• Your kid takes violin lessons from your sister, a professional violin teacher.
• Your Mom babysits your kids a few days a week.
• Your brother is living in the spare room of your house.
• Your best friend, a professional mechanic, fixes your car when it breaks down.

Should you exchange money for these services? If you were dealing with strangers then the answer would be simple: yes, you should exchange money. But this is family, and money and family is a volatile combination. What should you do?

The answer is… it depends. Your sister, the violin teacher, could expect you to pay her (since it’s… you know.. her job!) or she could be insulted that you’re trying to pay her to spend time with her niece and nephew. There’s no way to know unless you talk to her about it.

If you’re in this situation, you might be tempted to take an educated guess based on what you know about your sister, but I highly recommend you don’t do that. There are a lot social expectations here.

For instance, she may actually want to be paid, but if you don’t pay her she probably won’t argue with you since social norms say siblings shouldn’t pay each other for services. She could start feeling resentful because she doesn’t want to work for free, and then start feeling guilty that she feels resentful… and it’s a vicious cycle and she probably won’t bring it up to you.

Or it could be the other way around. It’s possible that even though she doesn’t feel like she needs to paid, she’s afraid to tell you to stop paying her since it might hurt your pride… or something. Awkward.

The point is if you guess wrong, the situation won’t resolve itself. The longer you let the problem fester the worse it gets, and in the end it can only be solved with an open, honest conversation about what each person wants. You might as well have that conversation in the beginning. It’ll be easier that way. And don’t wait for them to initiate the conversation. Most people won’t do it.

Talking to the Giver

If you’re the one receiving a service from a friend or family member, and you think you need to have a conversation with them about payment, you can easily make the conversation go well. Just, have the giver decide whether or not to be paid and assure the giver that neither answer will negatively affect the relationship. Doing that empowers the giver, which is a good thing.

Of course you need to actually show that you’re OK with either answer. Don’t be pissy if your sister says she wants to be paid for the violin lessons she’s giving your kids. Be gracious and agree to pay her. If you don’t have the money to pay her, be honest about it and ask her for suggestions on how to solve the problem. Then go do something fun together.

There’s a chance that your sister may be insulted for being asked if she wants to be paid. If that’s the case, assure her that you’re only trying to pay her for the value she’s providing. It’s a compliment, not an insult. Both sides look good this way.

Talking to the Receiver

If you’re the one giving services and you’re feeling resentful because you aren’t being paid by your friend or family member, you’re in a tough place. The conversation you have with the receiver more than likely won’t go well because nobody likes being told their free ride is over.

Before you start creating drama, figure out what category you’re in:

• You need the money
• You simply want to be paid for the work you do
• You feel like there’s something lacking in the relationship

If there’s something lacking in the relationship, asking them outright to be paid could cause more problems than it solves. It says, “you don’t feel like family to me anymore so you should pay me like the other strangers I work with do.” Assuming they do start paying you, every time money changes hands it will reinforce your estrangement. Not good. (Unless you really do want to poison the relationship. If that’s the case, by all means…)

Instead, ignore the money issue and focus on healing the relationship since that’s where the problem is. What would need to happen in order for you to feel OK with the idea of serving your family member for free? How can you make that happen? Work to make it happen.

Even if you’re the kind of person who always wants to be paid for your services, if you feel your relationship with your friend or family member is broken, you should focus on fixing the relationship before you go about asking to get paid. Once the relationship is healed, money can change hands without problems. Yes, it’ll take longer, but better that than making the relationship worse. Alternately you could stop providing your service to them until the relationship is healed.

If the relationship is healthy, but you need the money or simply want to be paid for your services, try having a frank conversation with your friend or family member about it. Be humble. Be honest. Be gentle. If they’re sane you should eventually be able to come to some kind of agreement. If the conversation ends badly, and you feel you were misunderstood, find someone both of your respect to talk to them about it. There’s nothing wrong with being paid for your services, even if it’s family doing the paying.

