Live data from Hacker News

Actual is going open-source

actualbudget.com

191–200 of 332 posts

Re: Actual is going open-source

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'll add the following: - it can not be a FAANG company, or any other company who makes their money by unethically exploiting consumerism, and/or advertising that abuses user privacy. These are non-negotiables. I want to sleep at night without thinking about how many people get screwed over for my benefit. - things like "flexible schedule" and "work-life balance" need to be more than just wishful thinking. I have…

Willing to relocate to the US? balasuar @ gmail dot com

No, I am not. We are talking about remote work here.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#192
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

You are not "reduced" to do that. You are making that choice, that's all. Nobody is forcing you. If you badly wanted to create a business, you'd just go ahead and do it.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Willing to relocate to the US? balasuar @ gmail dot com

No, I am not. We are talking about remote work here.

Fair enough.

> Also the cost of doing something so small can add up when you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy.

The point being relatively easy if you fit a specific criteria (don't need flexibility, want to work long hours, have a above average CV, can live near a major tech hub, have no problem working for FAANG etc).

Re: Actual is going open-source

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I totally regret it. There are ethical VCs that would be willing to invest a small amount and I should have done that. Bootstrapping isn't all it's cracked up to be; there are a lot better and smarter ways to kickstart a project.

but if you can't generate enough revenues to justify valuations you wouldn't go anywhere either. i guess it is better to find that out after raising millions and paying yourself a fat salary

It's in an established and competitive market. There's money flowing into companies doing this same thing. An investor throwing (some) capital at marketing and growth for this totally functional (and beautiful) product could have made sense.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

You are not "reduced" to do that. You are making that choice, that's all. Nobody is forcing you. If you badly wanted to create a business, you'd just go ahead and do it.

> > will require insurmountable efforts

regardless of whether or not you believe it's just "making that choice," completely discrediting somebody's claim the effort is insurmountable _to them_ makes you a breaker of Rule 1

Re: Actual is going open-source

#197
post #34

I've never heard of this, but it looks nice. Anyone can compare with firefly-iii?

It’s far less flexible of a system than firefly-iii.

That said it actually (lol) functions well with any amount of historical data. Firefly-iii slows to a crawl with just a few years of data.

Actual handles nearly a decade worth of data (imported from YNAB4) with ease.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YNAB drastically changed their pricing (double for "grandfathered" customers), but even more importantly American Express import has been broken for about 6 months now. That was the final straw.

We upgraded to SaaS YNAB and suffered through it for years, before dropping it in our house for the same reason. Syncing was broken for a really really long time. We finally reported it, and it was working the next time we checked. So, their monitoring (if it exists) is not doing its job whatsoever, and they’re relying on customer reports to find out about months-long outages. Not to mention the smaller sync outages…

> Syncing was broken for a really really long time. We finally reported it, and it was working the next time we checked.

Well they use Plaid, they aren't really responsible for syncing. Most competitor will also use Plaid and have the same issue sadly. Mine also stopped synced recently as my bank updated their website. It took a few weeks before it came back.

> So, their monitoring (if it exists) is not doing its job whatsoever,

Actually Plaid monitoring is quite good (for each bank you get the percent of failed queries), but how fast they react, well that's another ball game and I guess it depends on the amounts of users affected and the amount of works required to fix it.

I was considering working on my own opensource alternative to YNAB and that's why I looked a bit into Plaid. Now that Actual is open source, maybe I won't...

> I don’t treat a CC transaction any different from a cash transaction

Well they aren't different either... I treat both my cash and debit card transactions the same way I treat my credit cards transactions. I add them in their respective accounts and that's it (I only started adding them manually when my bank updated their website, it has gone better than I thought and decided to stay that way for now, never felt comfortable knowing Plaid had my banks credentials).

Maybe what you were confused with was the amounts shown on the Budget side? The credit cards categories act a tiny bit different than the actual categories. I know you said you had no interest in learning, but if you change your mind, I could try explaining how it works.

I guess an issue with credit cards is that it feel like it's actual money, but it's not. That doesn't goes well with zero based budgeting which depends on the fact that you already have the funds to pay for all your spending. You work with past money, not future one.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#199
post #34

I've never heard of this, but it looks nice. Anyone can compare with firefly-iii?

I've used both. firefly-iii is a fairly good, easy to maintain and host, web app. It's not as good design or UX as Actual - especially since firefly-iii has no mobile experience to speak of. Acutal had great mobile apps. firefly's budgeting interface is a bit of a UX mess.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise people work jobs as vital and stressful as that for a quarter of the money right? And that most people in the workforce don't get significant bonuses, and no shares. Software engineering is an absurd bubble.

Maybe the problem is not that tech is overpaid. Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough?

> Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and stressful are not being paid enough?

One possible reason for this is that in software the "means of production" is much more accessible, so it's easier for a group of developerss to go it alone than it is in many other professions. When tech salaries are compared to "small business owners" in general, it doesn't seem so out of whack.

Post reply on HN