Furnishing a house is expensive. Would you consider the costs Discretionary or Non-Discretionary? I am hesitant to throw them in my “Home” Category as they will bloat the Category. Not sure where to throw them in my current list. Any ideas?
This might be better in the discussion section. But more strictly speaking furniture, which I think as part of FF&E is discretionary depending on the replacement cycle. looking at your list you have a couple of items under listing that would be considered discretionary. But maybe you can have two categories FFE that’s 5+ years and daily use vs everything. ie your bed vs another sofa, or your need to replace pots and pans, vs a blender. It’s kind of what you envision. “bloating” a category isn’t bad in itself, it’s do you need the data dis-aggregated, and with the data what can you do with it.
Thanks for your reply. I didn’t think to add a FF&E Category but I think it’s a good one. Can you provide some details on “looking at your list you have a couple of items under living that would be considered discretionary.” Which would those be?
Also this might be a difference of what I’m thinking is included vs what you included in there, ie a couple of “Home” items seems to be included in other categorizes in but: professional expenses, pets, amazon, fees: investment, fees: general, services. For me I started to think of disposable and discretionary income as restrictively possible 'cause everyone’s can do without is different assuming that one’s not out living their means.
I am at a loss whether to throw all home expenses in the same broad category or break them out into semi-large categories like Home: Utilities, Home: Services etc.
For now I am grouping all Amazon transactions in one Category while I try and figure out the Amazon CSV importer. Most of what I buy on Amazon is for “Living” items but I do plan to break them out at some point.
Professional expenses are investments in career.
At the end of the day it’s really how you want to use the data. 'cause for me I group more in terms of sectors of life ie car related items, food related items because it’s from that I can either reduce spending or track CC categories.
Yea I am thinking I should consolidate. So you’re suggesting that I combine similar category items into a larger master category?
for better or worse it comes down to how you want to use each piece of data. I had asked about Differentiating similar categories - #2 by jpfieber earlier because I differentiate at that level, if that’s not useful to you; yeah just combine it.