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Ask HN: What is your financial “setup”?

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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by btrettel »

puranjay wrote: post #8

My setup wouldn't work for the majority of people, but I freelance and have set up a corporation. I pay myself a salary that's about 2x my rent. The rest of my funds stay locked in my business account. This forces me to limit spending. After paying rent, I only have about the same amount left over for personal expenses. Any money left over in my personal account at the end of the month is transferred into a mutual fu…

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this setup?

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

#43

Post by inetsee »

astura wrote: post #40
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.

As good as this idea is, I suspect that relatively few payroll departments are set up to provide this option, and most of them would resist going to the extra effort to provide it.

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

#44

Post by astura »

thoughtstheseus wrote: post #36
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!

Maybe.

Some checking accounts give high interest rates (rewards checking, Sofi, etc.). Plus there's fidelity cash management that acts exactly like a checking account but you can invest the funds in money market.

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

#45

Post by mping »

jlengrand wrote: post #37
bszupnick wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are some fintechs already paving the way and abstracting psd2 away. I just tried to log into my bank using tink (no affiliation) and it worked great.

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

#46

Post by astura »

inetsee wrote: post #43
astura wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

As good as this idea is, I suspect that relatively few payroll departments are set up to provide this option, and most of them would resist going to the extra effort to provide it.

What? All the major payroll processors/front ends (ADP, Paychex, PeopleSoft) support this "out of the box," no problem whatsoever.

Even when my employers was on paper forms for direct deposit there was always an option for multiple bank accounts.

I've never NOT had my paycheck deposited into a multiple accounts except for when I was a teenager at my first job.

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

#47

Post by jlengrand »

mping wrote: post #45
jlengrand wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are some fintechs already paving the way and abstracting psd2 away. I just tried to log into my bank using tink (no affiliation) and it worked great.

I'll have a look! Being a French guy in the Netherlands and with money spread over 4 different banks in several countries, bookkeeping really is a pain. I looked a few times in the past but support is notoriously lacking in NL.

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

#48

Post by bravura »

y4mi wrote: post #17
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 loved ynab4 and actually build a smallish webservice to duplicate it's functionality after it went SaaS. It sadly stopped working with the PSD2 regulation this fall. I'd definitely pay for it, if I could connect my bank account for automated imports. It's seriously silly that they still haven't come around to that. There are several platforms which let you access basically all banks in Europe. And these have been a…

Which platforms? Do they also work if you have an American bank AND a German bank?

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

#49

Post by y4mi »

bravura wrote: post #48
y4mi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved ynab4 and actually build a smallish webservice to duplicate it's functionality after it went SaaS. It sadly stopped working with the PSD2 regulation this fall. I'd definitely pay for it, if I could connect my bank account for automated imports. It's seriously silly that they still haven't come around to that. There are several platforms which let you access basically all banks in Europe. And these have been a…

Which platforms? Do they also work if you have an American bank AND a German bank?

> Do they also work if you have an American bank AND a German bank?

why would that even matter? its not rocket science to add more integrations. especially in an asynchronous process like fetching bank transfers. you got all the time in the world.

heck, why would you even want that? if you have a singular provider which gives you access to all banking logic, you're entirely at their mercy. they can just put whatever price they want on their service and you'd have to shell it out.

> Which platforms?

plaid to point out the most obvious. there are a lot since PSD2 came into effect though. that regulation isn't german btw. your comment makes it sounds like it is. and before PSD2, there were other providers that supported all banks in europe for example, and again: there is no reason not to add several integrations.

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

#50

Post by Rondom »

samoa42 wrote: post #21
aliceryhl wrote: post #12

I mostly just have two accounts: a private and a shared account. The shared account is very simple: Every month me and my boyfriend tops it up to 5000 USD, we have a debit card to it each, and all shared expenses including rent come out of this account. By topping it off to a high number like this, we ensure we wont run out within a month, and we just use the debit card for things we need. For my private stuff I have…

> but I'm a poor student with savings, a personal and a additional 5k usd checking account... sry to burst your bubble but thats called wealthy for most ppl on earth.

5000 USD seems high to me as well for a student and you don't know what his girlfiend does. It does not really matter how high that amount as long it can cover unexpected expenses.

When I was a student, I made sure I always had at least 1000 EUR on my account, basically treating the 1000 as 0. I cannot remember ever running into debt this way.

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