Hey everyone,
Just wanted to share a couple of ‘aha!’ moments I had recently using Tiller, especially now that I’m settling into retirement. Sometimes the obvious stuff escapes me, maybe others can relate.
Since retiring late last year, I’ve been getting a handle on my new routine. Looking at my brokerage statements, I always just assumed dividend activity was an end-of-month thing. But this month, Tiller showed dividend/reinvestment transactions popping up mid-month.
Instead of digging through old statements, I fired up a pivot table in my Tiller Google Sheet using my transaction data. Bingo. It clearly laid out the pattern I hadn’t noticed before: my U.S. bond fund pays out monthly but my stock funds pay out quarterly. Never realized that specific schedule before. Now I have a much better handle on when that income actually arrives, and it gives me some ideas for other things to look into.
Another thing that jumped out thanks to Tiller and pivot tables was classic subscription creep. Those little $1/month price hikes on things like Kindle Unlimited, Amazon Music, Netflix, etc., really snuck up on me. Individually, they don’t seem like much, but seeing them all laid out in the data, I realized those small bumps add up to a pretty significant chunk over the course of a year.
I’m also in the process of transitioning from another popular budget system which uses the envelope system. That system is great for the month-to-month view, especially making sure budgeted money carries over, setting and meeting targets, and handling credit card float really smoothly. Tiller, on the other hand, has been fantastic for easily spotting these longer-term patterns (like the dividends and subscription creep) that the strict monthly envelope view sometimes hides. I’m still working on replicating or working around some of those envelope features I rely on in my Tiller sheets (not a feature request – just part of my learning curve).
Looking ahead, I’m also pretty excited about what AI might bring to the table. Imagine AI automatically spotting unusual spending trends or offering personalized insights based on our detailed Tiller data or even automatically performing routine tasks like reconcilliation. I’m not quite ready to connect my raw financial data directly to an AI yet, but I’m getting closer. The potential for AI to help manage budgets and uncover even more hidden insights feels like a real game-changer down the road.
Anyway, just wanted to share my experience in case it resonates with anyone else.
