1. I’m definitely going to do this just for the hell of it. Also, Ian, this would seem to imply a loose association. Whereas you would have thought that more restaurants = less groceries this implies something even more interesting. That some months you feel like spending more on everything and some months you feel cheap.  I wonder what the secondary correlation is — if you time-slice it is does it go up over time? Is this about you simply getting richer (secondary Dropbox share selling?). Or perhaps in months you worked really fucking hard you just didn’t spend as much on anything? Ahhh.. data.  giantrobotlasers: I expected some kind of more obvious relationship between restaurants and groceries. This is absolute $ spent on each in a given month, as a scatter plot. This is for a family of four living in San Mateo in the Bay Area. Are your results any different? Pro tip: you can export all your transactions from mint, making it a unified way to get all your banking information. I used to do my own manual categorization. The categorization at Mint is junk because it isn’t 100% and the interface isn’t good for editing like a spreadsheet it. So now the process is mint export CSV -> python script -> csv -> google spreadsheets. I should probably just skip the last step, but it is a good way to do manual editing which seems to always be necessary. For example, checks that I didn’t label in Bank of America’s interface (for non trivial amounts to preschools) show up as uncategorized if the amount varies from the recurring amount. Side note: I wish google spreadsheets could do a directed scatter plot with a line connecting the dots chronologically. Alternatively, labels on each point would be nice.

    I’m definitely going to do this just for the hell of it.

    Also, Ian, this would seem to imply a loose association. Whereas you would have thought that more restaurants = less groceries this implies something even more interesting. That some months you feel like spending more on everything and some months you feel cheap. 

    I wonder what the secondary correlation is — if you time-slice it is does it go up over time? Is this about you simply getting richer (secondary Dropbox share selling?). Or perhaps in months you worked really fucking hard you just didn’t spend as much on anything?

    Ahhh.. data. 

    giantrobotlasers:

    I expected some kind of more obvious relationship between restaurants and groceries. This is absolute $ spent on each in a given month, as a scatter plot. This is for a family of four living in San Mateo in the Bay Area. Are your results any different?

    Pro tip: you can export all your transactions from mint, making it a unified way to get all your banking information. I used to do my own manual categorization. The categorization at Mint is junk because it isn’t 100% and the interface isn’t good for editing like a spreadsheet it. So now the process is mint export CSV -> python script -> csv -> google spreadsheets. I should probably just skip the last step, but it is a good way to do manual editing which seems to always be necessary. For example, checks that I didn’t label in Bank of America’s interface (for non trivial amounts to preschools) show up as uncategorized if the amount varies from the recurring amount.

    Side note: I wish google spreadsheets could do a directed scatter plot with a line connecting the dots chronologically. Alternatively, labels on each point would be nice.

Notes

  1. nabeel reblogged this from giantrobotlasers and added:
    I’m definitely going to do this just for the hell...it. Also, Ian, this would seem to...
  2. giantrobotlasers posted this