By: Revanche

Missing Something?

October 16, 2008

Last month, I took it into my head that I should compare my year to date income versus expenditures. It’s all part of this finances and housecleaning kick I’m on, and because I wanted to rethink my monthly snapshots (again). The results are weird. In two simple lists, I’ve got my income (all forms of it), and pulled my year to date spending numbers from Yodlee for the expenses. Added the deduction/reductions/taxes into the mix as that money comes out of my gross income, and retirement contributions.

Maybe it’s because I keep working on this when I’m sleepy, but I keep coming up $7,000 short! I don’t get it. I’m not in debt. I mean, other than the truck payment, but that’s been steadily decreasing.

Hm. The only thing I can think of that’s missing from the equation are reimbursements because office supply purchases did go on my cards for a while, but the reimbursements aren’t tracked in any real way. Except, after accounting for the insurance, it can’t possibly have been that much, could it?

Well, when I search Yodlee for “Other Income,” I have about $2865 in that category comprising of FSA reimbursements, tax refunds, and miscellaneous income. Add $1000 of insurance reimbursement, and that would account for more than half of the missing income. That’s imprecise, though, and it’s even messier when I look up the “Deposit” category. I don’t have the time or inclination to go back through ten months of transactions to try and parse out, down to the penny, what income I’ve lost track of, but it’s safe to say that I didn’t actually *lose* that money, I simply spent it and that’s a sobering thought. I somehow spent $7,000 of “extra” income? Oh, some of it was absorbed into the savings accounts, I’m sure, but that’s still quite a lot of money that should be on the ledger somewhere.

The takeaway here is that my family’s needs plus a dash of inattention complicate my finances. To cope, I need to devise a tracking system that encompasses all categories, including miscellaneous income, reimbursements, contractor income, savings of all kinds, etc.

I just don’t like the idea that at some point, I got sloppy and overspent. It’s entirely probable that all that extra income really went to refilling the savings funds, and filling in shortfalls during expensive months, but I’d like to be sure. This has to turn out better than my fruitless search for a perfect bag!

3 Responses to “Missing Something?”

  1. It seems impossible to spend $7000 without realizing it. Something must be off, and it sounds very mysterious… Maybe yodlee isn’t tracking something quite right?

  2. Sense says:

    Wow, that is alot of ‘missing’ cash. My money’s on you vs yodlee any day–I highly doubt you were ‘sloppy’ with 7 grand.

  3. Revanche says:

    stackingpennies: I’m almost sure that it has to be that Yodlee has trouble tracking anything that’s even slightly abnormal, such as balance transfers that were then paid in full. Hm… also I don’t think I manually entered all repaid loan money.

    sense: It’s definitely raising my eyebrows, that’s for sure. I may actually spend a day trying to figure it out after all, my curiousity’s piqued and I still want to figure out a new tracking system.

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