Doing business with family is trickier than doing it with strangers because of all the unwritten social rules, but it’s not impossible.

Self-Consciousness

When it comes to this blog I’m incredibly self-conscious. I feel like a fraud. I have a hard time telling people what I write about and feel like I need to defend why I want to write what I write. I need to get over this. The best way to do that is write about stuff I know. So that is what I will do… after the wedding.

Plans

After the wedding this blog will be my top priority. (After usual things like keeping up my current job, keeping my relationships afloat, not letting the house deteriorate too much… etc.) Basically Wedding Crapé will be replaced by Blogging Crapé.

Second to this will be music stuff. Specifically recording an album of Italian Renaissance dance music with Aaron and various other musicians from around these parts.

Third is artsy stuff like sewing myself a new Medieval dress or two for Pennsic. (I’m tired of all the unflattering cotton stuff I have, and my new Tudor Wedding Garb is too nice for camping.) Also I’d like to experiment with making period jewelry and kids clothes to sell. And maybe putting pockets in my skirts.

I will keep this order of precedence in mind.

Letting Go

Methinks I need to let go of some commitments that are weighing me down right now and will weigh me down even more if I try to pursue my already mentioned plans. At the moment, I’m holding on… doing the minimum… but I’m not growing as a leader and the people I’m supposed to be leading are suffering for it. Also I see people who would do a much better job in my place. I shouldn’t stop them from shining.

But it’s hard. I feel guilty for not wanting to grow into these positions. I had dreams for myself and they no longer fit. At the same time I know that feeling guilty about not fulfilling past dreams is silly. It doesn’t make me do what I need to do to be the right person for the job. It just makes me feel bad.

Also, it’s not like I can’t go back to these positions later. I could definitely see myself doing that at some point.

Spending to Earn

I’m thinking about spending money on this Blogging project of mine. I want a better design for the site and I have someone in mind to do it. But that will cost $$. I’ve also been looking for a community to help me get over my business/blogging related mental-blocks. I think I’ve found one that would be a good fit for me, but it costs $$. My hyper-sensitive instinct says paying money for such “help” is a scam or something, but if I view it through the lens of “it’s a class” it’s not so bad.

The trick is I need to block out the time to actually make use of it. It’s not going to be something where I just show up and have everything done for me. I’m going to have to pay money and work. But I think in the end it’ll be worth the effort. I’ll about it for another few weeks before I make any serious commitments. Plus there’s a wait list so I may not even get in.

At this point I trust myself to keep going with this blogging thing. I’ve been doing it for over a year and a half. I’d still really like doing it and want to improve at it. It’s worth throwing money at. Also throwing money at anything not related to music is a big mental block of mine so… yeah.

That’s about it for now. A week from Sunday is The Wedding. You can expect a Weekly Check-in next Friday. After that I’ll be on my honeymoon in Colorado. I’ll try to have some post ready for that Friday. It won’t be a check-in because… I won’t be there for the checking in. But it’ll be something.

Whee!

“Convenience Food” –> assumes that people wouldn’t want to cook for themselves if they didn’t have to. Isn’t it just as likely that people don’t want to cook because they don’t know how or that they think it’s too hard or whatever?

Shampoo –> See No ‘Poo. (I’ve been doing this for a little over a week now. We’ll so how it goes.

Computerized Sewing Machines –> The vast, vast majority of sewers can do amazing stuff with a Singer from the 50’s that goes forward and backward. If it can do a zigzag stitch, that’s nice too. The rest…. unnecessary.

New Clothes –> The thrift store is your friend. It takes a really really long time to wear out clothes and most of the stuff in the thrift store isn’t all that used.

Fancy Athletic Shoes –> We all should be walking barefoot (or close to it). The simpler the shoe the better.

Cameras –> A fancy camera in the hands of an amateur will still turn out amateurish pictures.

