Ask HN: How do you manage your financials?

cause i like to be alone

I'm not a frugal person, but I don't like debt. I use a Google Sheet that I wrote many years ago that tracks my income and recurring spend. All of my receipts go through Expensify. I also have another sheet that tracks my spend (from Expensify) against my income to make sure lifestyle inflation stays in check. For investing, I have a 401k and a IRA that I contribute way less to than I should

I don't track things too closely, and I'm thankful I don't have to. I automatically max out my 401k and IRA, and a good portion left after that goes into taxable brokerage accounts. The vast majority of investments are in no-load index funds; I set aside a bit as "play money" that I'm comfortable losing, and which I mostly invest in tech stocks.

My wife and I tend to spend about the same amount each month and there are rarely surprises. I check the statements before paying just to make sure no fraud went unnoticed, but I get emails for any charge over $50 so I usually catch things before that. My wife and I both allocate some of our own earnings for buying whatever we like without having to consult the other--I'm not paying for her clothes shopping, and she's not paying for my Steam library.

I think this works because we're both naturally frugal people. Saving isn't effortful for us, but rather is the default. Just this past weekend, I had to remind my wife that it probably wasn't worth the Herculean effort she was putting into repairing a piece of jewelry she got on AliExpress for $2. I am sure proper budgeting and other tools could help us eke out a bit more net worth, but only a bit. The marginal return of that activity would be low for us compared to those who tend more toward spending than saving.

I'm also running 55 UPRO/45 TMF in my Roth IRA, but I'd like to add a disclaimer here to note that leveraged risk parity strategies generally get their bonus from decreasing interest rates on the bond side and better risk adjusted returns from the diversification and rebalancing.

Whoever is implementing these strategies should also understand how daily rebalanced leveraged funds like UPRO and TMF work, rebalancing, and their tax implications in taxable vs non-taxable accounts.

These strategies generally perform well in up trending or downtrending markets vs. 100% stocks, but would not perform well in long term sideways markets(we haven't seen this in our history, but it could happen).

In periods of stagnant interest rates, the strategy experiences downside from from fees. NTSX will not be impacted by this as much as the fee for that ETF is 0.02%, but UPRO/TMF will lose 2% a year in these regimes.

In rising interest rate regimes, these strategies are even more impacted as rising interest rates will decrease the value on the bond side. If the federal interest rates are increasing during a period of stagflation, you will see very significant downside. What this strategy is doing is betting that the US won't run into a period of stagflation where both bond and stocks will drop at the same time. We are currently seeing a period of stagflation in Germany right now and if that were to happen here in the US, this investment strategy would perform poorly.

What I've posted is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information as investment, financial, or other advice.

Two tools: an annual budget spreadsheet and GNUCash.

The annual budget spreadsheet has a tab for every year, and every December I duplicate the tab and adjust for the coming year. It focuses on cash inflows (salary, equity grants, dividends) and outflows (expenses, taxes, investments). This is what I use to verify I can afford to max out 401ks and similar, as well as gifts/charity and maybe the occasional major purchase.

The other half of this equation is GNUCash. If the spreadsheet is a strategic plan, this is the tool I use to tactically manage cash flows and track assets on the ground. There are accounts for the typical double entry categories: income, expense, asset, liability, equity. It tracks in multiple currencies, including ticker symbols and custom currencies, and tracks conversion rates between symbols and my default currency. I have a variety of recurring transactions programmed in and created 90 days in advance, which is useful when paired with the 'minimum future balance' column -- if transferring money now would result in a future balance going negative (perhaps between a paycheck and rent being due or a CC being paid off), I can adjust.

What I don't yet have is a portfolio management layer. I have a few ideas in that space, but it gets complicated quickly with taxes.