How do I log a car purchase?

Question

How do I log a car purchase?

We just purchased a new car and paid cash. What are best practices on how I should log the transaction? I would like to categorize it in a way that it doesn't show on my 'trends' tab.

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6 comments

Thank you Jami -- how would you categorize the actual transaction?

grier.allen

How does it appear today? What I'm not understanding is that if you paid cash, there shouldn't have been a transaction pulled into Mint, since this didn't hit a bank account, correct? If so, we do have a way to manually add a cash transaction, the only problem is that when you do this, there's no option not to track in Budgets & Trends, because the sentiment is that if you are manually adding it, you'd want the transaction to be tracked.

Please confirm if this helps, or if I'm still missing something -- and if I'm missing something, please try to add more detail about what you're seeing in Mint and that'll help me.

Thanks!

Mint Jami

By cash let's consider we wrote a check for the car (I did). Now I have a check coming through checking account. Mint is yelling at me that it is uncategorized.

dtwick

Valid question, I'm wondering the same thing. A car purchase or car sale is throwing off my month to month net income. I'm tempted to set it as "hide from budget", but am wondering if there is a better way to categorize it.

bakerjaredj

Yes, good question. I want my budget to include big-ticket items that might be purchased every 10 years (like a car, computer or major appliance). Over the long haul, these big items might average, say, $100/month. As a retiree, I want to know what I can expect to spend each year. I suppose I could add a misc category at $100/mo for eventual big-ticket items, but that seems cumbersome (and just goofy!). I am probably not using Mint in quite the same way as most people: I'm most interesting in tracking expenses, including long-term average expenses. Ideas?

nanozuzu

Anybody find a good way to track this? Slightly different scenario, where I used a balance transfer offer to pay cash, but thought I'd see what the rest of the world was doing. Thanks!

cam513143

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Answer 1

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Hi grier.allen,

If this was a cash transaction, there should be no transaction in Mint to track, unless it's a withdrawal (in which you can choose the category exclude from Budgets & Trends).

Also, in case you weren't aware, in Mint, you can track a non bank asset is through "Other Property". When you add a vehicle, you can also choose to track the value using Kelley Blue Book. Please note that if you're car is a 2015 (and maybe even some 2014), and KBB doesn't have a value for the vehicle yet, you won't be able to find it and in this case you'd have to manually add the value.

You can learn more here: https://mint.lc.intuit.com/questions/976179

Hope this helps!

Best,
jami

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Mint Jami

Answer 2

How do I log a car purchase?

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