Computers –> Most of us don’t really need a computer every 4 years, but we’re forced out of them by new software that won’t work on the old ones.

If I wanted to I could think of more examples. Very few things in life are actually necessary. Some things will enhance our happiness. Too many things will weigh us down.

This has huge implications. For ourselves, it means that we can get more freedom by paring down the stuff that doesn’t matter. For the world, it means we probably have the means to enable everyone to have their basic needs met.

If we have the capability to create such a world, why aren’t we? I think it’s a matter of structure. We’re a capitalist society. We’re told to spend spend spend all the time. Many of us have thousands of dollars of debt. We have a mistaken belief that more stuff = more happiness. Until enough of us shun this belief system, we won’t as a society get to that place where none of us have to worry about how to get food, shelter, and safety.

Luckily, we don’t need society to be on our side in order to reap the benefits of getting rid of the unessential. Each thing you don’t need that you can get rid of is more money in your pocket. More money means you you have more you can save. More savings means less worrying about how to feed and shelter yourself. Not having to worry about that stuff is the whole goal.

The more of us that change our lives in a certain way, the more society changes in that direction. Businesses will start catering to our new values. Then it’ll be us running the businesses. Then there may not even be businesses as such. All volunteer organizations… If you wanted to sit on your butt all day you could! Without guilt even!

I think we have arrived at the age where this is possible. To go from possible to actuality we need to focus on what’s important and get rid of the unnecessary.

If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else. ~ Dave Ramsey

Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the Journey. ~ Anonymous

Sacrifice now; Enjoy later.

Life’s too short to not enjoy every moment.

These ideas are puzzling. How can you enjoy the journey if you’re in the sacrificing phase? Isn’t the first quote all about focusing on the destination? Is it possible to live both ideas simultaneously? Are they mutually exclusive paths?

To the last question, I think the answer is no, they aren’t mutually exclusive. The contradiction only occurs on the extreme ends of each idea.

If you’re sacrificing to the point where your life no longer has any joy, you by definition aren’t enjoying the journey. If you’re focusing so intently on the future goal that you’ve lost sight of where you are right now, you’re seeing life as a destination, not a journey.

If you over focus on the journey and have no goals, you’ll be happy–maybe–but you won’t amount to much. And if you over focus on the present moment you may develop a tendency toward reckless behavior: spending beyond your means, jumping impulsively into and out of relationships, living dangerously. It’s all about now, right?

Neither idea in the extreme is good. Ideally you want both. You want to enjoy the journey to achieving great things. You want to live in the moment AND look forward to the future. Let’s look at some examples of how to do that.

Example: Getting Out of Debt

The sacrifice here is money. If you want to get out of debt you have to spend less than you earn. You have to give up buying stuff. You have to sacrifice.

You could do this the hard way by focusing on the end goal of no more debt, trim everything away, have no life, no friends, no joy. Your life is all about getting rid of debt. If you manage to keep this up, yes, you’ll get out of debt, but it’ll be at a cost higher than the money you paid to the credit card company. You’ll probably have accumulated quite a bit of resentment for the months (years?) you spend over-sacrificing. With resentment you run the risk of overspending again because “you deserve to have fun now”. You could also go the other extreme and become a scrooge-like miser. You have no friends and no fun, but you’ve got money…

You could also do this the better way by learning to enjoy being frugal. Get the most out of every dollar you spend. Fully enjoy a single orange instead of eating 5 while watching TV. Enjoy cutting out the stuff that makes you feel guilty. Eventually you’ll get out of debt, and when you do you won’t have any resentment. The time you spent trimming your spending improved your quality of life. Why would you go back to your wanton ways?

Example: Getting to a Healthy Weight

The sacrifice here is tasty unhealthy food and a sedentary lifestyle. You have to eat healthier. You have to eat less. You have to exercise.

