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Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#31

Post by hedora »

For a few months, I tracked checking balance in a spreadsheet and did my best to extrapolate out payments and paychecks for a month. The idea was to (1) have checking live paycheck to paycheck, and put the rest in investments (2) figure out what the actual household monthly budget is and (3) simulate “affordable” mortgage payments based on income.

In practice, I managed to retime some of the monthly payments, lowering the variance of the account balance substantially, which created another $5-10k to invest. I also trimmed about $1k from the monthly budget with no lifestyle changes.

For online services, I recommend personal capital’s free tier. It is what Mint should have become.

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#32

Post by BOOSTERHIDROGEN »

wruza wrote: post #16

Default notes app: 22/06 -0.2 morning -3 Jack +2 John tires -1.5 ? Then I parse it (perl) to standard accounting software, guessing analytics from these comments. No specialized app worked conveniently enough for me than just typing the event on new line.

mind to share the setup?

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#34

Post by krupan »

I started using gnucash again recently after a 10 year break. It has made some progress around ease of use and there is an android version of it now too. Still tedious though. I played with ledger and found it even more tedious.

Fava sure looks pretty, but I haven't tried it:

https://beancount.github.io/fava/

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#35

Post by leemuro »

hasperdi wrote: post #18

Here's a practical approach that have been working well for our family. Forget about recording your transactions, it is way too tedious. The solution: Use 'jars' for budgeting. Our jars are bank accounts. First we have a main bank account where money comes in. Set all recurring bills (eg. rent, utilities, phone) to direct debit from this account. Let's call this income account. Leave the debit card at home, don't use…

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but are there any particular banks/accounts you use for this method? I would want it to be very easy to open accounts online with no hassle if I were to use this approach.

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#37

Post by daleco »

I keep it easy by using mint (also good to track your net worth), set different alerts on each category. I have automatic transfers to savings accounts (investments, IRA, HSA, safety net...).

For sharing expenses with my other half, we are using Vermo for large items (rent...), we're not tracking minor things. We discussed about a shared credit card for common expenses (groceries...).

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#38

Post by bootsz »

leemuro wrote: post #35
hasperdi wrote: post #18

Here's a practical approach that have been working well for our family. Forget about recording your transactions, it is way too tedious. The solution: Use 'jars' for budgeting. Our jars are bank accounts. First we have a main bank account where money comes in. Set all recurring bills (eg. rent, utilities, phone) to direct debit from this account. Let's call this income account. Leave the debit card at home, don't use…

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but are there any particular banks/accounts you use for this method? I would want it to be very easy to open accounts online with no hassle if I were to use this approach.

CapitalOne 360 allows you to instantly open savings accounts and you can have many of them (not sure what the maximum is--it's high, I've had about 8 at once). That said I liked the bank a lot better when it was ING Direct before they got acquired.

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#39

Post by bootsz »

hasperdi wrote: post #18

Here's a practical approach that have been working well for our family. Forget about recording your transactions, it is way too tedious. The solution: Use 'jars' for budgeting. Our jars are bank accounts. First we have a main bank account where money comes in. Set all recurring bills (eg. rent, utilities, phone) to direct debit from this account. Let's call this income account. Leave the debit card at home, don't use…

I like this approach a lot and used it myself for years. But I found it kind of falls apart as soon as you want to start using credit though. It's great if you only use cash and debit cards.

Re: Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?

#40

Post by jforjuancho »

I was in the same position last year, here's what I did:

- First month: Downloaded YNAB; every day or two, I logged into my bank accounts and check all transactions, added transactions to YNAB (creating budget categories as necessary). By the end of the month, I had a budget (a very bad budget).

- Second month: Review all expenses of previous month and create upper bounds for budget categories (groceries, gas, going out money, books, etc.), removing "unnecessary" expenses (mostly monthly subscriptions). Wrote scrapper for fetching bank transactions.

- Third month: Review last month budget and adjust accordantly.

And that's it. Just keep it simple.

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