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

Actual is going open-source

actualbudget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 332 posts

Re: Actual is going open-source

#161

Post by rglullis »

Dig1t wrote: post #139
mellosouls wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set. The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows perhaps just a leeetle disconnect with the mainstream tech world

I grew up in the US, my parents are very blue collar, neither of them went to college, and they worked hard to give me and my sibling a decent childhood. I went to the cheapest college I could (a local university you've never heard of) to get a BS in Computer Science. I worked my ass off, grinding on interview studying, working internships and jumping companies whenever I could get a better offer. I'm about to turn 3…

You were born and raised in the US. That by itself is already a huge privilege.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#162

Post by daenz »

maccard wrote: post #158
daenz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are European engineers paid so low?

Despite a generally higher cost of living in Europe, salaries across the board are lower. A £100k salary in the UK puts you in the 96th percentile for example. It's not just engineers, it's everyone.

This is probably a controversial thing to say, but based on your and other comments in this thread, it seems like the social safety nets aren't worth the lower salaries. Or are they? It seems like non-Americans in this thread are unhappy that their ceilings are lower.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#163

Post by Ozzie_osman »

bern4444 wrote: post #60

There are a lot of tools like Actual (YNAB, Monarch, Mint, Aspire google sheet etc). All are focused on budgets and mostly managing cash accounts. I've always wanted an equivalent but for investments. I know you can sync investment accounts to some of these, but that only reports the balance generally. I'd love to have the equivalent for investment accounts that answer these questions: What is my sector exposure? How…

If you're interested in exploring full-time work around this, I'm on the Monarch team, and would love to chat. Most of us our personal finance geeks on some level and we've loved working on this together. Our investment sync is pretty primitive right now but we have a pretty big batch of work in the next few months around planning/goals/advice (which would include investments, debt paydown, etc).

You can find me on LinkedIn through my About link (or just apply on the website, we keep a close eye on applicants especially if they're interested in personal finance).

Re: Actual is going open-source

#164

Post by cstoner »

nerdjon wrote: post #89

I am curious, what do people use for budgeting? Mint seems like the most feature rich, but not only do I not want to support their parent company because of their Tax lobbying... but I don't trust them from a privacy standpoint (Considering its free). YNAB and Monarch both seem like really good options. But I have not looked into them much yet. I currently use Copilot (iOS only... really just iPhone, no iPad app). I…

I've been using YNAB since March 2014. I started doing manual entry with YNAB4 and was an early adopter of YNAB5.

I manage my own personal budget as well a joint budget for myself and my fiance.

Here's my takeaway:

* The YNAB model to budgeting is how I want all future budgeting tools I use to work. They call the framework "The Four Rules" (https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-four-rules/) and they are a very pragmatic way to think about budgeting.

* Specifically, I like to be able to have my budget cover multiple months into the future. I have fairly bursty and somewhat unpredictable income. I like to have a reserve of 6 months of expenses covered just to make sure that I can handle any ebb and flow of my income.

* I have successfully convinced my partner to use YNAB and they find it valuable. It really is super useful software that is pretty straight forward to use and that makes budgeting very quick and easy.

* Sharing budgets with a partner doesn't really work the way you'd want it to. You would need to share a single set of credentials, and there isn't really any fine grained access controls.

* YNAB has been raising their prices lately, and I think it's reasonable to assume that they are going to be raising them again in the future. I am not convinced that I, personally, am getting value out of the things they say they are improving. While I have a lot of my financial history with them, I'm definitely investigating competitors to see if they would fit my needs. So far, none have but I'm going to keep looking because honestly I'm not sure YNAB is worth $100/yr ($200/yr between my partner and I is fucking crazy).

Overall, would I recommend YNAB? Yeah, probably. I would bet that if you haven't been budgeting before and started using YNAB at the current price that you would probably make at least $100 worth of better financial decisions in the first year. But there's a huge asterisk next to the price.

