Tell us about the lies you tell... your budget!

I tell myself some expenses are one time, take them off the spending plan and reports, and then they happen again. This does not happen often, fortunately. I have done it though.

@SRC54

I purchase it, but only the sales tax or delivery fee is an immediate cost. The item gets transferred to Possessions so it's really a transfer from bank account to Household Items.

This is a semi-legitimate move… but if and only if you depreciate the value of that possession and take that depreciation as an expense against your income every year.

But I'm sure you already do that. Right? … Right? 😉

@DryHeat Right, it is semi-legitimate. 😀 I have tried just taking it out of the Spending Plan and including in reports. But this works ok as long as I update the value periodically in possessions the way I do for the Cars' values. The result is instead of an expense that subtracts from my income, it ends up as a decrease in my net worth.

As I do with the cars, I use a transfer instead of a balance adjustment, which means that the hit is taken to my net worth instead of using a depreciation expense, which gets complicated.

So let's say the refrigerator lasts 15 years, I would take my refrigerator's value down about a $100 a year. If it is something that may last 5 years like a computer, I would do 20% a year. It doesn't require any work to the spending plan but over time it will affect my net worth.

I use a "goods" category for lower cost items that have an undetermined length of value so it is both an expense and a transfer into the Possessions account. These would be things like battery backups, cords, pots and pans, etc. Those things might not "depreciate" until I throw them out and delete them.

Example: My iPhone 14Plus cost $900 new (outrageous right?). Right now according to Amazon I can buy a used one for $305. So that is what it says now. This possessions list is for my insurance company if I ever need it. And good luck getting anything out of them. I do this periodically as I say, once or twice a year.

So like investments in stock, daily changes affect your net worth but they will affect your costs when you sell them. Since my old stuff ends up getting thrown away, I just never deal with depreciation.

Edit: Really one should buy used Macs, iPads, iPhones as you can get them much cheaper and not pay so much depreciation! Same thing applies to used cars, but I won't learn that lesson.