I have to imagine this has been discussed forever and yet I can’t seem to put the right search criteria in to find it. I’ve been trying to use Tiller for about two years and the way I used to be set up wasn’t that insightful, so I am trying to make an effort in getting it right.
I have ongoing debt. I’m trying to find the ideal way of tracking that in Tiller.
How I have done it in the past:
New item charged that month
categorized to the appropriate category (groceries, gasoline, etc)
Statement received end of the month
Minimum payment removed from my checking account | Transfer
Payment received on my credit card account | Loan Repayment
Missing has been what goes to pay for interest on the credit card, making it a ‘hidden’ fee. The balances were fine on all accounts, but it just didn’t tell me much.
What is a better way?
One way I was thinking is:
New item charged that month
categorized to the appropriate category (groceries, gasoline, etc)
Statement received end of the month
Minimum payment removed from my checking account | Transfer
Payment received on my credit card account | Transfer
Manual entry of interest payment | Loan Interest
Manual entry of principal repayment | Loan Repayment
Does that make sense?
Feel free to point me to another discussion if necessary, and I appreciate your help on this
I started to type out something and hit me it’s probably not relevant. Since I pay my CC off every two weeks I don’t record a Loan Interest or Loan Repayment.
My Process:
New item charged that month | categorized to the appropriate category (groceries, gasoline, etc)
Minimum payment removed from my checking account | Transfer
Payment received on my credit card account | Transfer
I don’t do this since I pay it off after use:
Manual entry of interest payment | Loan Interest
Manual entry of principal repayment | Loan Repayment
Not sure if you need to track these last two lines if you use something like the Debt Planner module which might automate some of this for you and give you a way to track and pay it down? Can see it here: Debt Payoff Template For Google Sheets - Tiller
On my cards that have accrued interest, there is a transaction each month for the additional balance that makes it way to the transactions sheet, for this transaction i categorize it as interest paid for credit.
If your cards do not have that and it just mysteriously adds to the balance then the route you describe would be sufficient.
If you’re not using the Debt Planner sheet then I think your category structure makes sense.
Generally if you’re still using a high balance credit card that you’re also trying to pay off we recommend to stop using it or at least pay off the statement balance each month (use a transfer category) plus make an extra payment to pay down the balance (use debt repayment category or some people like to have an individual category for the specific loan account).
The interest is definitely an expense as are any fees associated with the card/interest so those should be tracked as expenses. However, often you don’t see this as a separate transactions automatically and if you want to track those as separate expenses you’d need to split the payment outflow (money leaving your checking account).