41–50 of 70 posts
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My bank doesn't provide an API. So I just automated a headless browser to log into my account and download the statements.
Over 18,000 banks provide APIs, what bank do you use? Is it a small credit union?
Please consider adding a source for this when you have a moment.
> As an engineer, it is in my DNA to build things. However, it’s too easy to get stuck in the mindset that you have to build everything. This mentality often leads one stuck with a plethora of incomplete products that grew too complex to finish before losing interest. This. I can relate so much. I feel my instinct is always to roll-my-own because I can and, perhaps more importantly, because I'm not familiar with rele…
Definitely check out their templates, https://coda.io/templates
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Very few people in the US live in SF. For everyone else, it works a treat (I have a Chase account just for Zelle/Chase Pay transfers).
SF rent was just an example. There are many examples of needing to move money in amounts greater than $5,000 but less than $120,000. For example, I can't pay a contractor with Zelle because they almost always need more than $5,000. Yes, Zelle is a nice stopgap solution, except it is only supported by a few banks, and still has really low sending limits.
I've done something similar recently; but instead of grabbing data from my bank, I chose to enter data manually from receipts. This makes it work for both cash and debit payments, and doesn't need any maintenance for API breakage. I find doing this data entry calming, to be honest. I wrote about it here https://gkbrk.com/2019/04/plaintext-budgeting/
Very cool. Using email notifications to get transaction data is a nice hack. If you do find yourself wanting a more formal API, check out Plaid ( https://plaid.com/ ). I've never used it myself, but I believe the free plan is enough to get your personal transactions.
My bank doesn't provide an API. So I just automated a headless browser to log into my account and download the statements.
I admire how you've managed to do this easily (and avoid writing code for everything). But the fact that you have to do it shows how broken and lethargic banks have become. In the UK, they are starting to wake up. The new "challenger" banks which exist here all do this as a hygiene feature - see Monzo, Starling, Revolut. With Open Banking mandating open APIs for all banks, this will become the norm soon. The fact tha…
Banking in the US is utterly ridiculous. In Europe, if you need to move up to 100,000E in a day, you can do it with a few clicks or taps, and maybe a card reader that they already gave you. In the US, you have to use a wire transfer is you're moving more than about $4,000. And wires cost a lot of money. And they aren't even instant even though they are billed that way. I had to move some money from one account I own…
A couple of times I've moved between $17,000 and $40,000, and Chase sits on it for up to TEN DAYS before it will release received the funds.
Chase claims it's a federal regulation, but no one in the branch or on the phone can tell me which one.
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I prefer this, the finance is lost in the noise of other traffic and no creds to banks are shared unlike mint.
credentials are sent to the bank servers, and a token is stored on the mint servers, credentials are never shared _to mint_
1st item on their FAQ https://www.mint.com/how-mint-works/security
For anyone who wants to do things like double-entry accounting with transaction splits (e.g., properly encode an Amazon order for 5 different items from different expense categories, that're paid for by a mix of rewards points, Gift Card balance, and CC), there's GnuCash. You can also do things like record transactions yourself, update with downloaded data, and reconcile against monthly statements (as another way of…
Never really understood the need for double entry in the personal context.
With single-entry (where you just key in expenses for the month), it's easy to forget that cup of coffee you paid for in a rush. It doesn't matter with double-entry since you can always just check if your wallet tallies up.
I usually just classify variances under miscellaneous expenses if it's not a large amount, but sometimes I've found myself somehow "missing" a few hundred bucks which I then would start tracking down.
For anyone who wants to do things like double-entry accounting with transaction splits (e.g., properly encode an Amazon order for 5 different items from different expense categories, that're paid for by a mix of rewards points, Gift Card balance, and CC), there's GnuCash. You can also do things like record transactions yourself, update with downloaded data, and reconcile against monthly statements (as another way of…
Never really understood the need for double entry in the personal context.
It's not so much that it's personal or business that's the issue, I think. It's more the consequences for making a mistake. When I was very poor (but luckily not in debt) I had a good system for controlling my spending. I would take out X amount of money every Monday. I would try to have some left at the end of Sunday (a couple of hungry days helped me understand the importance of being conservative in my estimation).
That system works fine (and would even work fine in some kinds of businesses). However, what do you do when you find that no matter what you do, you can't seem to get to Sunday without running out of money? What if you can't figure out where it is going? Some kind of accounting will help you figure out what you are spending your money on.
Doing the accounting is fine and most of the time it's not a big deal if you make a mistake here or there. However if you are really pressed for cash (like you won't eat on the weekend if you make a mistake), it's probably not a bad idea to record your expenses in a way that allows you to detect mistakes. If your weekly transit pass is $50 and you accidentally record $5, you might conclude that you have $45 every week more than you actually have. You'll eventually figure it out, but it will mean more missed meals than you probably want to endure.
I like living a lifestyle where I make enough and spend little enough that I naturally have enough money. For me, that's my definition of "rich". After I got married, that state of affairs seems to have disappeared from my life ;-) Trying to reason about where the money is going is surprisingly tricky and double entry accounting has helped me make good conclusions without enduring stupid mistakes. Not necessary, of course, but still useful if you are the kind of person who likes fiddling.
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Not at all. The Single European Payment Area solves these issues without wasting a gargantuan amount of energy.
Isn't all the infrastructure, people employed, offices and everything needed to support something also a waste of energy if it can be replaced by some lines of code? Also with your energy wasting straw man remark i assume you are talking specifically about bitcoin which is just one of many cryptocurrencies and a lot of them aren't based on proof of work.