You could do this the hard way by going on an extreme diet. You will lose weight that way if you stick to it. But it’s not sustainable. You might get to your goal weight, but do you really want to live that way? Probably not. Do you want to spend your life doing exercise you don’t enjoy? Probably not. Not surprisingly when most of try such a lifestyle change we usually give up after a few weeks days.

The better way is to pick healthy foods you like. Slowly change your diet. Slowly change your lifestyle. Do the kind of exercise you like to do. Over time you’ll get to where you want to be. You’re still sacrificing. You still have a goal. But it’s not suffering. There’s no resentment.

Example: Starting a Side Business

The sacrifice here is time. Time for friends and family. Time for hobbies. Time for sitting around. It’s really easy to fall into the “focus too much on the destination” trap here.

There are several components to doing this while enjoying the journey.

First, love what you’re doing. If you love your work, you’ll almost automatically enjoy the journey.

Second, remind yourself that it’s temporary and enjoy the imbalance. Imbalance can be fun! Ask anyone who’s gone to a convention.

Third, figure out what’s essential to your life and keep doing those things. For me that’s family and friends, music, and deep thinking. Focus on maximizing the value you get out of the time you put in. As in, skip the chit chat about the weather when talking to your Significant Other. Don’t zone out when playing music. Don’t read feeds while attempting to write a blog post.

So yeah, you can definitely do both if you want to. And when you do try to do both, you get the benefit of sustainability (i.e. you’ll be able to maintain your destination state when you get there) and avoiding resentment. Is it easy? Not usually. Most of the time it’s a lot easier to think of the extreme way to get something done or to not do anything at all. Is it worth the soul searching to try? Absolutely. Don’t we all want to make and keep our goals and enjoy life the whole way? That’s why enjoying sacrifice is on the path less traveled.

Are you living up to your potential? Do you want to? Do you feel guilty for not doing so?

Is wealth bad? Is power bad? If you don’t acquire either does that diminish the quality of your life?

What constitutes a good life?

What constitutes a wasted life?

If you retire and spend your time just connecting with people, is that wasting your time? If you’re just spending time with your family and closest friends?

Just some things I’ve been thinking about recently.

What about clothes that are “Made in USA”? Does that mean it was made in the states? Not necessarily; the territories count too. Is that what you thought you were getting? If you’re concerned about the carbon emissions necessary to get your new clothes to you, it’s not much closer than India or China.

What about using the bus vs carpooling? What about “going paperless”? Is that really green? The bank websites say it is, but who knows if that’s actually the case. What about reusable bags vs. paper bags. Which is really better?

Do we have the time to figure this stuff out? Do we have a good way to measure the impact we have?

I guess the point of this is, When you buy something with the word GREEN labeled all over it, don’t let yourself believe that your conscience is off the hook. It’s not that simple. Buying “green” still sends a good message, it’s just that the products may not be doing real tangible good for the world.

Keeping score in general feels bad when it comes to service, and money is the ultimate way of keeping score.

Also, how much money you have isn’t an indication of how much good karma you’ve amassed. When we buy things all we see is the end product, and as we all know, the ends don’t usually justify the means. If the food you’re eating now was procured in such a way that the soil underneath has been depleted of nutrients, is it worth the cheaper price than the one that was farmed sustainably? The plastic option may be cheaper but it’s often not recyclable or biodegradable. Is the computer that ultimately ends up in an electronics junk heap poisoning the earth worth the affordable price? We don’t see these negatives when we buy a new product. And even when there is information on products (Organic! Free range!) it can often be misleading. You can meet all the standards of organic and still not produce your products sustainably. There’s no regulation on what “Free range” actually means.

So yes, it’s very clear that you can generate lots of money by doing things that are unsustainable. That is, the value you provided to the end user came at a cost to the earth or to others who don’t have a say in the free market.

And, of course, when you go to spend the money you can use it in very damaging ways: flights around the world, giant houses, more new stuff than you can count.

