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PlainBudget – Minimalist Plain Text Budgeting

plainbudget.com

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Re: PlainBudget – Minimalist Plain Text Budgeting

#31
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that level of detail (specifying receipts to the article level) helps you get a grasp of your overall spending, nor do I expect it giving the "right advice". Suppose you buy a lot of healthy fresh fruit and vegetables, would you want that tool to suggest you reduce that spending?

the point is to group articles by category. a single visit to a supermarket may contain important and vanity items mixed together. i want to break that out and then categorize accordingly. i do want to know how much i am spending on candy or sugar drinks, or, if you are so inclined, cigarettes or alcohol. toys, gifts, school supplies are all different categories that are worth tracking. if you go shopping at places l…

I suppose a tool like Beancount (or (h)ledger, but I only have experience with beancount) and bean-web would fulfill your needs. The latter offers HTML reports per arbitrary subaccount, based on the data entered in the beancount file (which is plain text).

Re: PlainBudget – Minimalist Plain Text Budgeting

#32

I use Soulver with a file for each month’s expenses as well as a file for overall assets and liabilities. If you already have that app, it’s a great solution. It supports (global) variables and has natural language support. https://soulver.app/ It’s not plain text, but it feels like plain text.

This was my thought instantly. It looks like a worse Soulver with fewer features and not many benefits.

I am confused why you would want to bother with plaintext and go out of your way to use a limiting editor to do that.

Ah well the macOS utility app market is weird.

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