Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

After years of trying to find something that works for me I've finally found a stack that works. The big issue I had was that I wanted something that could import my bank statements. I found one of this issues here was that the bank transactions had no id's so I couldn't tag the duplicates. Then I found most banks allow you to export to ofx. This has ids and it has the balance at the end of the statement. So I could auto import and de-duplicate. I started to write my own thing but then I remembered something my boss taught me "Only write software as a last resort". Basically meaning most problems are already solved only write custom software if its really needed. So I looked around and found ledger autosync (I love this tool). Then I use hledger for my actual accounting. I rely heavily on automated transactions and virtual accounts to do an envelop style budget. But its been amazing. I've been thinking about documenting the work flow. If you are interested ask on this comment and I'll put something together.

Ledger likes are not for everyone. I'd actually say they not for most people, but I truly love the simplicity and flexibility. But I'd be using a text based email client if it wasn't for everyone sending html emails, so I'm a bit weird. That said having plain text files that you can manipulate is amazing. I don't know why but with Gnu-cash I was always unsure about using import tools and trashing my db. But with hledger I can try something and just roll back in mercurial if I don't like it. I'm sure I could have made copies of my Gnu-Cash files but I just feel more in control of hledger. Also hledger allows for things like automated transaction that simplify envelope budgeting.

With auto sync and hledger, I've gone from my budget taking 1 - 2 hours a week to 10 - 20mins. No more hunting for that one typo that meant my budget didn't balance with my bank balance.

Hledger has also been fantastic as far as help. I've jumped on IRC a few times for help and bug reports. The lead dev has been amazing. Fixing bugs the same day and offering help on using hledger.

There are some great resources here https://plaintextaccounting.org/

Auto sync is here https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync Hledger is here http://hledger.org/ How to do envelope budgeting with ledger likes https://frdmtoplay.com/envelope-budgeting-with-ledger/

People still use cash? I don’t think I’ve made a cash purchase in the last 5 years.

Start with double-entry accounting on paper, until you don't learn anything new going through the process. Then you'll be in a position to pick an automation system that works with your process.

You'll need two notebooks:

Start with a transaction journal, where you record your purchases -- amount, how you paid, what you bought, etc. For most things, this is as simple as taping the receipt in.

Your account book has one page per account (method of payment or expense category). Once a week, subtotal all the new transactions by account. Make sure the subtotals balance (sum(expenses) = sum(payments)), and add a line to the relevant page in your account book -- Dates of transactions covered (to crossreference with the journal), subtotal amount, running total.

> Then I found most banks allow you to export to ofx. This has ids and it has the balance at the end of the statement.

Watch out with that. Unless you verify the output format yourself for a few months, don't trust the exported ofx files. I haven't seen one bug-free yet, but I've found: wrong values if memo contains numbers, bad date format (minutes used for month), missing IDs, duplicated IDs, IDs generated with every download, dates changing after processing, and some others.

I processed ofx files from a few banks and in the end reverted to CSVs. They're less broken...

I total up my accounts every month, put it in a spreadsheet.