brad-cannell / budget_app

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Update the Google Sheet App After Shifting to Chase Sapphire #6

Open mbcann01 opened 1 year ago

mbcann01 commented 1 year ago

Overview

2023-06-30: I decided to shift to paying (almost) all bills with the Chase Sapphire card. See #5 for a complete explanation. As a result, I think it may be best to make some changes to the current layout of the Google Sheet App.

Useful websites

Layers of complexity

When making these changes, I sort of jumped in the deep end head first. However, it may be worth recognizing that there is a potential stepped approach here too.

  1. Keep everything as before - no automatic payments. Just pay with the Chase Sapphire card instead of the bill pay checking account where doing so is possible.
  2. Add automatic payments.
  3. Use a credit card for discretionary spending too.

Process for paying Chase Sapphire card off

I decided that I'm going to use the Chase Sapphire card to pay for (almost) everything. What does the process to pay it back look like? Due dates for the actual bills don't really make a difference anymore. They will all get paid on time. Now, it's all about paying off the Chase Sapphire card in an optimal way.

I may have to play around with this some, but right now, I'm thinking the best method for paying off the Chase Sapphire card and tracking expenses is to log into my Chase Sapphire account on the 1st and 15th of each month and essentially pay off whatever expenses have accumulated since my last login. Also, use that statement to update the "actual paid" column in the monthly spending spreadsheet (if you keep that format). You will still need to log into some accounts manually to track your balances, and some accounts will only accept payments directly from a bank account.

Changing the layout of the monthly payment spreadsheets

In this new system,

What to track

Specific potential changes

Left off at

2023-07-15: I'm rolling back some of the changes I made over the last month or two. See an explanation in #5. However, I still need to make some adjustments to the Google Sheet (see below).

Tasks