Money is like power. When you have a lot of it it’s tempting and easy to misuse it. It’s also tempting to do amass it in less than ethical ways.

I suppose, then, that it’s not surprising that a primary sustainability metric is income. The more money you make the less likely it is that you’re living sustainably. Why? Because of all the reasons I’ve listed above. To generate money you probably waste a lot and you’re probably will to spend money on things that are also wasteful.

It certainly seems like the only way to do good for the world is to be OK with living on virtually nothing. But that sounds less than wonderful.

Can you make money sustainably?

There are some occupations that don’t do that much damage to the environment. Blogging, for instance, is fairly low. People aren’t buying new computers for the sake of reading a blog, and there are lots of ways to get access to said blog without even owning a computer. In general anything where there is no physical product is very low on the impact scale. (At least that seems intuitive to me… I don’t know if that’s actually the case.) Also with blogging and other content type things, it doesn’t matter all that much as you get more and more readers. With something like making cars or electronic stuff or plastic candy dispensers or disposable diapers, the more customers you have the greater your negative impact on the earth.

I imagine with one of these low impact type careers (especially content generation) you could have the potential to make lots of money essentially guilt free. And if you’re wise in the spending of your money you could have an incredibly positive impact on the world.

I used to take this to mean that the true hero was the antithesis to the characters in those stories. The poor person who has lots of people to share his joy with is better than the businessman. The person who has a small social circle (but incredibly close!) is way better than the woman with lots of acquaintances. The stay at home parent is better than the working parent.

Then I read lots of books and blogs which told me otherwise. Or at least discussed in great deal how to obtain large amounts of wealth, how to make many weak ties, and how to be successful in the workplace. On top of that these same sources mention ideas that are also important to me: service to others, changing the world to be a better place, living life with passion and fervor. The people that write these things don’t sound particularly depressed with their lot in life. What gives?

On top of that I realized that the people I thought were the heroes didn’t have the greatest lives either. Being poor means you’re unable to do things that enrich your life. For instance, a poor person doesn’t have the freedom to choose to eat healthfully. Nor do the poor have the freedom to send their kids to the best schools (or homeschool them), to private piano lessons, or whatever. A poor person can’t live in safe neighborhoods because he can’t afford it. It also probably indicates that he isn’t really doing a lot of service for the world. (Although, of course, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.)

The person with only a few close friends is not in all that great a position either. She’s dependent on them to help her out, since that’s all she’s got. After a while they could become resentful of her frequent calls, and if one of them changes who they are (for better or worse) she’s stuck either changing with said friend or risking losing said friend. Also she doesn’t have the freedom to become all that she can be because there’s a good chance she’d lose her close friends. And when she needs a new job her close friends can’t really help her out because they all share the same social circle. So yeah, have too small a circle of friends (even close friends!) is not all that awesome.

Being a stay at home parent has its drawbacks too. It’s a funny situation in the home since the stay at home parent is dependent on his/her partner to put food on the table. The stay at home parent may develop an unhealthy attachment to his/her kids since he/she sacrificed 18 years of his/her working life to them. Etc.

The Middle Way
The truth is all of these observations are true. Neither the storybook path nor it’s opposite is optimal. What’s optimal lies in the middle, where the positives of both are combined. The successful business person who also has a rich personal life with lots of close friends is in a better position than the poor person who has lots of close friends. The person with lots of weak ties AND a close circle of friends is better than the one with just the close friends. The person who manages to spend lots of time with their kids and give to the community is in a better position than the one who’s solely focused on their kids.

What the stories tell you is where you should err. That is, you should err on the side of close relationships rather than material gains and weak relationships.

On combining both
The fundamental thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to gain worldly success and live a fulfilling life is to make time for the important. While you’re off amassing your wealth spend at least the minimum amount of time necessary with the people that make your life worth living: your family and close friends. It’ll probably be a bit less time than normal, but it’s really not about quantity, it’s about quality. Watching TV, reading together, and small talk, while nice are not the way to keep your relationship in good shape. Master the art of getting to the heartfelt, vulnerable, and intimate part of conversation as quickly as possible. It’s hard, but it’ll go a long way toward really maintaining your relationship.

