Cash or Credit: tracking your expenses with an ios shortcut

I have come to talk about a „German“ thing for once: cash. Hard earned, well spent, paper and coins-based cash. I especially want to talk about why I mostly stopped using cash and how I track it when I (have) to spend it.

When I was young, I of course didn’t have a electronic cash (EC) card. They were more prevalent than debit cards where you could make debts or had to pay everything at once. It was (and still is) and if my understanding is correct still is just a electronic wallet tied to your bank account. But I started life with relatives gifting or giving me cash. Which I used to get sweets at the supermarket :) . Anyways in me teenage years I learned that a lot of people/germans used cash as a privacy-based lifestyle. Because you can’t track cash or who you are with that it is way easier to just buy stuff and know you have zero data ties or history with that transaction. There are some thoughts why Germans especially like their cash: having two currencies until the wall fell, having a hyperinflation back which kind of helped start a war, leaving you home countries because the red army is in front of your home and you can’t stay there. If you lived through such a trauma you might want to have everything ready to own the money you own and not having it depended on a bank. (Please note that back then there was no digital payment method)

Anyways when I moved out and got to be an adult my aunt told me to have a household book and write down where I spend my money. And since my expenses where suddenly a lot more than sweets and sweet tech gadgets I stated to pay with a pink credit card from Klarna (loved that bitch of a card). I picked a date at the beginning of the next month where I would log into my bank account and see where I spend my money since all transactions were made by me (solo) with a card. Yes they were trackable for corporations (thanks to the DSVGO I actually started reading the privacy statement of Klarna and its many partners it shared the data with). I didn’t like the tracking but also that was the hole point because I started to use EC/Credit Cards: I wanted to track my spending.

I am now still tracking my spending digitally it in mostly the same excel spreadsheet for five years. It got my overhead costs like rent, streaming, Rundfunk and all that. And some categories: essentials (food), Transportations, travel, presents, material stuff, hobby etc.. It’s not that fancy just categories in a easily over viewable spreadsheets that tells me what is left from my monthly salary. My goal isn’t to be on zero each month, but I shouldn’t be beneath it every month when I didn’t travel/ got something expensive. Also tracking where you spend your money and lossless not as if you would be in court reflecting about your spending habits is great and you should do it too <3 .

But you can’t always pay by card or don’t want to give Visa a cut out of a payment OR you want to protect some business as it’s your right for privacy. Anyways I still sometimes spend cash. When Is tarted with the excel I just wrote down when I took money out of my home envelope where I stashed some money so I always knew I had taken out 50€. Where I spend the money? Idk I didn’t track that and you can’t easily loose track after 14 days of living.

But when the iPhone rolled out widgets on the lockscreen and I heard about time tracking (I didn’t that for two weeks) I started to wonder how if I could work a way out to:

  1. track where I spend the cash
  2. In a flexible way
  3. Which was easier to fill data in
  4. which didn’t give my data to anyone
  5. And had a better UI than all Apps for that purpose on the AppStore Basically something lightweight. I tracked cash in my notes app for some time but I hated to put a new line it or when I was drunk I would accidentally click on an entry + I needed to:
  6. Unlock my phone
  7. find the notes app and open it
  8. Find the note where I tracked the my money
  9. make a new line
  10. Write down what I spend money on
Alt text

But there is a solution to this horrible way: Reminders! So I build myself a shortcut which here comes the third list:

  1. opens with a widget button on the lockscreen
  2. asks me for a text input with the words: where did you spend money on
  3. Fills that automatically into a list where I only track cash Done so for me as a human just two small steps. And it works wonders when I remember that I track cash now too. Here is picture of my lockscreen as an example:

Here is the link for copying the ios shortcut: Cashtracker on ios shortcut

I still pay mostly by card as I find it more comfortable and it doesn’t really change the system of surveillance capitalism when I stop.

I am quite proud what I can archive with the little freedom and knowledge I have. It reminds me of when there was a word too much in an important PDF document and I only had a basic adobe acrobat reader and no way to install any new software. I made a white stamp signature and put it above the words. The document was meant to be printed out so that the data was still there was not important for the printer.

I hoped I inspired you to search your little books of freedom to solve tiny problems that might only you have ;)