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How much value does this provide vs. just checking over your account history every month? It feels like a pretty high price to pay in terms of access to your data just to have them check for things that you could probably do by exporting a CSV and searching for things.

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I've found it's not worth it. What I've had be most impactful is just to look at all the transactions on my accounts every paycheck. I notice subscriptions to cancel, spending I want to change.

I don't think looking at sums is actually much more powerful than looking at items. The count carries a weight. There's also no chance of analysis paralysis, slicing and showing things a hundred ways to avoid the heart of the matter. It's just you and the transactions. It leads to less understanding but better decisions.

Can I say, just having the transaction merchant name converted to a more human readable version makes it worth it in and of itself (there are probably some free services that do this).

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