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Comment by aeneasmackenzie | Hacker News Reader

When I use cash I split the transaction like this (in YNAB):

    CASH         -$7
    LOOSE CHANGE +$0.36
    STORE        +$6.64

Loose change is an account that represents at least as much money as there is in change in my house, pockets, cars, etc while cash is an exact tracking account.

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Have you found value out of this? I just consider cash spent as soon as I withdraw it, as far as the budget goes. Tracking small change sounds tedious and seems line it wouldn’t provide value, but so I’m curious to hear if you think differently.

I used to do this but I started tracking change separately because I want to track budget categories exactly but I also don’t want to have to count a bunch of change every time I reconcile my cash account. The change account is only tracked automatically, it would be too tedious to do manually.

I do the same as you. I used to attempt to track cash spending but I found that if I wasn't tracking it within 24 hours of it being spent, I probably wasn't categorizing it correctly anyway.

Since my cash expenditures represent well under 1% of my total spending, it wasn't worth tracking in detail.

I used to toss coins in the bin. Time spent accounting for then (Where are they now and how much is it, how much more do i need?) cost more time then their value. Now I live somewhere where some merchants only accept cash, so I save them again. It's a hassle though.

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