A way to track expenses in the venmo era?
Services like Mint are great if all of your spending is for yourself - but that's seldom the case. I'm regularly charging group dinners, movie tickets, travel, etc for my friends and I, and get reimbursed via Venmo later. Or, paying for things via Venmo to friends. However - if you're trying to track your cash inflow/outflow, and categories, this makes it quite difficult. Mint is gonna think you spent 4x what you did and the venmo deposits/withdrawals in your bank account confuse things further. What's the best way to manage this situation? (Besides not using venmo which is not realistic for me since I credit card churn and need my friends' spend)
I log reimbursements as negative spend against a category.
Split the expense then exclude one from your budgets and trends
Hmm okay thanks everyone. I was hoping there was a more automated way to do this but I guess wishful thinking. I don't know if I'll ever feel like putting in the effort to categorize every transaction, so much effort..
It's not automated, but mint has a category called hide from trends. I use that sometimes when I spend money and get reimbursed and don't want it to screw up my trends
Perhaps you could always use a specific credit card for things where you expect to get reimbursed and not use that card for anything else. That way, you just exclude the entire card and don't have to worry about it.
Import venmo data into mint and view venmo deposits /withdrawals as transfers