A tidy home is easier to clean. If there are legos all over the floor, I have to pick them up before I can vacuum (or get stabbed walking around). If there are dishes on the table, they need to be loaded in the dishwasher before that dried pesto stain can be wiped off.
Similar to physically tiding up, I like to keep our finances tidy too. But unlike the necessary daily tidy in my home with two kids and a dog, the financial tidy happens once a month and takes around 10 minutes most months. I follow up on long running things, fix miscategorized transactions, and squint to see if anything weird stands out.
I use Empower (formerly PersonalCapital, previously Mint) to aggregate spending across different accounts. I export to CSV because account syncing breaks occasionaly or I fat-finger something and lose history. Then I import the data into an app I made to review spending. I sit down with a Lipton tea, and go over my notes:
For spending categories, I use a few broad categories rather than many granular ones; 'Home' includes mortgage, HOA dues, repairs, property taxes. 'Utilities' includes phone, internet, water, trash, electricity. Last year, the top 3 categories accounted for 75% of our spending, the top 5 for 85%. It's easier to remember fewer categories and consistently label things. Outside of the top categories, there's a 'General Merchandise' category for any one off things. It ends up being 1-3% of our spending in recent years, so not worth breaking down into better categories. If an expense could be multiple categories like a rental car (Automotive, Travel), I just pick one. Over time, the categories may change (Automotive and Hobby merged to Automotive), but they're similar enough in recent years to highlight big year-over-year changes. If I'm looking for something specific within a broad category, I can filter then search (Utilities, search for T-mobile).
Transfers between accounts are categorized transfers and cancel each other out. Credit card payments are listed to make it easy to look up payment dates, but aren't counted as an expense because individual transactions already cover that. Other transfers include saving for retirement or college.
I keep track of estimated income tax payments, but don't include them in our spending. I want to know how much money we need to cover our expenses, but income tax varies with income. No income, no income tax either. I do include property tax in our spending because that needs to be paid even if we don't earn income.
I track investment dividend dates to help manage our cash flow, making sure we have enough cash on hand for a year of expenses. Cash beyond a year's expenses goes towards investments.
I don't try to distribute big expenses across months. For example, home property taxes and insurance is paid twice a year. It makes those months look heavy in spending, but I'm more interested in 1-year spend, or running 12-month average spending. I don't find comparing month to month spending useful, preferring to look at the bigger annual picture (2023 vs 2024).
Whatever the software and tools, keeping a monthly schedule has worked well for me. I keep some other notes on personal finance at jch/personal-finance.