Budget Categories are Personal – How to Choose the Best for You

The Timeless Importance of Budget Categories

Automated or manual, paper or digital, every money tracking system depends on budget categories.

Indeed, the earliest writing was used to track different categories of exchange, for items like grain and gold.

Today, of course, we’re more likely to use a computer than clay tablet for tracking everything we buy, sell, and earn.

But the importance of using precise, personally meaningful categories for understanding your finances hasn’t changed for thousands of years.

The Benefits: Why Budget Categories Matter

Budget categories provide a structured way to see your income, spending, and transfers, so you can make informed decisions about your money.

But they’re more than just labels; they are tools for financial clarity. They help you:

Identify spending patterns: Knowing where your money goes each month can be eye-opening. For instance, you might find you’re spending too much on dining out and not enough on savings.

Prioritize expenses: Categories help you allocate funds to essentials like housing and healthcare, ensuring that your money is used effectively.

Make real-time adjustments to your spending: If you notice you’re overspending in one category, you can make immediate changes to prevent future financial strain.

Catch fees, subscriptions, and fraud: Categories help you discover recurring payments and unexpected fees you might want to contest or cancel.

Achieve your financial goals: Whether it’s paying off debt or saving for a vacation, budget categories help you set and stick to financial goals.

How to Choose Your Budget Categories

Choosing meaningful budget categories is your first step toward understanding and controlling your finances.

Personal finance apps include a list of suggested categories to get you started. Unfortunately these categories are not fully editable.

For example, Mint doesn’t allow you to delete or rename top-level categories. Likewise, some services like Empower limit your total number of categories.

Don’t settle for one-size-fits-all approach. You should customize your categories to your specific financial situation, goals, and way of thinking about money.

Plus, you’ll likely want to edit your categories as your financial situation changes over time.

Tiller gives you complete control of naming, editing, and deleting your categories, category groups, and tags. Learn more →

4 Tips on Budget Categories from Tiller

These tips are based on years of helping thousands of people select the best budget categories for their situation:

Start Simple

Begin with broad categories like ‘Bills,’ ‘Living Expenses,’ and ‘Discretionary Spending.’ You don’t need a separate category for every little expense.

Be Mindful

Place daily or frequent expenses like groceries under ‘Living Expenses,’ so you can actively manage them. You make these decisions every day. While you need groceries and gas, you can also manage these expenses as needed by being mindful.

The electric bill and cell phone bill go under “Bills”. These are expenses worth checking a few times a year, but generally, they aren’t expenses you can impact with your daily behavior.

Your “Discretionary” expenses are elective. If cash is tight, you can go without the latte or the movie.

Finally, gifts to “Charity” should be flagged for tax purposes, and work or other “Reimbursable” expenses should also be flagged so you make sure you actually get reimbursed.

Adapt and Evolve

You can always add more categories, or change them later. Your financial situation won’t remain static, and neither should your categories.

Feel free to add or modify them as your life changes. If you find that you really want to pay attention to additional categories, just add them.

Goals make great categories too

If you’re saving for something specific, make it its own category. This helps you track your progress more effectively.

For example, if you’re making transfers to a savings account for that goal, you can mark those transfers as “Vacation” as you build up your savings.

Then when it’s time to take that vacation, you’ll mark those expenses as “Vacation” too.

You probably don’t need to worry about cleaning up the past

If you add a new category today to track outdoor gear, you don’t need to go back in time to flag all your expenses in the past that were previously “Discretionary” that are now “Gear”.

Instead, use this new category for new expenses going forward. Focus on today, tomorrow, this week, and this month.

Read how others organize their categories in this Tiller Community discussion.

About Auto-Categorization

Many personal finance apps automatically categorize your transactions, saving time and taking the hassle out of tracking expenses.

However, these apps often get it wrong, repeatedly filing your transactions into the wrong categories. And even more frustrating, they don’t allow for rules customization or selective auto-categorization. So you’re out of luck if you prefer a manual workflow or only want some transactions categorized automatically.

Tiller’s AutoCat takes a different approach. It’s the only automatic transaction utility for spreadsheets that gives you complete control of your categorization rules. Indeed, AutoCat provides the most customizable and accurate auto-categorization of any personal finance service.

Budget categories in conclusion

Budget categories are not a one-size-fits-all solution. They should be as unique as your financial situation, goals, and preferences.

By taking control of your categories, you empower yourself to make informed financial decisions and confidently plan your financial future.