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Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

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Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#41

Post by anticorporate »

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 have the spreadsheet sync to my phone. I thought about a little form front end for it, but it's really not worth it for the amount of data points I collect ($today, $amount, $location).

Since I review my finances weekly, there's really no need for notifications. Habit is enough. My bank already sends me notifications for possible fraud (almost always incorrectly, but I suppose I'd rather it err in that direction than the other).

Simple works for me, but there are certainly some ways to add complexity to it if that's helpful to you.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#42

Post by withinboredom »

brudgers wrote: post #34

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.

I earn interest weekly. So I am earning money off the float.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#43

Post by withinboredom »

jppope wrote: post #33

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.

I built this. The card would halt the purchase if you were over budget. You could use a different pin if you wanted to override it. It turns out that this counted as “financial advice” in the legal sense. I ran away, as did any investors. It was cool though. I live in the EU now, so maybe the laws are different.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#44

Post by LeicaLatte »

I'm a spreadsheet pro, but I set up this budget stack — Actual Budget + SimpleFIN — for my spouse last week.

SimpleFIN is fast and a quick Plaid alternative for just $1.50 a month or $15 for the year. I created my SimpleFIN account, copied the API token, and added a bank account. Then I jumped back to Actual Budget, entered the API token, and linked the account from Actual to SimpleFIN. You can link as many bank, credit card accounts as you want with one SimpleFIN account.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#45

Post by brudgers »

withinboredom wrote: post #42
brudgers wrote: post #34

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.

I earn interest weekly. So I am earning money off the float.

Thanks for sharing, you’re not the OP, however.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#46

Post by hirvi74 »

mrngm wrote: post #38
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…

I've always entered data manually into budgets/expense trackers. I used YNAB for many years until I decided it wasn't worth the money. I was grandfathered into a cheap subscription price, but YNAB hiked the price for everyone a few years back, and I left.

I currently use a spreadsheet, and of course, I still do everything manually. I have basically no self-discipline and even poorer self-regulation, but somehow, I am able to enter transactions every day. If you stay on top of your transactions, it's not really that much time. I probably do not spend more than two minutes a day, if that even (about the same when I was using YNAB too).

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#47

Post by hirvi74 »

wbadart wrote: post #29
djhworld wrote: post #8

https://plaintextaccounting.org/ Quite a bit of a ramp up to get used to it, but no other tool outside of spreadsheets comes close to flexibility.

+1 While I don't think this approach meets OP's requirements (they seem to be looking for something a little more turn-key), I hope other readers of this thread will fall down this rabbit hole. I'm now in my 5th year of tracking every penny in and out of my life with hledger[0], with a mostly manual approach. Some benefits: - as noted by a spreadsheet user, it adds friction to spending money, which has curbed frivolo…

Only reason I stopped going down the PTA path was I always struggled to figure out a viable way to organize everything.

I tried one file per account, one file per account per month, multiple accounts in one file per month, and eventually everything in one massive file per year. No matter what I seemed to choose I always seemed to end up with just a complete mess.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#48

Post by johntash »

LeicaLatte wrote: post #44

I'm a spreadsheet pro, but I set up this budget stack — Actual Budget + SimpleFIN — for my spouse last week. SimpleFIN is fast and a quick Plaid alternative for just $1.50 a month or $15 for the year. I created my SimpleFIN account, copied the API token, and added a bank account. Then I jumped back to Actual Budget, entered the API token, and linked the account from Actual to SimpleFIN. You can link as many bank, cre…

I know you haven't been using it for long, but are you (or your wife) liking this setup? I don't like having to pay for SimpleFIN, but I'm thinking about doing it too.

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#49

Post by johntash »

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…

I think I have the opposite mindset. I prefer putting everything on credit cards because then I don't have to keep a receipt or remember exactly what I spent where if I go to multiple places in one day. Plus bills/online subscriptions/etc that aren't cash-friendly.

I'd like something like Privacy that creates temporary credit card numbers, but is also anonymous from the provider side. Sort of like buying a new visa gift card to use every month.

But I also like getting points to use while traveling

Re: Ask HN: Spending Tracking Tools

#50

Post by johntash »

yqiang wrote: post #18

I've tried a bunch, and while I'm reluctant to recommend a Quicken product, Quicken Simplifi is actually working out really well for my family and I. The UI is similar to Mint & it supports Apple Pay. I used to export all my data from Mint to a CSV for further cleanup/analysis, but the built-in tools in Simplifi are good enough now that I just do everything inside the app.

Is Simplifi basically just the new version of Mint? I hadn't seen it before you mentioned it
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