Not even 40 years ago. I was still manually tracking my bank account around ~15 years ago because my university was still doing a lot of stuff by check. You could either pay in cash or by check, no debit or credit allowed because of how old their system was in the billing department.

yeah, it is wild how easy the tools make it these days. I’ve always monitored my own shit / done my own taxes, etc. when I was in grad school, I got really good at spreadsheet functions for complex processes, and pulling in modeled data.

so, of course, I started developing sheets for all kinds of shit, just to mess around and link data. it used to be real easy to download transaction data. its still doable, but more annoying now.

anyway, the point being, I probably spend as much time tracking and analyzing my money situation as my grandparents did, but now I can rapidly generate beautiful graphs and do analysis on all kinds of shit to quantify the impact of buying decisions over time.

I finished and filed my taxes like a week ago and all my friends just roll their eyes at how I can answer the most obscure questions about utility/energy costs, price points on meal ingredients, etc. and like, sure once a year I spend an hour or so bulk updating/refining the data for analysis, but other wise I spend like maybe 10-15 minutes a month.

it all started just as an exercise to keep my data analysis skills sharp, but now it’s an addiction. a very nerdy addiction.