When it comes to raising kids the same thing is true (quality over quantity), I’d personally prefer to err on the side of too much time. In this case the ideal is finding a way to spend the time with your kids and still be a part of work that inspires you. Blogging, to take a nice obvious example, is a great way since you aren’t bound to an office. Other “work from home” type work is good too.

To sum up, worldly success should not be dismissed. There’s a reason people strive for it. But, you shouldn’t ignore the important people in your life either. The challenge is to make meaning with the small amount of time that you have.

I used to use Quicken and Aaron used Mint.com, and while these tools are convenient and pretty, they don’t really work well for us. One annoyance is that these tools use credit card statements and the like to populate the tables. What do you do when you buy lightbulbs and groceries at the grocery store? Are the lightbulbs also food? You also probably didn’t keep the receipt so you don’t know how much they cost. Because of that, the graphs are never accurate. Another annoyance is that Quicken had a difficult time actually pulling my information from the different institutions. I got tired of it quickly and didn’t buy the next year’s upgrade.

MySQL to the rescue. Admittedly if you’re not comfortable with computers this maybe a bit scary to use, but if you want to be able to answer the questions you have about your finances and don’t care about a pretty interface it could be the right tool for you. This is what we use to analyze our financial data, and I’ll show you how to use it too.

MySQL is a relational database management system, meaning that data within it is stored as tables and the relationships between tables are also shown as tables. For this exercise the multiple tables thing isn’t important. What is important is that with RDBMSs you can ask whatever questions you want about the tables, as long as you form those questions in the query language. We only have one table, so this is how we’re using MySQL.

Step 1) Copy the Spreadsheet

You have your table in Google Docs. The first step is to make sure your columns are in the right format. MySQL will complain if they aren’t.

• Amount column values must not have a preceding $. (Notice the spreadsheet picture)
• Date must be in YYYY-MM-DD format

Now that your format’s all set, copy the cells with the information. If you have a “Cleared?” column don’t copy that. Also, don’t copy titles. You’ll be making special titles soon enough. Throughout the rest of this tutorial I’ll be assuming you have the same columns that I do.

Step 2) Paste into Text Editor

I’m using a Mac, so I copied the text into pico in the terminal. Save it as a .txt file. Mine is called ledger.txt. Make sure you use a text editor and not a word-processor. Word-processors will add information to the text that you DO NOT WANT. If you’re using a Windows machine use notepad.

Step 3) Get XAMPP

The easiest way to get MySQL onto your computer is to use XAMPP. If you install MySQL directly you’ll have to do some configuration magic that is a pain, and really unnecessary for the task at hand. You aren’t setting up a production web server, so you don’t have to worry about security or anything. XAMPP is as close to plug and play as you get with this. It’s also free.

You can get XAMPP here. Follow the instructions on the site for how to install and get started for your operating system.

Step 4) Set up DB and Import Data

Open up a terminal (on windows: run –> cmd) and move to the XAMPP directory. Then move to xamppfiles; then to bin. The full path of the bin directory for me is:
/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin

The command mysql should be in this directory. Stuff in bold is stuff you type.

Open MySQL:

$ ./mysql -u root

“-u root” just means that you are logging in as the user “root”.

