Few years ago I created simple web application to track spendings
https://receipt.ifels.dev (code: https://github.com/subtle-byte/receipts)
It stores all info in your browser and allows to export it as json.
10 years of personal finances in plain text files
71–80 of 199 posts
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#72I've tried to track personal finances several times, but it only started to work when I've discovered the idea (from https://github.com/adept/full-fledged-hledger ) that you need to treat the whole PTA story more like a project compilation: - Everything is managed by build system that is able to track dependencies - Inputs from financial institutions are kept in the repo as is - Those inputs are converted by your scr…
The mortgage payments always confused me and that link has a good explanation of how it works. Have you used that code base in your own system or just the principles? I don’t know Haskell so not sure how much I can/need to modify.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#73This would be so valuable as a service.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#74Very good for a budget. And as a text file, they rot just about the same speed as the media. But what about basic Cost Of Goods Eaten? I have fading thermal tapes in boxes with grocery store purchases. They get scanned once a year into large PDFs: grocery, home goods, repairs (large purchases are kept separately for easier finding). I’m considering if a personal AI subscription to manage the data interrogation is wor…
paperless-ngx and their built-in OCR might help here for the data transformation.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#75A lot of people in this thread comingling "plain text" with "double entry". Beancount is both, but you can do either one or the other or both. In particular, you DONT need to learn double entry to do plain text accounting. Of course, you SHOULD learn double entry accounting because it's a great tool for organizing knowledge. Whether plain text is beneficial for accounting is less clear cut in my mind. I think plain t…
I think Accounting needs automation. Because manual tasks are error prone & Accuracy is a P0 requirement for finance.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#76I started decades ago using Quicken. Then had to re-enter all my data when a new version came out and support for the old version was EOLed. So I switched to GNU Cash and re-entered everything again. Then there were migration issues with GNU Cash.
Finally I discovered PTA. I chose hledger (because of possible performance issues with beancount). I learned double-entry bookkeeping (it's pretty simple, honestly). I write Python scripts to import investment statements sent in PDF format (broker does not support transaction downloads) and pay stubs (payroll company does not do transaction downloads) and CSV imports for bank and credit card statements which lets me autocategorize most transactions. Turns out it's exactly what I wanted all this time I just didn't know it.
I spend about an hour each month updating accounts. I generate investment reports, budget reports, and tax summaries. It's all there, except tracking the ACB of my investments (which I probably could do except a simple spreadsheet is less effort). Everything I need for my coming retirement this year.
And because it's plain text I will never have to lose everything when data formats change due to new upstream releases. And because it's plain text I can use git to track changes and recover and do better off-site backups.
I guess the downside is it doesn't work on your phone and you have to know what you're doing. But if information like how much money you have and where you're spending it is actually important, it's the right tool for the job.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's definitely something in it around there's a huge learning curve. Double entry book keeping isn't that difficult but that's easy to say once you've been doing it a while I've been doing PTA since around 2018 and there's definitely lessons I've learned along the way along with plenty of mistakes. I think the main benefit for me is just the system gives you a complete picture of your finances. The commer…
I have no experience w/ PTA, but was a Mint user for a couple years before it got killed, and recently discovered Monarch which has similar features. But just this week I got set up w/ eMoney thanks to a friend who works in wealth management. It provides a centralized dashboard (like Monarch), but also the ability to run forecasts / projections, which will be helpful as things have gotten more complicated for us as a…
As an ex-Mint user, Monarch has been a very useful and I feel I spend way less time monkeying around trying to recategorize transactions. I really like the budget rollover feature, it really helps smooth out things like yearly insurance renewals. My only fear is if they start getting greedy and jack up the yearly subscription fee. I feel like around $100/year is just about right.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#78My less obsessive personal finance workflow: I have a spreadsheet. I update it by hand once a month, and have been doing so for ~20 years. Takes about 5 minutes. I only track the categories I care about. Those have varied a bit over time, but have always included staples like power, heating, water, ISP, rent/mortgage, insurance, savings, etc. I don't track things like groceries or restaurants or anything else that I…
I'm also less obsessive than some people but I don't want to use anything proprietary or have to pay for a product to track my finances ("Hey you spend a lot, we can help, how about you spend more on us?" is just ridiculous).
I do everything with CSV exports of my bank accounts and credit cards. I drop the exports once a month into a directory and Python scripts (my newer versions of which are mostly written by LLMs) take all the analysis from there, breaking things down by category and by merchant (so that I can see if I'm unintentionally spending more on a particular merchant over time or if that merchant is charging more without notice).
I also have one credit card for strictly recurring expenses ONLY and never put non-recurring expenses on it. That way it's quite easy to see on that credit card bill what changed from month to month. If Comcrap tries to charge me $10 more one month they're going to be getting nasty messages from me pretty quickly.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#79My less obsessive personal finance workflow: I have a spreadsheet. I update it by hand once a month, and have been doing so for ~20 years. Takes about 5 minutes. I only track the categories I care about. Those have varied a bit over time, but have always included staples like power, heating, water, ISP, rent/mortgage, insurance, savings, etc. I don't track things like groceries or restaurants or anything else that I…
I do the same, except I track even a bit less. I track monthly all account balances, salary/income, paid taxes, transfers to investment accounts, rent/mortgage, and health insurance. This is enough to map investment performance, financial position, and necessary living costs. Mostly everything else is "a life lived" expense and I don't see a need to do any finer tracking there.
Re: 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
#80I began with PTA recently. I think the barrier to entry is high because you first need to learn double entry bookkeeping (if you haven't already) and then you need to decide between ledger-cli, hledger, or beancount, with the differentiators being on the margins and with some promise of being able to switch later. The choice really comes down to which tool has the documentation/community that makes the most sense to…
If you're running a business, double entry BK is essential. If you're doing personal finances it is completely overkill. I think the perfect tool is just excel or any similar spreadsheet, and track what matters for you. I usually add numbers weekly to my spreadsheet.