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Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

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Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#291

Post by 8589934591 »

This looks really promising. My current challenge is that I use Ubuntu and my wife uses windows. We definitely need something cross platform. This in turn should help us to share data (version control maybe?) between ourselves, and input the data as and when we feel like it? I work in software dev but my wife doesn't. A simpler layman tech/commands is what she prefers.

Are there others who have faced this issue similar to mine? Did you use GnuCash or something else? I'm more of CLI but she's more GUI. So...

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#292

Post by seltzered_ »

BeetleB wrote: post #287
seltzered_ wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"each file is saved into a folder that corresponds to my account structure such as Asset:Current:Cash, Liability:Mortgage, Income:Salary, Expenses:Health:Dentist" Beancount user here, even if you don't bother with any finance tracking, organizing financial documents following the folder structure is useful - see "Filing Dcouments" in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e4Vz3wZB_8-ZcAwIFde8X5Cj... Shameless promos: -…

> People are starting to make Fava extensions for things like envelope budgeting I've been hearing about making extensions for envelope budgeting for years, with little progress. I haven't checked in the last 2 years though - any progress on this? To be frank, it was fairly annoying that the author kept declaring it as "not too hard" and yet no one came up with one.

Brian Ryall is working on one: https://github.com/bryall/fava-envelope

discussion: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beancount/RXvOvHHdse...

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#293

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#294

Post by BeetleB »

seltzered_ wrote: post #292
BeetleB wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are starting to make Fava extensions for things like envelope budgeting I've been hearing about making extensions for envelope budgeting for years, with little progress. I haven't checked in the last 2 years though - any progress on this? To be frank, it was fairly annoying that the author kept declaring it as "not too hard" and yet no one came up with one.

Brian Ryall is working on one: https://github.com/bryall/fava-envelope discussion: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beancount/RXvOvHHdse...

Thanks. Too soon to see if it will be workable. I'll stick to Ledger until this becomes mature.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#295

Post by jonjohn84 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #134
jonjohn84 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give the opposing opinion that YNAB's auto-import works well for me (I use it with a local credit union, 2 credit cards, and an online savings account). In fact, I used my own homebrew budgeting software for over a year before I found that YNAB exists and does everything I needed from my own software plus imports from banks automatically which was my biggest pain point with my own solution (it involved painful c…

They are using Plaid, and yeah, it varies wildly by bank. FWIW, I don't know that having a bank that doesn't play nice with Plaid is a deal-killer. There is a school of thought among many YNAB users that you should not use the auto-import, or even csv/ofx/whatever import, because manually entering transactions takes only a few minutes a day, and gives you much better awareness of your outflows. I can see some merit t…

Even with auto-import, you still have to "approve" each individual transaction that is imported, at which time you can assign it to a category (or approve the auto-suggested category). So that works for me in terms of being aware of spending on a regular basis. And if you manually enter some transactions as you spend, it automatically matches them up with your bank's version of those transactions as you import so you don't end up with duplicates. So it's okay to use it in a hybrid mode where you sometimes enter transactions manually and sometimes wait for them to show up automatically.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#296

Post by moises_silva »

Izkata wrote: post #290
moises_silva wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this and overall I still want to engage in better financial tracking. However, the obvious flip side of the coin is that if I need several hours a month to keep proper track of the budget to save a few hundred more a month it might not be worth it, as I value more what I do with that time and not worry about a budget. The problem of course is that once I start tracking in detail I may find…

Takes me about 20 minutes once a month to compare my bank's monthly PDF with my own records, and update anything I missed. One reason not mentioned so far is to identify payments I don't recognize, just in case someone got access to my account or a monthly charge suddenly tripled. So far nothing big (some things on Amazon change price by a few dollars up or down after putting in the order), but I always wince a littl…

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing. I do look (more than once a month probably) to cc statements for unexpected charges. I do not keep track however of how much I spent on categories such as subscriptions, clothing, groceries, take in, dining out, toys and then trying to come up with a budget for each and stick to it. That's more work than 20 min a month.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#297

Post by buzzkillington »

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. 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.

A coffee is $5 give or take.

If I have one every day that's $1,825 a year. If I splurge and have two every other day that's $2,737. That's a lot of money.

The simplest way to budget is to just give yourself a set amount of cash every morning and keep spending it until you run out. You get immediate feedback because you can see how many banknotes you have left.

Funnily enough I think that's the main reason why there's a war on cash.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#298

Post by raz32dust »

taftster wrote: post #121
raz32dust wrote: post #77

I've been using YNAB. I want to switch out because YNAB is too expensive. What I miss with open source alternatives is the mobile app. I don't like to link my bank accounts, so I enter expenses manually whenever I buy anything. The mobile app is critical for that to work.

YNAB can sometimes feel expensive. And while I could use an OSS solution like Gnucash or ledger, I don't have the time to deal with the tech support needed to be able to share my setup with my spouse. Likewise, we extremely value the mobile experience. To me, YNAB is cheap and well worth the money. You might want to try "Every Dollar" which is free and has a mobile experience. It's not open source, of course, but it…

Thing is, I have very limited usage. I don't really use or want the budgeting facilities. I just want a simple app to keep track of expenses. I even considered building my own little apk (I use android) which will just sync from mobile via dropbox (just like YNAB classic used to do).

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#299

Post by anitil »

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 hope my comment wasn't too insensitive to this issue.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#300

Post by anitil »

buzzkillington wrote: post #297
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…

>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. A coffee is $5 give or take. If I have one every day that's $1,825 a year. If I splurge and have two every other day that's $2,737. That's a lot of money. The simplest way to budget is…

Yes a coffee every day is worth tracking, my emphasis was more on 'here or there'. I would say any ongoing payment is probably worth tracking unless it's truly trivial
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