Tracking your money without hating it

The traditional advice is: log every expense. Categorize every transaction. Review your spending weekly. It works for about 3% of people. The other 97% try it, fall off after two weeks, and conclude they're bad with money.

You're not bad with money. The system was bad. A tracking system only needs to answer two questions: did I spend less than I earned last month, and where is the biggest category of spending I could compress? That's it.

The minimum viable system

• Connect your accounts once via something like Plaid (or Worth, if you're reading this inside it).
• Let the software auto-categorize. Fix obvious wrong ones. Ignore the rest.
• Check in monthly, not daily. Spend 10 minutes. Look at net cash flow and top 3 categories.
• Adjust one thing per month if something looks off. One.

When to go deeper

There are two situations where more granular tracking is worth it: you're trying to pay down a specific debt aggressively, or you're in a financial transition (moving, new job, new kid). Otherwise, monthly is enough. Tracking is a tool, not a virtue. Use it, then close the app.