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Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

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Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#31

Post by jppope »

jimbob45 wrote: post #20
anticorporate wrote: post #2

I've settled on good old fashioned spreadsheets. Why? One, I pay cash as much as I possibly can (fuck surveillance finance), so using something that brings in my transactions isn't that much of a time savings. I have a minimal number of monthly scheduled transactions, so bringing those in manually just isn't really that painful. Two, it adds a tiny bit of friction to my spending. This is a good thing (at least for me…

You could combine this with a quick cronjob to send notifications about daily/weekly spending but I don’t know an easy way to send texts without dipping into Twilio, which is difficult. If you’re okay having emails notify you, that might work. Maybe enter purchases in a linked spreadsheet from your phone to your desktop to track purchases? Might just be better off sucking up purchase information from your bank’s API…

> I don’t know an easy way to send texts

Most of the major telcomms have an email to text setup. Verizon is {phone_number}@vtext.com, AT&T is {phone_number}@txt.att.net

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#33

Post by jppope »

on this topic what I really wish was that there was something that would actually stop me from spending when I'm over the budget. Attribution is nice, but organizing accounts or money folders that could just stop categorical spending would be preferable.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#34

Post by brudgers »

Monitor your bank account.

1. Use a debit card or cash for purchases when practical.

2. Pay bills when they arrive, not when they are due. You are not earning money from the float anyway.

3. Supplement with other documentation ad hoc.

4. Improve the system over time based on what works for you.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#35

Post by dewey »

These tools always felt like a chore to me that didn’t really provide any value to me. Felt the same as “productivity” tools that people pay for to feel like they are doing something.

Now I’m just using a banking app (https://moneymoney-app.com/) that fetched the status of all accounts and shows them in one place including my portfolios etc.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#36

Post by leosanchez »

jimbob45 wrote: post #20
anticorporate wrote: post #2

I've settled on good old fashioned spreadsheets. Why? One, I pay cash as much as I possibly can (fuck surveillance finance), so using something that brings in my transactions isn't that much of a time savings. I have a minimal number of monthly scheduled transactions, so bringing those in manually just isn't really that painful. Two, it adds a tiny bit of friction to my spending. This is a good thing (at least for me…

You could combine this with a quick cronjob to send notifications about daily/weekly spending but I don’t know an easy way to send texts without dipping into Twilio, which is difficult. If you’re okay having emails notify you, that might work. Maybe enter purchases in a linked spreadsheet from your phone to your desktop to track purchases? Might just be better off sucking up purchase information from your bank’s API…

> You could combine this with a quick cronjob to send notifications about daily/weekly spending but I don’t know an easy way to send texts without dipping into Twilio, which is difficult. If you’re okay having emails notify you, that might work.

I use telegram or ntfy to notify myself.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#37

Post by mattbillenstein »

Do not trust Plaid or services that use it - it stores your login credentials directly...

I use spreadsheets - download csv from your bank, import, label categories, then you can look at it any way you like. Doesn't take that much time, and with a few heuristics, the tagging can be mostly automated...

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#38

Post by mrngm »

simplify wrote: post #27

Could be wrong, but I feel like the most tedious part is categorization of transactions. I wonder if any have adopted LLMs to make this better?

YNAB4 or YNAB Classic, the standalone desktop application based on Adobe Air, was already quite capable of learning the categories for transaction, of course after you've provided them a few times. This still works good to this day, without LLMs; I'm regularly importing bank transactions, and usually I only have to confirm the category. There are just a few cases where there's still manual action required.

If you're looking for fully automated recognition of transactions, that might be useful for bookkeeping, but I think this creates too much distance between you spending money (and the application just confirming that) and the wish for conforming to your predefined budget.

Another trick I've seen people do, which is of course more time consuming, is manually enter every transaction into such a budgeting tool. This trick keeps you really close to your spending behaviour, instead of mindlessly looking at spending graphs after the fact. It gives you a chance to reevaluate with every transaction whether your everyday spending, or subscriptions, or other periodic spending is still needed, useful, and if cutting those costs might help you stay within budget, and maintaining your preferred quality of life.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#40

Post by bwb »

me_smith wrote: post #28
blakeburch wrote: post #13

I highly recommend LunchMoney ( https://lunchmoney.app/ ). It's built by a solo developer who is very responsive and continues to make the app great. Lots of automation and ability to create custom classification rules. I've been happy for the past 3 years. I've also heard good things about CoPilot ( https://copilot.money/ ) but have not had the chance to experiment with it yet.

LunchMoney is cool. When Mint shut down I tried several apps (LunchMoney, Copilot, and Monarch). Unfortunately, I couldn’t get LunchMoney to work with one of my credit unions. I reached out to them but they couldn’t really do anything about it. I wanted to support the solo dev but I ultimately chose Monarch because it just worked with all my accounts out of the box.

It has come a long way since then, small team now and it is rare that something is not supported.
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