219945916
I keep my cellphone bill and house utilities separate. To me, it's not a part of the house. In fact, it's something that I actually don't need, but is close to a need because it's so darn useful. So, it's lumped with the internet. Sort of like, naming it "house add-ons".
I'm a guy who gets a haircut only once in a blue moon so... I can't help you there. I typically just suck it up from the excess (because I slightly under-budget from my actual take home). Perhaps you may want a "work expense" category and put it in there?
Basically, just however it makes the most intuitive sense to you is how I would set up the categories.
December 12th, 2008 at 05:01 am 1229058073
Financial software should not have limited categorization.
People can Categorize as many expenses under as many customized headers and should have the facility to rename the headers according to their requirements.