3/9/14

I wanna see where my money goes, especially since starting my sabbatical thing.
Downloaded all my transactions from Mint.com.
Processing with javascript-eval..

function chop(x) {
    return x.slice(1, x.length - 1).split(/","/)
}
var lines = _.lines(input)
var keys = chop(lines[0])
var ts = _.map(lines.slice(1), function (line) {
    return _.object(keys, chop(line))    
})
_.each(ts, function (t) {
    t.Date = new Date(t.Date).getTime()
    t.Amount *= 1
})
ts

that's gives us things like:

    {
        "Date": 1394006400000,
        "Description": "Starbucks",
        "Original Description": "AuthorizationTo Starbucks OGGKahului MauiHI",
        "Amount": 8.54,
        "Transaction Type": "debit",
        "Category": "Coffee Shops",
        "Account Name": "PayPal Account",
        "Labels": "",
        "Notes": ""
    },

(man, $8.54 at Starbucks? what did I buy?)
Anyway, now let's get just the ones since October 2013..

var ts = eval(input)
var cutoff = new Date('10/01/2013').getTime()
ts = _.filter(ts, function (t) { return t.Date > cutoff })
ts

..good.. now.. hm.. there are 465 transactions in that time.. how can we make some sense of them?
first, maybe group by description, and see if some descriptions are very common..

var ts = eval(input)
var bag = {}
_.each(ts, function (t) {
    _.bagAdd(bag, t.Description)
})
_.sort(_.pairs(bag), function (x) { return -x[1] })

hm.. the most common thing is "PayPal", which is not quite descriptive enough. Hm.. I do see quite a few transfers from my bank to PayPal, which can probably be removed, but I also want to remove the corresponding gain in money in PayPal.. maybe I can just remove all "income" anyway, since I want to know where I'm spending money, not earning it..

ok, so 446 after removing transfers to PayPal,
and 306 after removing income (so much income! sortof.. not sure what all those are.. for some reason Mint.com shows a credit associated with most of my PayPal transactions for the same amount as the transaction — I don't know why.. it's not because they gave me the money back, that's for sure)

what next.. ok, I see some investments, which I shouldn't count as "spending money", since I still own the investment (even though, in point of fact, the value of the investment has already gone down, as my investments typically do)..

hm.. I see that I'm paying for Netflix twice.. I am paying for my mom's account, as a gift, which I want to continue, but I think Netflix may allow families to share accounts, so I should look into that.. probably they mean for the people to be in the same physical house, not sure..

ok, let's pull out Netflix expenses into an aggregating spreadsheet..
pull out phone bills..
pull out Spotify..
pull out virtual mail thing..
blah..
blah..
more stuff..

hm..

some takeaways..

first, I'm spending $100 a day, which happens to be the budget I was allowing myself, but I thought I was well under it, especially considering that I didn't pay for lodging at all for two whole months while I was staying at my dad's house..

second, I'm spending a lot on car rental. Somehow I thought that was cheaper. I spent more on car rental than on lodging..

here's the breakdown, more-or-less:
22% on car rental
17% on lodging
15% on stuff (whatever that is.. groceries, and paying apple for a developers license, etc..)
13% on food
11% on air travel
7% on health care
7% on services (including phone)
6% on cash.. who knows what I did with that..
2% rounding error

so.. don't rent cars so much! and maybe eat less?

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