Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

csun.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 323 posts

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#231

Post by TeMPOraL »

rakoo wrote: post #223
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #125

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh! I just want a bank account and to have that bank record my spending and let me download it, securely, and automatically. I mean the European Union has taken years to force, yes force banks to do this, and it is basically still broken. I don't want to spend this much effort on something so obviously solvable. It just offends me. Yes that is the right word. And, finally, none of this matt…

There are tons of third-party doing this for you, and I'll just cite one because it makes sense here: https://www.budgea.com/ . It's much like any other, except they're a commercial entity that was born out of an open source project called weboob ( https://weboob.org/ ). That project aims at getting information out of website without having to use websites' javascript or restrictive APIs; it's still browsing the web,…

Don't know about GP, but I don't want to touch any third party. Beyond data concerns, I haven't seen one that would provide me with necessary amount of control (which amounts to being able to run SELECTs against my finacial data and graph them how they like).

Thanks for the link to weboob project, I haven't seen that one. boobank looks much more like something I want to have, though I can't find anything on how it works - how are the banking modules implemented? In particular, are they accessing an API, or just scrapping the bank's page? The reason myself and others are pushing for consumer-open API access is because, while scrapping is something a competent programmer can do (+/- jumping through the increasingly arcane authorization hoops), it's technically against ToS, and I'm personally not willing to risk my bank thinking I'm trying to "hack" them.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#232

Post by mulmen »

I love the introduction to this post. It reads like an absurd GNU infomercial. Someone is dissatisfied with their current software? There must be a better way!

I imagine Richard Stallman himself rappelling down a sold rock face to spread the good word of GNU.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#233

Post by TeMPOraL »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #157
ahnick wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is commonly stated, but I found it relatively straightforward once I saw the extended accounting equation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_equation ) and knew every entry needed a corresponding entry to make the equation balance. Assets = Liabilities + Equity + (Income - Expenses) For some reason the (Income - Expenses) part gets left off in many introductory explanations of the accounting equation. I…

I agree this is important to understanding double-entry accounting. Keep in mind that the Income - Expenses gets elided because the Retained Earnings go towards Equity

I wish somebody did an explainer of all this, not just for dummies, but for us European dummies. I've approached this topic multiple times, and I always get confused by all these Liquidities, Equities, Accounts Payables, Accounts Receivables, Commodities, and how come any article trying to explain any of that starts talking about stock trading.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#234

Post by jamil7 »

johanlarsson wrote: post #87

A macOS and iOS alternative: https://hochgatterer.me/finances/macos/ > No data is stored on servers, except when you enable Cloud Sync to keep your data up-to-date on all your devices. In this case the data is stored encrypted on iCloud.

This looks really nice, thank you for sharing.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#235

Post by tendencydriven »

unglaublich wrote: post #210
tzs wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 0. Forget about tracking things down to the dollar, or even the tens of dollars. That level of precision is unnecessary. If a coffee here or there is going to break your budget, it's already broken and you need to go in to panic mode. I'd suggest considering using a separate payment method for those things, and only those things, that you just think are going to be just a little expense here or there that doesn't n…

My bank has this feature where the same card has two PIN codes. The PINs are coupled to different bank-accounts, the PIN determining which account will be charged. So groceries I pay with 111222, coffee-to-go with 333111... My bank does the rest. All easily analysable and exportable.

I've never heard of that being an option at any bank. Who are you with? Sounds really useful.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#236

Post by ketzu »

anitil wrote: post #140
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #125

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh! I just want a bank account and to have that bank record my spending and let me download it, securely, and automatically. I mean the European Union has taken years to force, yes force banks to do this, and it is basically still broken. I don't want to spend this much effort on something so obviously solvable. It just offends me. Yes that is the right word. And, finally, none of this matt…

I know you're not asking directly for advice, but if you'd be interested, I find the following is the easiest way of keeping a budget. 0. Forget about tracking things down to the dollar, or even the tens of dollars. That level of precision is unnecessary. If a coffee here or there is going to break your budget, it's already broken and you need to go in to panic mode. 1. Have a spreadsheet with vague monthly costs lik…

0. and 1. is exactly why I built myself a 'this-should-be-aspreadsheet' webapp to estimate my expenses to have a rough budget. I only update it once in a while and check if it's somewhat accurate. I'm quite happy with that approach.

