Is there any possibility to add within Eating Out Category or New Category: Beverage Category?
We do start drinking in pubs and after eating out, most likely keep drinking out too, therefore, the money spent in Beverage is significantly important!!
The fact that the beverage is literally more important that the food, since we start drinking and finishing drinking.
I wouldnāt say it significantly important. As someone who rarely drinks out I would think that either the eating out or the entertainment category matches this requirement
I can see the use case and that it can sometimes be blurry but I personally tend to categorise drinking under the Entertainment category.
I think the key is really that we avoid categories which are useless to some people or perhaps even negative. So weād never have an āAlcoholā category, for example, because it excludes people who donāt drink.
Thereās an argument to be made that you could do āBeveragesā through including going out for coffee. Thatās admittedly a large amount of a transactions, but Iām not sure that just two use-cases - no matter how large - justify a category. Thatās just my personal opinion - feel free to disagree!
Which ends up with me āhackingā the categories by choosing one I donāt use to stand in for āPubs and drinksā.
āBeveragesā sounds a good compromise, Iāve no objection to lumping my beards beers in with my coffee.
āEating outā doesnāt work because Iād prefer to track meals separate from social drinking. Put them both in the same category, I canāt tell at-a-glance if Iām going to too many fancy restaurants or having too many nights with the guys.
āEntertainmentā doesnāt work because for me thatās things like buying a Blu-Ray or videogame, or going to see a show or a gig, or a night at the movies.
This was my initial thought, but looking back through my Summary history, thereās not much usage in the Entertainment category, mostly just occasional trips to gigs and the cinema.
Iāve also just realised that Iāve historically been categorising physical media purchases from physical retail stores under āEntertainmentā, yet if I were to buy the exact same thing on Amazon itād fall under āShoppingā
Have to confess to putting my Amazon purchases through my credit card rather than Monzo. Partially to keep section 75 protection when appropriate, partially through inerita (easier to carry on with exisiting card than add Monzo). But.
If I were to use my Monzo account to pay for Amazon purchases directly, Iām pretty certain I would be adjusting the category as appropriate each and every time, if necessary. So only orders analagous to what Iād buy from the supermarket or similar would end up under shopping, while Blu-Rays and books would end up under Entertainment.
Looking at my last few orders, the picture it a little muddier (because Christmas and therefore gifts), but thereās a whole bunch of household goods (so, shopping), and only a few books (entertainment). My latest Amazon order rather screwed the pooch, though, by mixing household items and a couple of books in one order. Doh.
This is the thing, especially with Prime Now. Itās intended to be a grocery service, and thatās mostly what I use it for, but fairly often household items get thrown in with it, or videogames. Iād love if we could scrape an email or API to pull in the receipt data, but otherwise Iāll just forgot which Amazon order refers to what, which makes categorisation hard.
Iām not even fussed by having you split transactions using APIs and other things that need constant maintenance just let me me manually split a transaction across multiple categories!
This is, for me, where the justification for user settable custom categories lives. My very niche use cases are indeed very niche - they will never justify a category at a 1 million user wide level. But for me they make all the difference. (And because quite frankly if you did have a category with my Catās name that would be silly).
Proper Categories and Budgeting are a powerful help me plan for the future about my spending decisions and priorities. Tracking the past is not as valuable to help with my Spending Plan as conscious decision making of the future.
So weād never have an āAlcoholā category, for example, because it excludes people who donāt drink.
You could say that about almost every category, for example I know people who never eat out (yes they exist!) or who donāt have expenses (probably the most obvious)
Are they really excluded from these categories? I wouldnāt say so, they simply donāt use them.
However agree that Alcohol is narrow to be a category itself and perhaps something like Social would be better, although it overlaps with entertainment quite a bit.
Speaking of which I have often wished for a Fitness category, I feel like it doesnāt really fit anywhere, personal care dosent feel rightā¦ maybe its just me