I’m not overly familiar with how things work financially in the U.S. for day-to-day things, but here in Australia, I run everything through my debit card, so at the end of the month, I import all my transactions into Hledger, allocate them to their appropriate expenditure account (i.e., food, gas, utilities, dining out, etc.) and then I can run a report on where my money has gone. I’ve been doing it over the past 2 years and it gives some really good insight.
Although it’s retrospective, it helps me understand what I’m spending my money on and can help forecast and budget.