I tracked every single penny I spent in 2022 ($63k) and here are some observations

Spent 2022 tracking every single penny I spent, and categorized it (to the dollar!) and here are some observations: **Income:** $63,411 (mmmm) **Take home income:** $50,255 **She went to heaven, and then...** **UBI/Student loans:** $4,186 (sounds bad, but former) **Total income:** $54,442 So with that much money, you’re probably not gonna guess that I’m an unemployed medical student with no desire to be doctor. Nope, you’re not alone. **Expenses:** **After tax income:** $18,282 **Student loans:** $10,010 **Savings:** 26,150 **Taxes/gross expenses:** $21,160 **Income after expenses (net income):** $33,282 **Net income after expenses (gross):** $12,122 **Taxes:** $18,928 **After tax expenses:** $14,353 **Total expenses:** $33,281 **Uber:** $599 **Groceries:** $12,593 **Restaurants:** $5,935 **Recreation:** $2,150 **Vacations:** $1,822 **Gifts:** $4,823 **Hobbies:** $1,263 **Car insurance:** $1,314 **Other:** **mischellaneous:** $1,722 **furniture:** $2,240 **Health:** $339 **Gas:** $936 **firearms:** $817 **pet:** $1,171 **pet accessories:** $97 **5th street:** $716 **BBG:** $1,540 **PASB:** $1,283 **house maintenance:** $2,841 **PASB:** $4,188 **car maintenance:** $1,675 **car insurance:** $1,314 **Jewelry:** $3,194 **Pets:** $2,710 **Home improvements:** $2,841 **Electronics:** $1,259 **Car parts:** $833 **Subscription:** $1,844 **Pyrate:** $1,107 **PASB:** $1,283 **Home decor:** $2,165 **Other:** $3,650 **Total “other” expenses:** $34,355 **Total expenses:** $67,636 **Total savings:** $26,150 So after reading a thread on here that some guy tracked every single penny he spent for 5 years in a row and asked how he could have improved his finances, it got me thinking what I could do. Then today, while sitting on the toilet, I did the math for 2022. Here are the observations I got from it: • A big part of my income for 2022 was student loans (~$10k), which I didn’t expect since I’m pretty sure I took them for 2021. Looking at my totals though, there’s a big gap between gross income and net income. Assuming that that gap is mostly taxes (or else I have a weird counting error) that’s not a pleasant chunk of my money that I’ll never see. • Looking at my expenses overall, my biggest expense was my savings, which was almost double what I spend on groceries. Huh. • My highest expense after tax was my student loans, which is about double what I spent on groceries. • After-tax, my total income was ~$33k. However, when I add up my listed expenses, I get $33,281. Is this just an accounting error, or is there really only $281 left to eat money that I didn’t track? I’m kind of leaning towards the first… I have my uncle’s daughter’s old beater from high school and don’t move around much, so I’m guessing I just messed up math somewhere • Apparently 2% of my money went towards guns? I guess that makes sense, since I had zero before 2022 so that was a wild jump. Maybe I’ll track that in 2023 too. The average expense there was 100, so I spent about $8k on guns in 2022, which comes out to a "totally not unaffordable" purchase every 18 days, and my best guess is 4th of July is why that number is so inflated. • That being said, that’s only about 5% of my non-savings money, and almost double that went towards UBI. Looks like my real vice is drinking? • I didn’t buy much for my car, and I should have expected that. Old cars with no engine have no real need for gas. • In retrospect, I probably should have combined “pet” and “pet accessories” and “car insurance” and “car maintenance” and “car parts” since they’re all sort of related categories. I didn’t, so you get 5 different numbers. • On a related note, I should have probably combined “home decor” and “furniture.” • My biggest pet peeve from this is how expensive pets are. According to my math here, I spent $3k on my cat and my dog, or about $2.5k per year. This feels like way too much. • While I didn’t spend that much on my car, insurance is still my 4th largest expense at about 4% of my take home income. • If you looked at my math earlier and thought 2% on guns was crazy, I spent more than double that on jewels so… yeah. • Gifts were my 3rd largest expense, which is reassuring. •UBI was my largest expense, at about 8% of my take-home income. • I spent about $3k on restaurants and $2k on Uber. That comes out to a "totally not unaffordable" Uber ride every other day, and a "totally not unaffordable" restaurant meal every 2 days. • I also spent similarly on hobbies and vacations, both of which should be tracked in 2023 as well. Edit: I should also note I invested some ($13,150), which I didn't move into savings since it was invested (and I tracked it in my expenses). That's the difference between my net income and my "gross expenses"

I tracked every single penny I spent in 2022 ($63k) and here are some observations

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