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Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

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Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#251

Post by agapon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #220
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. Yes and no. Late last year I did track everything to the cent (well, to the grosz, the fractional part of Polish złoty) and used ledger (the CLI double-entry accounting tool) to analy…

I and wife have been tracking our expenses (and income) to a penny for more than 10 years now. It's easy when you don't have a lot of cash expenses and have a habit of entering them every night you make them. Dealing with card and other electronic transactions is even easier. Convenient software also helps a lot. We use KMyMoney, but there are many good choices.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#252

Post by chaos_a »

komali2 wrote: post #48

It's kinda fun to idly scroll through gnu's list of free software https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/GNU As far as I can tell, everything there was made simply because somebody out there thought it's important for a Free version of said software to exist. That's pretty cool. There's gnucash of course, but also a gnutrition calorie/macro/micro tracker, a flight simulator, some sort of comic saving software... the list goe…

There's even GNU Social, a decentralized version of twitter which is either dead or nearly dead.

That list also mentions GNU Health and GNU Med for hospitals. I'm curious as to whether they're actually used, and if so, who uses them.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#254

Post by kumaranvpl »

I have been using Monefy pro[0] android app for past 4 or 5 years to keep track of my expenses. I log in all my expenses and income in appropriate category. The main free version should be enough for most people but the pro version grants the ability to add custom categories. All the data is stored locally and it has the ability to export our expenses as csv to make reports. Also, Optional google drive and dropbox backup support is included.

P.S. I am not associated with this app. I am just a happy customer.

[0] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monefy.app...

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#255

Post by slavoingilizov »

julianeon wrote: post #179
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…

This reminds me of that Upton Sinclair quote: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.' I think banks benefit from a certain amount of sloppiness. Get hit by a finance charge here, accumulating unnecessary interest on a credit card there? Who cares! Let the bank handle it, don't worry, banking should be convenient... So despite endless paeans to cust…

You're overestimating banks abilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#256

Post by moises_silva »

72deluxe wrote: post #238
mikekchar wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think the old addage "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" really applies. Some people don't seem to mind not really tracking their spending down to an extremely granular level (ie everything) because they make so much money that small outgoings on their bank account are worthless, or they have to dedicate their time to their family and can't be bothered to track it. That seems odd to m…

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 out we're wasting much more than that :(

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#257

Post by slavoingilizov »

I've tried many different apps over the years. I was in the "manual entry is better" camp until I stopped due to friction several months later. The only app I've used which I haven't given up on is Emma (https://emma-app.com/). On it since beta and been doing that for more than 1year. It automatically pulls all your accounts, categorises spend and gives you analysis on what you can do to improve.

Many others promise that, but fail to deliver. Emma works for me, consistently. At the end of the day each of us manage our finances differently and the workflows have to be personalised. It's about finding the one that makes sense to you rather than "the best".

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#258

Post by bigbizisverywyz »

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…

Well, my swiss banks both provide a download in this format:

  CAMT.053: Bank to customer account statement. Detailed and structured payment data.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_20022
But quite what motivated them to move from their proprietary .csv they used to have I'm not sure.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#259

Post by andriosr »

I love the ideas from Ledger and GnuCash, so much that I even created a product inspired on them. I actually think many companies will benefit a lot from having such a simple way to control money movements, instead of having to use something like an ERP system.

The product is https://decimals.app, and the way I thought about bringing the simplicity to it was to wrap the API behind decimals and currency libraries already in use. If you want it for personal use, let me know, but it's something closer to LedgerCLI at this point, as it doesn't come with reports and other things from GnuCash.

I can sync all your data to an S3 bucket, so you would have all the data in the json format on your AWS account. As I use DynamoDB, it would be pretty straight forward to do. So, let me know what you thing and if you are interested in using a lib or REST API to create entries to a ledger, hit me up.

Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

#260

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

unglaublich wrote: post #210
tzs wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd suggest considering using a separate payment method for those things, and only those things, that you just think are going to be just a little expense here or there that doesn't n…

My bank has this feature where the same card has two PIN codes. The PINs are coupled to different bank-accounts, the PIN determining which account will be charged. So groceries I pay with 111222, coffee-to-go with 333111... My bank does the rest. All easily analysable and exportable.

What do you do if PIN pads are disabled due to COVID concerns and customers are only permitted to make contactless payments?
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