in reply to REGEX Frustration

Regex can be used for validation or data extraction. You want to perform the latter, so no need to examine the data that closely. You have tab-separated data, so all you need to match your data is:
_____________________ date / ______________ desc / / _______ amount / / / ------ ------ ------ /^[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t[^\n*]\n\z/

You want to remove the amount, so

s/^[^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t\K[^\n*]//; # 5.10+ s/^([^\t]*\t[^\t]*\t)[^\n*]/$1/; # Any version