In some situations it would be easy to get ballpark estimate of current expenses by calculating annually:
Net Income - (increase in savings) = Expenses.
There can be a lot of money flow factors related to taxation, gains, college payments, etc that make the method cumbersome. Just thought I should mention it, in case somebody needs a quick “monthly expenses” answer for modeling retirement.
Thanks! Actually the bank will only give 2 months of transactions in an exportable, Excel compatible format. Anything earlier is on a banks statement in pdf format.
Pretty painful to manually enter but hoping to connect with Quicken or something like it (maybe Mint?) so transactions can be automatically tracked/categorized/etc.!
Oh, what a hassle! I can’t believe the bank will only provide two months of transactions. I would be annoyed, but probably not annoyed enough to change banks because I am lazy.
I suppose you could start now pulling down two months at a time and adding to a spreadsheet until you have a year of data but it will take you ten months to have a full year of expenses.
I have never tried Quicken so unfortunately cannot offer any suggestions. I use low-tech Excel and create my own categories. Good luck!
Thank you!
I’m not confident that I’ll have the diligence to consistently do manual entries going forward - so am putting some hope in an auto-process or some kind, LOL!
Thank you for the suggestion, Colorado_mom!
The granular tracking is done to get the fin planner’s software calculations/projections as correct as they can be - but I know that the broad stroke approach would in all likelihood work as well for that purpose.
But I have an additional reason for slogging through the minutiae - finding areas we can cut back on today (like my excessive Amazon purchases, lol!).
…and maybe get to retire earlier if we are consistent with reductions!
Oh boy, can I relate! 
I like to look at my annual Visa summary provide by Chase, sorted by category.
For tracking purposes, I just log monthly totals. But the annual view helps to “see where the money goes” (LOL - not surprised that a lot of it is for vacations and eating out and monthly fees for cellphone etc) It does not change our spending patterns since it’s affordable now, but it show the areas we could cut back on if needed.
I do the same, but sort by spouse. That brings immediate clarity where we could save 
(and a new sleeping arrangement that involves the couch).
My experience is (unfortunately) the savings are temporary and (fortunately) the couch is also 
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