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Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#31

Post by newscracker »

_l4jh wrote: post #16

The thing that really worked for me was I only ever buy in person with cash. I almost never use my debit card in person. This simple thing changed my relationship with what I buy. Obviously my mortgage and other monthly payments are direct debit but unless the purchase is several hundred Euros or more I will pay in cash. I always have €200 in cash on me which is enough to cover me at least a week. Then whatever I hav…

Tangentially related: ever since I read “In Praise of Cash” [1], I started doing as many transactions as possible in cash. I make sure I carry enough change in different denominations so that I can pay almost any amount without having to worry about inconveniencing the receiver for change. It may seem like a hassle to others, but I’m ok with this.

[1]: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is...

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#32

Post by newscracker »

Hackbraten wrote: post #22
_l4jh wrote: post #16

The thing that really worked for me was I only ever buy in person with cash. I almost never use my debit card in person. This simple thing changed my relationship with what I buy. Obviously my mortgage and other monthly payments are direct debit but unless the purchase is several hundred Euros or more I will pay in cash. I always have €200 in cash on me which is enough to cover me at least a week. Then whatever I hav…

How do you feel paying in cash helps compared to cards? I honestly don’t get it. For me, withdrawing and paying cash simply adds unnecessary complexity, and on top of that, it destroys any paper trail you may need for tracking your individual budgets. How come people (mostly in Germany, from my experience) are so obsessed with cash?

A different context and reasoning: this article inspired me to use cash (wherever possible) for different reasons — “In Praise of Cash”. [1]

[1]: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is...

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#33

Post by Aqueous »

building on submitters question: if y’all don’t want to give services like Personal Capital access to pull transactions in through apis, which often involves giving them your password (!) rather than properly giving them access through something like OAuth since many smaller (and even large) banks don’t offer it, what do you do? I still want the benefits of pulling down all transactions into a centralized location

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#34

Post by thatfrenchguy »

psv1 wrote: post #18

Important features of any good setup: - you consolidate your finances in the minimum number of accounts & cards - you have a couple of months of expenses as cash in a current or savings account - you pay off your credit card in full every month - you invest some amount every month - all of this is automated - paying bills, credit card repayments, investing, putting money in savings, all of it. Once you have these thi…

I've automated everything except paying bills and credit card payement: I like feeling that money going away.

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#35

Post by ianlevesque »

Aqueous wrote: post #33

building on submitters question: if y’all don’t want to give services like Personal Capital access to pull transactions in through apis, which often involves giving them your password (!) rather than properly giving them access through something like OAuth since many smaller (and even large) banks don’t offer it, what do you do? I still want the benefits of pulling down all transactions into a centralized location

I forget the article but someone had the genius idea of turning on email notifications for all their accounts and scraping the emails instead of dealing with aggregators.

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#36

Post by thoughtstheseus »

ttcbj wrote: post #19

We have a checking/savings account, and then various investment accounts at vanguard. All income goes to vanguard. Each year, we move our total budget for the year to checking. Then, we pay for all spending from checking. We can easily track whether our budget is on Pace at any given time. If we run out of money, we went over. (Technically, we subtract out year end expenses like property taxes to avoid a year End sur…

You should consider keeping the unused/not yet needed annual funds in a high yield savings and do monthly transfers, excess cash in a checking account adds up. Sounds like you have a good system regardless though!

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#37

Post by jlengrand »

bszupnick wrote: post #7
tra3 wrote: post #2

YNAB ( https://www.youneedabudget.com ) for budgeting and tracking spending. It forces you to pre-allocate your funds which ensures that you don't overspend unconsciously via credit cards. I've been very successful with it. > Anything that follows the "don't make me think" philosophy? I don't think that exists. YNAB requires pretty diligent tracking, but the payout (heh) is huge.

I second YNAB, but as you said, it requires diligent tracking especially for those of us living outside the US and can't hook their bank account into it. I happen to love the diligent tracking, though, and it's just part of my daily routine. Every time my wife or I charge a card or the money from the ATM, we log it in YNAB. Then every day I open my banking app and reconcile the charges with what we've input into YNAB…

I'm hoping the arrival of PSD2 in Europe early this year will finally mean we get apps that will be able to auto report as opposed to manual accounting like it has to be done today

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#39

Post by grecy »

Pay yourself first.

Setup an auto transaction to move a set amount into a savings account on payday - that way at the end of the pay period when you run out of money, you've already saved how much you wanted to. If you wait till the end of the pay period to save, there will never be any left.

My trick is to increase the amount going into savings every time - just a little. Eventually you'll find the point where you're saving the most you possibly can, and you might need to back it off just a touch.

This maximizes my savings to the point where I work for a couple of years, then I can take years off and drive around the world.

Rinse, repeat.

Re: Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

#40

Post by astura »

grecy wrote: post #39

Pay yourself first. Setup an auto transaction to move a set amount into a savings account on payday - that way at the end of the pay period when you run out of money, you've already saved how much you wanted to. If you wait till the end of the pay period to save, there will never be any left. My trick is to increase the amount going into savings every time - just a little. Eventually you'll find the point where you'r…

>Setup an auto transaction to move a set amount into a savings account on payday

Better yet, go to payroll and have them split your check, $x or x% in savings and the rest in checking. If you do it by percentage then your savings will grow in proportion to your income.

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