You moved your money. Your app called it spending.

You move money to a savings account, fund your brokerage account, or send crypto to another wallet you own. One place shows money leaving. Another shows it arriving. But did you actually spend anything?

Say you have 1,000 in one account and transfer 400 to another account you own, with no fee. You now have 600 in the first and 400 in the second. Still 1,000 in total. Count the transfer as spending, and your report invents a purchase that never happened.

Funding your brokerage account works much the same way: the money is now somewhere else. Buying securities is a separate transaction that exchanges cash for another asset. Moving crypto between your own wallets does not, by itself, mean you have spent it either.

A bank or network fee, however, is a real expense. Moving your own money to yourself does not increase the total. Paying to move it reduces it.

That is why “How much left this account?” and “How much did I spend?” are different questions. Otherwise, the same money can become an expense several times just by moving between accounts.

Have transfers between your own accounts ever made your spending look bigger than it was? 👀

#JAB47