Ask HN: How do you plan to track your personal finances in 2020?
10 comments
Personally I just export a CSV file with my monthly bank transactions that I feed to a django app I've made.
1/ It flags suspicious entries according to rules that I manually add and it automatically highlights transactions involving new parties.
2/ I've added tags to be able to classify the expenses and present them in a pie chart so I can at a glance see if I was on track or not last month and adjust things the next one.
In the end it took 2h to write, I spent now 5min / month on this reviewing, I've found the bank made an error and was charging me for something I've never signed for and I'm finally following a loose budget and building savings in a "relaxed" way.
1/ It flags suspicious entries according to rules that I manually add and it automatically highlights transactions involving new parties.
2/ I've added tags to be able to classify the expenses and present them in a pie chart so I can at a glance see if I was on track or not last month and adjust things the next one.
In the end it took 2h to write, I spent now 5min / month on this reviewing, I've found the bank made an error and was charging me for something I've never signed for and I'm finally following a loose budget and building savings in a "relaxed" way.
ledger/hledger again, though I also use YNAB for my cash accounts, credit cards, and other debts. I can live with its single-currency support for that. But I use ledger/hledger for my total picture of my finances.
NB: I do everything manually. So I enter in my transactions with YNAB manually, then later enter them into my ledger file. I find that this keeps me better aware of my financial status than automatic downloads, but that's a personal preference.
NB: I do everything manually. So I enter in my transactions with YNAB manually, then later enter them into my ledger file. I find that this keeps me better aware of my financial status than automatic downloads, but that's a personal preference.
Thank you for the hledger tip. Definitely going to look into that. I have been completely disillusioned with YNAB due to the community and almost fanatical mindset that comes with it.
Maybe also checkout beancount. It's a more opinionated and slightly simpler (h)ledger alternative, but it features an excellent web interface called fava.
What do you you expect from the data?
As a german: we have no good software to track from banking data so I just don't. I live modest and check if my account on average goes up or down (usually goes up, so all good).
I will calc an average to see how much to put in to retirement savings monthly soon.
As a german: we have no good software to track from banking data so I just don't. I live modest and check if my account on average goes up or down (usually goes up, so all good).
I will calc an average to see how much to put in to retirement savings monthly soon.
I don't plan on tracking really, so let's see how that goes :)
I personally use app from Play store, quite handy :)
Tillerhq.com is awesome
Manual-entry solutions like spreadsheets are too tedious. I find MoneyWiz to be clunky and ugly, and I don't trust it, perhaps because I was spoiled by YNAB's super polished clearing/approval/reconciliation UI.
For 2020, I'm thinking of building myself a Plaid API integration into Airtable or Google Sheets. What about you?
p.s. I'm Canadian, so I must pass on all US-centric software.