Alcohol Tracking (Bank/YNAB - Finance & Cronometer)

PoetGoals

I am tracking both my expenditure with YNAB (live updates from bank accounts) and food tracking.

I recently completed identifying all of 2025 outflows, inclusive of a sub category of social expenditures, by tagging specific payees as Pub or Restaurant and/or memo field keyword (Social, Alcohol).

As I live in Ireland, just going for a pint is a social norm, as like in many other parts of the world.

I then track Alcohol as food in Cronometer, and I get the nutritional data tracked.

I now add two biomarkers

• Units per consumption (Using https://alcoholireland.ie/drinks-calculator/)
• Drinking Ratio (times per week):
  .... - This is the ratio (per month, 28/30/31 days) of Drinking Days:Non-Drinking Days, then multiplied by 7 days for per month weekly average).

The two major blind spots from analysing expenditures are, particularly after the fact:

• Restaurant bills (as it difficult to reverse guestimate, unless you get a copy of receipt, which may be socially awkward)
• Grocery basket (like above, unless one tracks the receipts)

Like with all behavioural economics and adjustments, 21 days to make a habit, etc, adding these new patterns takes time (1-3 months) like tracking alcohol consumption.

Cronometer make this “accounting” a breeze without (for me) any shame, and more fact based when talking to my GP and Medical Professionals (like with Hepatology etc).

I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and reducing (to zero) alcohol consumption as a co-factor post diagnosis is a strong recommendation

PoetGoals

I can then track my units per month or per week by the custom charts features

And I do this activity once a month, in hindsight. So I create a custom Note (wish we had templates) and copy it for every month in the forthcoming year, so when that day arrives, I just add the numbers, not the entire note.