You should get the following prompt:

mysql>

Now that you’re in, the next step is to create your database and use it.

mysql> create database finances;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql>use finances;
Database changed

Next create your table. Again, this is assuming you have the same columns.

mysql> CREATE TABLE 'expenses' (
-> 'date' date default NULL,
-> 'store' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'item' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'tag' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'subcategory' varchar(255) default NULL,
-> 'amount' decimal(10,2) default NULL,
-> 'source' varchar(255) default NULL
-> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

mysql> delete from expenses;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> load data local infile '/Users/mrio/ledger.txt' into table expenses;
Query OK, 30 rows affected, 7 warnings (0.05 sec)
Records: 30 Deleted: 0 Skipped: 0 Warnings: 7

Here’s an easy to copy and paste version of the Create table command:
CREATE TABLE 'expenses' ( 'date' date default NULL, 'store' varchar(255) default NULL, 'item' varchar(255) default NULL, 'tag' varchar(255) default NULL, 'subcategory' varchar(255) default NULL, 'amount' decimal(10,2) default NULL, 'source' varchar(255) default NULL );

In case you’re wondering what each command does:

“create table” creates the table into which your data goes.

“delete from expenses” removes any data which may have been in expenses before. Perhaps from a previous month?

“load data local infile” loads the data from your text file. Change the text file path to the appropriate one for your file.

Step 5) Query Query Query

Below are a bunch of questions you might want to ask about your expenses. In the code you’ll see how those questions are translated into SQL and how the answer looks for the sample data I intered into the table.

How much did I spend in each tag? I’d like the data in descending amount spent.

mysql> select tag, sum(amount) as mysum from expenses group by tag order by mysum desc;

 +-------------------+--------+

 | tag               | mysum  |

 +-------------------+--------+

 | Food-Normal       | 722.64 |

 | Food-Out          | 449.59 |

 | Wedding           | 205.21 |

 | Household         | 125.73 |

 | Recreation        |  76.63 |

 | Utilities         |  70.34 |

 | Medical           |  40.00 |

 | Food-Entertaining |  32.54 |

 | Car               |  27.72 |

 | NULL              |   NULL |

 +-------------------+--------+

 10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

How Much did I spend total?

mysql> select sum(amount) from expenses;

 +-------------+

 | sum(amount) |

 +-------------+

 |     1750.40 |

 +-------------+

 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

How much did I spend each week?

mysql> select week(date), sum(amount) from expenses group by week(date) order by week(date);


 +------------+-------------+

 | week(date) | sum(amount) |

 +------------+-------------+

 |       NULL |        NULL |

 |         39 |     1421.73 |

 |         40 |      328.67 |

 +------------+-------------+

 3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

How much did I spend in each category and subcategory?

mysql> select tag, subcategory, sum(amount) from expenses group by tag, subcategory order by tag,subcategory;

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 | tag               | subcategory   | sum(amount) |

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 | NULL              | NULL          |        NULL |

 | Car               | Gas           |       27.47 |

 | Car               | Parking       |        0.25 |

 | Food-Entertaining |               |       32.54 |

 | Food-Normal       |               |      722.64 |

 | Food-Out          |               |       34.42 |

 | Food-Out          | Work          |      415.17 |

 | Household         |               |       26.73 |

 | Household         | Garden        |       33.33 |

 | Household         | Hygiene       |       38.79 |

 | Household         | Repair        |       26.88 |

 | Medical           |               |       40.00 |

 | Recreation        |               |       10.00 |

 | Recreation        | Books         |       10.99 |

 | Recreation        | Music         |       30.00 |

 | Recreation        | Video games   |       25.64 |

 | Utilities         | Internet      |       70.34 |

 | Wedding           | Wedding Dress |      205.21 |

 +-------------------+---------------+-------------+

 18 rows in set (0.00 sec)

What percentage of my total spending did I spend in each category?

mysql> select tag, sum(amount)/1750.40 as mysum from expenses group by tag order by mysum desc;

 +-------------------+----------+

 | tag               | mysum    |

 +-------------------+----------+

 | Food-Normal       | 0.412843 |

 | Food-Out          | 0.256850 |

 | Wedding           | 0.117236 |

 | Household         | 0.071829 |

 | Recreation        | 0.043779 |

 | Utilities         | 0.040185 |

 | Medical           | 0.022852 |

 | Food-Entertaining | 0.018590 |

 | Car               | 0.015836 |

 | NULL              |     NULL |

 +-------------------+----------+

 10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

This is the same as sum by tag except I divided sum(amount) by the total spent which was calculated earlier. Here you have basically what you need for YMOYL summary.

