<prompt> Human: Im a pretty financially literate person, and my job involves numbers, so I thought I had a good grasp on how much I was spendingsaving. I have been tracking my net worth for several years now on a quarterly basis, but I had not, until yesterday, tracked expenses. Heres what I found: 2008: 12,500 estimated, bank statements only go back to 1008 2009: 10,381 2010: 20,374 2011: 30,167 2012: 44,602 2013: 53,046 2014: 55,636 2015: 34,259 to dateNotable life events: 2008: started grad school 20111213: moved from one coast to the other 2012: Began long-distance relationship 2013: Started jobNow, I know that I wasnt the best about spending, but the number I had in my head was that I was spending between 35-40k a year. I was shocked when I found out I had been trending over 50k for the past 2 years, although this year looks to be better. As long as my bank account was going up, and I was maxing out my retirement contributions, I was happy and didnt scrutinize too closely. I was a little bitter about saving more slowly than I expected for a house down-payment, so this explains a lot.Bottom line: track expenses!  <response>: I think of this principle every time someone claims to be living on some unrealistically low number. Unless you are literally tracking every expense, you are underestimating your costs.And even then there are people that claim to have no housing expense, for example, because they dont have a mortgage. Well, theres still property tax, insurance, and maintenance. Plus there is an opportunity cost of having the capital tied up in the house, so no one truly lives for free. 