Best App for Budgeting? • Hacker News Board

Re: Best App for Budgeting?

#11

Post by syncbehind » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #10

syncbehind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can...you elaborate on this?

Mint and others used to (still do? I haven't used any of these things in over a decade) take your username/password and sometimes even security questions and then use screen scraping to get transactions and balances and such. This was (is?) because many banks and CC companies didn't have proper APIs or access tokens that could offer limited access. The result was that Mint and others could, in theory, initiate transa…

Oh wow, no idea. But that's definitely a big red flag.

Re: Best App for Budgeting?

#12

Post by v1l » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

I don't "budget" in the traditional sense of the word. Tried using these apps for a long time and they are either too complex or don't give me what I want.

I look at income and spend post-facto by once-a-month pulling in statements from my bank, card, and any other spend accounts (like venmo). I wrote a simple app to analyze this on a month-to-month basis.

Re: Best App for Budgeting?

#13

Post by foxandmouse » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

syncbehind wrote: post #11

Jtsummers wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mint and others used to (still do? I haven't used any of these things in over a decade) take your username/password and sometimes even security questions and then use screen scraping to get transactions and balances and such. This was (is?) because many banks and CC companies didn't have proper APIs or access tokens that could offer limited access. The result was that Mint and others could, in theory, initiate transa…

Oh wow, no idea. But that's definitely a big red flag.

Same, I was shocked when I found out, I only registered for mint recently and there was no warning in the sign up process.