Ask HN: How do you manage your personal finances?

I use beancount, it is a great fit for a specific type of user who can put up with double entry and who wants to run sql-ish queries on their transactions and who doesn't need a GUI. It probably won't work if you are not all those things but if you are it is great.

Conceptually, I would suggest looking into books that do a basic job of explaining accounting- balance sheet, income statement, cash flow. While it is a much bigger space than the world of personal finance, personal finance itself has gotten very complex, with lots of seemingly indistinguishable places/apps to put money. The indistinguishable becomes just crisply defined if one has the basics of accounting.

Last year, I got in touch with the City's public service, where they have debt counselors and financial experts who help people get control of their finances. And I sat down for a couple unproductive sessions where I recited my budget items from memory, the guy plugged the numbers into a spreadsheet, and then I compared it to bank statements. They were unproductive because there was no possibility of information sharing between me and his office. We couldn't even match our calendars for an appointment, or transfer a simple file.

Another resource that has helped is a 2" binder full of consumer finance information, published by the US Federal Government. I think it's the CFPB: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ and I'm sure there are online resources now to match. They can really help you with solid facts and education about basic financial literacy and getting out of debt.

I also signed up to Mint a few years ago, after a recommendation by a friend. I found Mint to be no more helpful than when I started. Also, it was spamming me with special offers, which is how they monetize the free service, of course. I canceled Mint and I also shut down my whole Intuit account. I use H&R Block's software now, for tax preparation.

So these days, in terms of managing my finances day-to-day, I use little else besides my two online banking apps. And, I'm happy to say that their limited automation features have finally come together for me. I've got a flow going where all my bills will be paid, necessary transfers and credit card payments go through, and of course, all deposits are direct and electronic. So barring something unexpected, all my bills should be paid without intervention, even if I were to be incarcerated or go to the hospital, or be incapacitated in some way.

My bank apps are still inept at categorizing things. I mean, like, if I buy a Subway Sandwich, it might get categorized as Public Transit! So I still don't rely on that stuff for figuring out how my expenses are distributed, but thankfully I don't really need to know, and my discretionary/entertainment expenses are minimal already.

I'd still really like a master budgeting app that's capable of ingesting machine-readable files from both of my banks, and visualizing stuff on a monthly/annual basis, with colors and stuff. I suppose I could whip something up with Google Sheets. I don't own any other spreadsheet application anyway.

Joint account is only used for bills, and barring some terrible emergency I don't plan to cash out my investments.

I also have an autosave set up on my bank account that each paycheck it shifts $400 into my savings.

Whatever is left, I just pretend that's my paycheck and work with that for the next couple of weeks. Sometimes I stretch myself a bit too thin, and then I dip into my savings account to get me by until the next paycheck, but I try not to make a habit of it (it's not our primary savings, that gets taken out of the joint account, I mainly use my personal savings account as a buffer now).

And in addition to that I have a 401k that gets taken out of my paycheck right away as well.

I'll get to see the numbers go up each paycheck, and then I don't really have to think about it outside of that. Investing and paying my loan and shifting money over takes about 20 minutes of my time, then I'm done for two weeks.

I'm definitely not as efficient with the rest of the money as I'd like (we eat out too often and get too many toys), but at least I'm still saving/investing a respectable amount each paycheck anyway.

I didn't really start having this habit until my 30s, though, and never worked at a place that gave out RSUs, so I'm way behind a lot of people on this site that are younger than me, I'm sure.