Who is planning a pre-New Year declutter? What's your strategy?

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We often talk about spring cleaning for our homes.

But there is something quietly powerful about doing a winter declutter for our finances.

As the year winds down, the urge to “optimize” everything can feel heavy.

It can feel like pressure.

At Tiller, we believe financial clarity should feel like relief, not a chore.

It is not about having a perfect spreadsheet.

It is about having a system that makes space for your actual life.

Who is planning a pre-New Year declutter?

If you are looking for a place to start, here are a few gentle ways to clear the noise in your Tiller sheets before January arrives.

Simplify your categories

It is tempting to track every single latte or parking meter fee.

But over-categorization is one of the quickest ways to feel overwhelmed.

Take a look at your category list.

If you have five different categories for “Food,” ask yourself if that distinction actually changes your behavior.

If it doesn’t, consider merging them.

Aim for categories that reflect how you live, not how an accountant thinks.

Hide what you don’t need

One of the best things about Tiller is that it is your data, on your terms.

That means you don’t have to look at everything, every day.

If there is a tab you never use, hide it.

If there are columns that distract you, hide them.

You aren’t deleting the data.

You are just quieting the visual noise so you can focus on what matters.

Archive the past

You do not need to carry every transaction from 2022 into 2026.

Consider creating a fresh archive tab for old data or making a copy of your spreadsheet and deleting the really old transactions.

This keeps your daily view light and fast.

It helps you focus on your current intentions rather than past history.

Lean on automation

We build tools to help you spend less time managing money and more time living.

If you haven’t updated your AutoCat rules in a while, take ten minutes to do it now.

Let the system sort your recurring bills and subscriptions.

Save your energy for the decisions that actually need your attention.

What is your strategy?

We would love to hear how you are preparing your sheets for the new year.

Are you starting fresh?

Are you archiving old tabs?

Or are you just enjoying the feeling of knowing exactly where you stand?

Let us know in the comments.

-Alice
Tiller Evangelist

Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn

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I start in a fresh sheet every year, which includes changing up my categories a bit. This year I had a group called Food that included groceries and eating out when previously I included groceries in my “bills/living” group. I think I’ll have a group dedicated to subscriptions AND entertainment in 2026 so I can see a better grand total from that group (I don’t have many subscriptions so the amount right now seems obsolete). I’m also counting my contributions as “income” under my investment group right now, but this amount is not a clear picture when my investment connections don’t always pull in transaction data.

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We talk a lot about most of this in this webinar as well :slight_smile:

If you want a demo on how we think about getting ready for the new year (and the mechanics of how to do it) please join us! Register even if you can’t attend and we’ll email you a link to the recording.

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I start fresh with a new sheet for the new year. I’ll get ready by reviewing my actual spending for this year and adjusting my budget as needed. My Categories are quite broad already, but I’ll review them to determine if I can consolidate them even more. I use Tags as sub-categories, so I’ll review the Tags I used this year and eliminate those that I didn’t use.

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Thank you for sharing this @Rebecca.S . Do you archive the old spreadsheet?

-Alice
Tiller Evangelist

Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn

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No, I keep it in my list of Google docs for easy reference.

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I have archived a copy of my prior year sheet and then made adjustments on the sheet I have and I have set up a new sheet completely (I changed emails, so it was necessary). I found that setting up a new sheet completely was overwhelming, so this year I will again just make an archive copy my 2025 sheet. I will delete the 2023 data probably - I do like having 2 years data in one sheet for comparisons, and such, so I always have kept the prior year, even when I started a new sheet, I copied the transactions and balance information. I will also update my budgets based on prior years averages, but I feel like my categories are pretty solid for my needs now, so I won’t be doing much there. I will also attend the webinar if I can (or at least watch it later) as there are always good tips there to help with things.

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Personally, I am a pack rat when it comes to data. More data is always better to me! The more information I have to start with, the better I feel about my decisions. The trick for me is taking those mountains of data and reducing it to something more digestable and useful. I do a monthly and quarterly household budget report for me and my wife, as well, and reduce those further for year-end discussion.

My workbook is full of various tabs of different analyses of data that reduce it in different ways. I have a modified Savings Budget that is sort of our primary “current picture” dashboard, and then I have the Tags Report that I look at frequently to track individual projects, specific spending on certain things, etc., and a new sheet I built to look at volatile categories month over month and year over year with averages for both. I have some other sheets set up to analyze some of our utilities usage and costs, specific project budgeting and spending (holidays, annual road trip planning, a couple home renovations, etc), and general budget building based on our current consistent expected income.

In my transactions and Savings Budget, I use groups and categories to keep the overall budget picture clear and light and give my wife a quick top-line summary of how we’re doing. I even added a simplified “Current Envelopes” tab that literally just pulls the remaining money we have in each budget for the month in each category and that’s a little more mobile-friendly for her. (I want to figure out AppSheet or some other no-code app creation so that I can do this as a separate app, but have failed miserably so far.)

This gives me a range of layered options for whatever level of analysis I need right now, rather than decluttering everything all at once. If I need a decluttered view, I can look at those top-level analyses, and if I have more questions on those, I can go to my next layer down and so forth until I’m looking at specific transactional data if I need it.

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This year I used a sub-category strategy using Group as category and Category as sub-category. This was successful, but I have cleanup work to do for 2026. There are about 5 sub-categories I will remove, and I’ll need to add about 3 new ones too.

Although this isn’t decluttering, I did experience a significant increase in expenses that were planned for, but way under budgeted. They are related to the health care and home care categories. I need to work better on 2026 projections for these areas.

While reviewing this year’s expenses I realized I did not account for the increase in products and services across the board. Groceries, Pet food, City services, and Utilities were the biggest over budget items. I need to apply a simple cost of living increase percentage across the board for budget estimates.