What is the recommendation for how to categorize large and infrequent purchases (e.g. buying a new or used car)? There is no monthly payment, but would still like to track it obviously. Right now I just have a couple of separate categories, “Vehicle” shows up in reports like normal and is for repairs/maintenance etc, and “New Vehicle Purchase” is a hidden category and therefore doesn’t show up on the dashboard. This has the effect of hiding these large swings from the dashboard that only occur every couple of years, but it artificially improves the appearance of the cash flow. Curious what others do for large purchases that aren’t on a payment plan.
I would hide/unhide depending on what view you want at that moment, as opposed to having a fixed hidden state always.
In the short term, you may just want it hidden, so you see your normal spending.
But, in the long term (a couple months, 12 months, next year), I personally would unhide it, then all your expenses are visible when it’s less likely to care about the cash flow view.
in addition to mark’s perspective, I’m assuming you’re paying for the car outright with cash from savings for one reason or another. And assuming this is a manual transaction you could either amortize the cost of the car over how ever long you think you’ll keep it, or inversely as you’re saving to purchase the car you could put that as an expense.
Overall it depends on how do you want to see it. if you main dislike is the sudden jump in a cost just excluding it is probably best. but if you want the true picture just let it spike.
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@jcg have any of these suggestions worked for you?