I remember paying $30 for YNAB4 and being happy with it. They introduced the SaaS version that would sync to import your transactions at $50/yr and I remember thinking that was kinda pricy. You could always import the transactions from your bank by downloading the Quicken files, but I understand they need a subscription model to sustain an actual business around the product.

I am not convinced that the recent price hikes have been justified by an increase in the value of the product.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#165

Post by xtracto »

soneca wrote: post #156
mellosouls wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set. The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows perhaps just a leeetle disconnect with the mainstream tech world

I agree with you, but I appreciate that people on HN talk like this because then I am presented to this world of privileges. It shows to me that this world exists and I might benefit from it. That happened to me. Instead of anchoring myself to what Brazilian companies pay for developers, I focused on getting a remote job at a US company. One that would anchor themselves among their peers around SV, LA, NY. Now I earn…

Whitexican problems we call it here in Mexico: I'm in a similar position. 6 digit USD salary while living in Mexico. My problem is that I've been wanting to setup a business: real life like a gym, a store or similar.

The issue is that there's no way I'll get as much money as what I'm earning now... and I know building the business will require insurmountable efforts.

So I'm reduced to keep working in IT, wait until my good luck ends and hopefully be able to retire around 45

Re: Actual is going open-source

#166

Post by rglullis »

daenz wrote: post #162
maccard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite a generally higher cost of living in Europe, salaries across the board are lower. A £100k salary in the UK puts you in the 96th percentile for example. It's not just engineers, it's everyone.

This is probably a controversial thing to say, but based on your and other comments in this thread, it seems like the social safety nets aren't worth the lower salaries. Or are they? It seems like non-Americans in this thread are unhappy that their ceilings are lower.

The Welfare State is meant to be a stabilizing force to avoid social unrest and to guarantee that the elites can enjoy their power/status but at least not destroy the fabric of society completely. The Welfare State is not meant to be "worth it". You can not think of it as something that has a ROI, because it is not an investment. It is insurance.

With that said: my net salary may be less than half of my American counterpart, but my quality of life is certainly better here. At the moment, I would be more interested in getting "German" salaries but to be able to live in Southern Europe than to get US-salaries in Germany.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#167

Post by nerdjon »

bredren wrote: post #159
nerdjon wrote: post #89

I am curious, what do people use for budgeting? Mint seems like the most feature rich, but not only do I not want to support their parent company because of their Tax lobbying... but I don't trust them from a privacy standpoint (Considering its free). YNAB and Monarch both seem like really good options. But I have not looked into them much yet. I currently use Copilot (iOS only... really just iPhone, no iPad app). I…

Has anyone found a product that does a good job at consuming and unwinding transactions from an Apple Card? If I understand correctly, AC can’t be connected by Plaid, and You have to do manual export and upload of transaction data. If you use this for most of your expenses the payments from your checking account to pay off the card each month should also be recognized as such. I’ve tried managing this using Waveapps…

I think Mint announced a few weeks ago native support.

Unfortunately Copilot is the same where you have to do a manual export, which means you only see it at the end of the month. Making it not super useful for tracking your budget as the month goes on.

This has unfortunately lead to my Apple Card rarely being used. Which sucks.

I keep hoping that there is some sort of native data sharing built into iOS so I don't have to log into apple through something like Plaid

Re: Actual is going open-source

#169

Post by balls187 »

rglullis wrote: post #116
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen.

I've built and shipped my own apps independently. I have almost 20 years of professional experience in Web, some Machine Learning and Data Science. I also led teams distributed around the world. I also got into blockchain development in 2019 and now I am working on a slow-but-steadily-growing open source project [0] to make payments with crypto easier. I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) and I'm ye…

I'll take that deal.

Caveat, 200k would have to include bonuses, and not just base salary.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#170

Post by balls187 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #100
mellosouls wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set. The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows perhaps just a leeetle disconnect with the mainstream tech world

> Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set If we're talking about people talented enough to actually build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in any medium size city. For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not the norm according to any compensation data I've seen.

I'd phrase it slightly different--talented enough to build a small company that generates real revenue, vs building and shipping apps.
Post reply on HN