Track Your Money (Part 1)

An American Problem?

I need to talk to you about an endemic problem afflicting many Americans…. the problem associated with tracking money. No, I am not talking about tracking money that finances terrorism or organized crime. I am talking about the need to track your money.

When I first published this article back in 2017, I cited an April 2014 Business Insider article that reported 61% of US adults did not track their money. That was only six years after the financial meltdown of 2008. At the time I thought that was pretty damning, but not surprising. Fast forward to 2025, after the post-COVID cost of living crisis, and those numbers reversed. A May 2025 report from Secure Data Recovery showed that 59% of Americans tracked their spending and 49% tracked savings. That’s a healthy turnaround, but it came with a kicker. Apparently 70% of the people who tracked their spending said it caused them stress.

As someone who has tracked their money religiously for the past 26 years, I can attest it takes time and discipline, which in and of itself can be stressful. I can also attest that sometimes the results don’t show what you want, which again may prove stress inducing. But that’s no reason for not partaking in the effort, though. I say that because I firmly believe that the insight gained from tracking your money is like a personal finance superpower.

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Track Your Money (Part 4): Mint (All) Breakdown

Posted on 07-January-18 by Grumpus

A Word From the Editor in 2025

Hi folks! Grumpus Maximus here, your friendly author, editor and publisher of the Golden Albatross Blog. The below article compares Mint.com to Quicken in some key areas as money tracking and reporting programs. However, Mint.com is no longer operational because Intuit (the parent company) shut it down in March 2024. This news did not surprise me given the numbers of issues I identified with the program when I originally published Track Your Money parts 3 and 4 in 2017 and 2018, respectively. That said, I’m keeping this article up on my website as a historical archive since I also make some good points about Quicken’s comprehensive reports ability — despite loathing the program itself. My reasoning? Quicken is still an operational program and company, reader’s may yet find my insights valuable. In any case, if you’re reading this as of 2025 or later, then just keep Mint.com’s demise in mind. It’s hard for money tracking programs to stand the test of time.

Hidy Ho (Math) Campers!

As a result of the problems identified in my previous article with Mint.com’s annual “Net Savings Over Time” report, I decided to nerd out on money tracking again. Apologies to those of you who don’t enjoy these articles as much as some of my others. However, much like Darrow Kirkpatrick did with retirement calculators, I believe it’s important to understand the pluses and minuses associated with popular money tracking software. This is especially crucial considering the importance I place on tracking money, to begin with.

I spent several days prior to writing this article improving the fidelity of my data in my Mint.com account. I also rebuilt my entire 2017 financial year in Quicken. Doing so allowed me to total my net savings for the year in Quicken and verify if I made any mistakes with my Mint calculations.

The now infamous Net Income Over Time report display

To refresh everyone’s memory, when I initially ran Grumpus Familias’s net savings for 2017 through Mint as part of my annual end of year fiscal review, it reported we saved $70.5K. However, I didn’t trust that number due to my inability to verify whether or not Mint accounted for our annual Roth IRA transfer. The program, as far I could tell, didn’t allow for that determination. After spending a few days double checking entries, modifying several transaction labels, and re-displaying reports; Mint now shows an annual net savings of $69.5K. Obviously, I had approximately $1K of transactions mislabeled in my previous report. However, I still cannot verify exactly how Mint determines expenses and income for this report. As a result, I don’t trust this number any more than the previous one. Continue reading →

Track Your Money (Part 3): Passive Tracking

Posted on 31-December-17 by Grumpus

A Passive Tracking Experiment

I’m ready to blow up this lab whenever you are!

In case you can’t tell from my title, this article is a follow-on to my previous two “Tracking Your Money” posts. In the first article, I reviewed my historical use of various software applications to track my money over the past 20 years or so. In the second, my brother (Grumpus Brotherus the Younger) reviewed the software application called You Need A Budget (YNAB).

If you did not read the first post in this series, you probably should. I don’t just say that because my brother’s post sucked (it did), and I think mine is much better (it was), or I want the extra site traffic (I do). No, I say that because I actually made a few worthwhile points in the post … if I do say so myself. However, if you’re unwilling or unable to go to the post, let me provide you a re-cap. Continue reading →

Track Your Money (Part 2): YNAB

Posted on 25-June-17 by Grumpus

Remember how I said Grumpus Brotherus had used You Need A Budget (YNAB) for years? Well, when I asked him to write a paragraph for my Track Your Money post, he sent an entire post’s worth of information back. Instead of editing the material down to a paragraph to fit my article, I decided to give him his own post. I present you here the first guest author for the Grumpus Maximus blog!

Now I must warn you that Grumpus Brotherus is a nerd … I mean N-E-R-D. Which is ok these days since the nerds will apparently inherit the Earth. But at points within the article, he does geeks out on software interface and whatnot. It is hard to believe he flies in fighter jets for a living. Although I guess jets are more software than hardware these days, so maybe it makes sense. In any case, I edited a little to de-nerd it for us ‘laypeople’, but otherwise all the themes are his own; completely unprompted by me …. you will see what I mean. Enjoy. — Grumpus Maximus

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