How much did I spend at each store?

mysql> select store, sum(amount) as mysum from expenses group by store order by mysum desc;

 +---------------------+--------+

 | store               | mysum  |

 +---------------------+--------+

 | Kroger              | 524.61 |

 | Starbucks           | 400.30 |

 | Jo Ann Fabric       | 205.21 |

 | Co-op               | 141.74 |

 | Trader Joe's        | 105.63 |

 | Comcast             |  70.34 |

 | Rite-aid            |  40.00 |

 | English Gardens     |  33.33 |

 | Ark                 |  30.00 |

 | Rite Aid            |  28.49 |

 | Marathon            |  27.47 |

 | Carpenter Bros      |  26.88 |

 | Kmart               |  26.73 |

 | Target              |  25.64 |

 | Jersualem Garden    |  15.37 |

 | Amazon.com          |  10.99 |

 | Damon's Grill       |  10.52 |

 | Salvation Army      |  10.00 |

 | Zingerman's         |   7.25 |

 | Colin's Coffee      |   5.30 |

 | Coney Island        |   4.35 |

 | Parking 5th&William |   0.25 |

 | NULL                |   NULL |

 +---------------------+--------+

 23 rows in set (0.00 sec)

And that’s all there is to it. Not as pretty as Quicken, but it’s way more flexible in terms of how I organize my data and what questions I ask of it.

If there’s anything in this tutorial that doesn’t make sense or if there’s a question you’d like to ask about your data that isn’t listed here, leave a comment and I’ll update this tutorial.

Track all expenses for the Month

The way we do this is by:

• Keeping all our receipts
• Writing down non-receipt expenses (like farmer’s market, parking, etc.)
• Leave a voice note when I don’t have my planner

I take my planner most places, and put receipts inside a little pouch in the planner so that my wallet doesn’t get bulky. Sometimes I’ll put the receipts in the wallet temporarily and then transfer them to the planner later. Voice notes get transferred to the ledger in the planner.

Transfer to Spreadsheet

Aaron and I have a Google Docs spreadsheet we share for keeping track of our expenses. Google Docs is great for a few reasons:

• Easy collaboration — we can both update the file at the same time
• Online — don’t have to be on a specific computer; don’t have to merge two separate files
• Easy to import into mysql — Good for interpreting the data later

We update the spreadsheet about once a week. This is one of those nice tasks that doesn’t require a lot of mental effort.

Our spreadsheet has the following fields:

• Date The date the item(s) were bought.
• Store Where did we buy said item(s)?
• Item What did we buy? I don’t usually list every item individually unless it’s only a couple of items. If I buy a bunch of ingredients for a recipe I’ll just write “groceries” here.
• Tag What category does this fit into? Sometimes a single receipt will be in several categories. Each category gets its own row. If I bought shampoo and apples at the Kroger, there’ll be one line with shampoo (and its category) and another with apples (and its category)
• Subcategory Some categories can be further split. Wedding, for instance, is a big category. I want to know how much we’re spending total on the wedding. However, I also want to know how much we’re spending in different areas of the wedding (hall, favors, music, etc.). Not all categories have subcategories
• Amount How much did it cost? I include tax in this.
• Source Where did the money come from? The shared credit card? My personal credit card? Cash? The change we keep in the car? Useful for checking against our account statements.
• Cleared? Has it cleared yet? Have the checks been cashed? We only check this at the end of the month.

And that’s basically it for the initial expense tracking. Later this week I’ll show you how we use MySQL to get some insight into how we spend our money.

And here’s the follow up post: MySQL is Way Cooler than Quicken