Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget • Hacker News Board

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#21

Post by zrail » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:06 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #17

I like the idea as a way to track daily averages, and I'm going to definitely try it for myself. But it doesn't help me with what causes my nose to be buried in Quicken every Sunday: bills don't get paid little by little daily. They come at fixed times in the month (or year). This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many clos…

YNAB has the concept of a "buffer", which is just the idea that you have enough in your checking account to pay for an entire month on the first of the month. That way, your bills come out of your buffer and your paychecks replenish it.

This is separate from the idea of an emergency or rainy day fund, which should be an additional 3-6 months expenses in an easy-to-access account, like a linked savings account.

I realize that if you're currently living paycheck-to-paycheck this can seem daunting. Definitely check out the video lessons on the YNAB site, and think about buying the software. There's probably a way to implement it in Quicken, but I have no idea.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/training-and-educatio...

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#22

Post by Amorymeltzer » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:09 AM UTC

bwang29 wrote: post #10

Also a fan of Civ5 and all turned based games. Another extra thought: In Civ you will know that building such Monument will take X turns or making some other technology progress will consume Y science points. I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to track when and how long someone will be able to afford something. It would be extra cool if this could factor in stock options you received in a company or any…

I do this in a little spreadsheet just for major items, one-off items — think plane tickets, hotels, wedding gifts, etc. A rough estimate of income and expenses per month gives me a good idea of "how long" those things cost. The extra time dimension is helpful when evaluating and considering other choices.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#23

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:16 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

ryandrake wrote: post #17

I like the idea as a way to track daily averages, and I'm going to definitely try it for myself. But it doesn't help me with what causes my nose to be buried in Quicken every Sunday: bills don't get paid little by little daily. They come at fixed times in the month (or year). This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many clos…

> This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many close calls where my paycheck is every two weeks but bills are monthly, and 2x2 weeks ≠ 1 month. A paycheck every two weeks can never give you less than two paychecks a month. It'll give you three paychecks in two out of twelve months. So the issue you describe could never cause…

$BIGBILL comes at a fixed day each month, but $PAYCHECK happens on a different day every two weeks. Some months, $BIGBILL comes right after $PAYCHECK, in which case you're safe. Other months, $BIGBILL comes right before $PAYCHECK which means you need to find some extra money to cover the period between the bill and your paycheck. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you always have to have these unsynchronized-cadences in the back of your mind.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#24

Post by zrail » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:21 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #23

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many close calls where my paycheck is every two weeks but bills are monthly, and 2x2 weeks ≠ 1 month. A paycheck every two weeks can never give you less than two paychecks a month. It'll give you three paychecks in two out of twelve months. So the issue you describe could never cause…

$BIGBILL comes at a fixed day each month, but $PAYCHECK happens on a different day every two weeks. Some months, $BIGBILL comes right after $PAYCHECK, in which case you're safe. Other months, $BIGBILL comes right before $PAYCHECK which means you need to find some extra money to cover the period between the bill and your paycheck. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you always have to have these unsynchronized-cade…

This sounds terrifying. It seems like you need a behavioral solution, not a technological solution. Spend a little less, cut where you can, and save until you have a buffer. Then you don't have to worry about paycheck timing.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#25

Post by swsieber » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:23 AM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #11

w4 wrote: post #8

This is absolutely fantastic. I'd pay for something that hooks into my bank account and spits out a daily number for me, no problem (especially since it doesn't suffer from the mess of housekeeping and categorizing that something like Mint does, which is my biggest complaint about that kind of software). If you don't build it, I'll probably wind up hacking it together for myself. :)

I think you're either going to use Mint or Yodlee for the API as they have partnerships with the major banks, while the banks themselves don't provide the APIs, I believe.

Or Plaid - I think partnered with Intuit (Mint) to get support for smaller banks. They have a very simple yet great api.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#26

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:28 AM UTC

zrail wrote: post #24

ryandrake wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$BIGBILL comes at a fixed day each month, but $PAYCHECK happens on a different day every two weeks. Some months, $BIGBILL comes right after $PAYCHECK, in which case you're safe. Other months, $BIGBILL comes right before $PAYCHECK which means you need to find some extra money to cover the period between the bill and your paycheck. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you always have to have these unsynchronized-cade…

This sounds terrifying. It seems like you need a behavioral solution, not a technological solution. Spend a little less, cut where you can, and save until you have a buffer. Then you don't have to worry about paycheck timing.

Welcome to the Bay Area.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#27

Post by jldugger » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:28 AM UTC

> I was tired of trying to assess how we were doing financially while our account balance was jumping around so dramatically month to month. I wished instead that money could come in and go out more consistently - like water draining from a faucet.

Congratulations, you've independently invented double entry accounting. Beware that applying it to PF is highly addictive ^_^

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#28

Post by Jtsummers » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:49 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #26

zrail wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds terrifying. It seems like you need a behavioral solution, not a technological solution. Spend a little less, cut where you can, and save until you have a buffer. Then you don't have to worry about paycheck timing.

Welcome to the Bay Area.

That's not just the Bay Area. That's living paycheck-to-paycheck, and it happens everywhere. Sometimes even to "wealthy" people, if they find themselves cash poor (money tied up in retirement, home equity or other property, or investments).

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#29

Post by chucksmash » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:49 AM UTC

This makes me really happy to see. For whatever reason analyzing finances is enjoyable in a Civ-ish way though I never would have made the connection.

A couple of things I've noticed as I've done something similar:

1) Categorizing the little things as you go along was way too tedious for me too - even in really stripped down form. I really like the idea of categorizing All The Things though. How I dealt with this was to download 90 representative days worth of credit card history into LibreOffice and remove all of the "still gets paid even if I'm cryogenically frozen" payments. I then manually categorize everything that is left (quick because the categorization is batched up and auto-complete works wonders), divide by 90 and generate a pivot table that shows the daily sum of each of the categories. Where I think we diverge though is that rather than trying to keep this snapshot up to date, I just make a mental note of it as "Okay, I average $XX/day on everything else".

As long as you know your starting CC balance then it's pretty easy to figure out how you are doing for the pay period. Just a matter of $start + $daily_cc * $days.

2) Kinda similar to the web app (in spirit if not functionality), I set up a little Python CLI tool that simulates my recurring expenses (along with my recurring $XX "all other crap" fund from above). Once you've set up the recurrence relations you can step through two weeks at a time, pausing to change state, transfer money, etc. It's basically like using a debugger which is an enjoyable way to test out various ideas you have that's a little bit more freeform than a spreadsheet where its hard to see how various ad hoc tweaks layer on top of one another over time.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#30

Post by brownbat » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:12 AM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #29

This makes me really happy to see. For whatever reason analyzing finances is enjoyable in a Civ-ish way though I never would have made the connection. A couple of things I've noticed as I've done something similar: 1) Categorizing the little things as you go along was way too tedious for me too - even in really stripped down form. I really like the idea of categorizing All The Things though. How I dealt with this was…

It's interesting, I religiously categorize everything in Mint, but now that I think about it, I basically never use those categories for anything.

Maybe I should just categorize everything as "spending" and get over it.

(I can imagine ways that granularity should be helpful, like if one area got out of control, or for tax reasons if I ran a business or had a HSA, but they've just never come up.)