Thanks for the ideas of 2-4!

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#237

Post by QuixoticQuibit »

jnfr wrote: post #168
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #125

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh! I just want a bank account and to have that bank record my spending and let me download it, securely, and automatically. I mean the European Union has taken years to force, yes force banks to do this, and it is basically still broken. I don't want to spend this much effort on something so obviously solvable. It just offends me. Yes that is the right word. And, finally, none of this matt…

What personal finance apps have you tried with budgeting? There are a few on the market, the most popular being YNAB and Mint. My personal opinion is that Mint tries to do too much while YNAB forces you into a rigid philosophy. I made Lunch Money ( https://lunchmoney.app ) as a potential happy medium between the two. If you end up trying it out, feel free to let me know what you think!

I’ve been meaning to get a sense of my day-to-day finances for a while now and I have to say that your site is great. Concise, answers all the obvious questions, and directly compares to the two most popular solutions on the market. Amazing work!

Q: Have you ever considered alternative payment schemes, e.g., student pricing, loyalty pricing (pay $X first year and then $Y for all subsequent years, Y < X)?

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#238

Post by 72deluxe »

mikekchar wrote: post #216
anitil wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're not asking directly for advice, but if you'd be interested, I find the following is the easiest way of keeping a budget. 0. Forget about tracking things down to the dollar, or even the tens of dollars. That level of precision is unnecessary. If a coffee here or there is going to break your budget, it's already broken and you need to go in to panic mode. 1. Have a spreadsheet with vague monthly costs lik…

> If a coffee here or there is going to break your budget, it's already broken and you need to go in to panic mode. I understand exactly what you are saying here, however, there have been several times in my life where buying a coffee here or there will break my budget. I know that's a level of poverty that most people on HN have never experienced before, but it's a reality for many people. You don't really ever want…

I think the old addage "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" really applies.

Some people don't seem to mind not really tracking their spending down to an extremely granular level (ie everything) because they make so much money that small outgoings on their bank account are worthless, or they have to dedicate their time to their family and can't be bothered to track it.

That seems odd to me because they could be paying for things they don't need, or odd subscriptions they really could live without. Small subscription services rely on you not noticing the "small" amounts, but many small items make a big item.

I think a spreadsheet to track everything is really helpful to ensure that you are only spending what you need to spend, particularly if you wish to simplify your lifestyle (work less!) and do your proposed lifestyle 2 (need less money to live).

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#239

Post by xupybd »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #125

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh! I just want a bank account and to have that bank record my spending and let me download it, securely, and automatically. I mean the European Union has taken years to force, yes force banks to do this, and it is basically still broken. I don't want to spend this much effort on something so obviously solvable. It just offends me. Yes that is the right word. And, finally, none of this matt…

I agree totally. The worst part is loyalty card companies have an easier time tracking my spending than I do.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#240

Post by quietbritishjim »

I was a bit flummoxed right at the first example. You bought something at a bakery, so the balance in your credit card increased? It's right there in the increased column. Surely it decreased to a larger negative number? (Credit card accounts are almost always negative, although mine occasionally goes slightly positive when I pay it off and round up to the next pound.)

And why are the columns different to the example shown later for the checking account (or current account, as we say here in the UK)? You've got "increase" and "decrease" vs "deposit" and "withdrawal". Obviously you're likely to use your credit card and checking account in substantially different ways, but surely the fundamentals of transferring money in and out is similar enough that they ought to look the same in your finance software?

Post reply on HN