re: How does the OT Track their Finances?

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I track every dollar that goes in/out of my accounts on an excel sheet that I monitor and update daily.

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frick all that shite. Sounds miserable. I put everything on my credit card that I can then pay bills that I can’t out of my checking. If it looks like I won’t have enough to cover in my checking I move money from my HYSA to cover it.

I try to move as much money as I can to my HYSA and sometimes it’s too much so I have to move it back

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frick all that shite. Sounds miserable. I put everything on my credit card that I can then pay bills that I can’t out of my checking. If it looks like I won’t have enough to cover in my checking I move money from my HYSA to cover it.

I try to move as much money as I can to my HYSA and sometimes it’s too much so I have to move it back

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Yeah, to each their own. I would not be able to stand not being completely dialed in. I use a credit card for everything too but I literally pay it off daily. Admittedly, that's a little much. But, I truly believe being extremely organized has helped grow my NW tremendously since I started doing it like that about six years ago

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have a bunch of envelopes and put money in them every month to keep me organized.

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I realize you’re being sarcastic. But the Dave Ramsey method is for people who are basically out of control financially.

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I got in Piere when it was free as a beta tester. I use that to track credit cards and transactions in everything

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Same. It has everything I need.

Excel. Once a month I put all my account totals in it (Fidelity, bank, other IRAs, etc) and minus my loans. Let’s me see my net worth and I have a little graph. It’s like a snapshot of the 16th of the month. I don’t track individual purchases or anything.

I use one of the online sites to aggregate. I wanted to get deep into retirement planning in my 30s. I found I couldn’t begin to estimate the income I needed in retirement if I didn’t really know how much I spent today. Tracking expenses closely lets me know what I spend that’s likely to persist into retirement in order to give me confidence I’m saving enough AND that I can afford to make some discretionary purchases along the way.

Quick Books

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I have a bunch of envelopes and put money in them every month to keep me organized.

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this is the my favorite method of all. I love this method more than anything else. If it weren't for the free $ to use a CC, I'd stick to this and writing checks. It was the best way for me to stick to a budget with zero slipping. It also made it so much easier to determine when your budget wasn't realistic.

Old school budget spreadsheet I created myself and fine tuned over the years. Net worth: 2.5 million at 48.

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out of control financially

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Wives and the male fascination with boats, hunting, OF and gambling probably describes 95% of use cases.

Microsoft Money Sunset Edition (free) was always my jam until it was killed right before I got married. TBH, unless people in OP's position are just ignorant, they already know where the money is going, they just have their heads in the sand.