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Ask HN: How do you manage your personal finances?

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Ask HN: How do you manage your personal finances?

#1

Post by wanobi »

I just graduated and I feel like managing and keeping track of my finances can be quite challenging. Most of the time, I wonder where my money has gone even though I "know" where I spend my money most of the time.

What kind of apps do you use to assist in managing your finances?

On another note, how do you even "learn" managing finances properly (i.e., spendings, banks, investments, etc). Using Excel does not work for me. I'm thinking of focusing my time on beancount. Feels pretty simple enough to use.

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

#2

Post by dgoraa »

Stopped using apps, and started using an excel spreadsheet. It isn't easiest thing to do, but the effort and granularity has really helped me to stay on top of things. Once a month I will log in and update the sheet. I use this template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kWHnihgmOHy6ZQ9K2oGW...

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

#4

Post by hot_gril »

What about Excel wasn't working for you? The one time I had to sit and figure this out for $130K of wedding expenses, I downloaded CC/debit CSVs from my banking site, loaded them into Excel, and categorized them there in a semi-automated way. Overall felt pretty efficient and accurate, only snag being a few cash payments I had to note down manually.

Other than that, I don't do anything more than watching my "total assets" value move up and down. If I ever need to retroactively assess things, I can do it in Excel again.

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

#5

Post by andrewf »

On your latter question https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/young_adult/ is pretty good.

I've never been great at tracking spending - what worked for me was just being strict about separating "spending money" from "savings money". I'd get paid $X into a savings account every month, my rent $Y would be drawn from that, and I'd transfer a $Z "monthly allowance" into a separate checking account. Credit card and everything else would come out of the checking account. I know I'm spending $Z every month. I know each month I'm accumulating $X - $Y - $Z in savings. I can adjust $Z however I like, make emergency transfers from savings to checking if I have to, and the transaction history for the savings account is easy to understand.

There are lots of ways to do it and it's important to find something that works for you. I know people who have big mortgages, with an expected windfall when they retire and trade their huge house for a smaller one, because they know it's the only way they'll save enough!

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

#6

Post by dangus »

YNAB (ynab.com). It's a kinda-pricey SaaS subscription (which the uber-nerds hate), syncs with banks/credit cards[1], and is a good solution on the web and mobile. I'd like to see it get enhanced with improvements faster, but it's still a good product.

[1] This functionality always costs money or a crazy amount of ads/spyware (like mint.com), but it's always worth it unless you just pay for everything with cash.

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

#7

Post by samelawrence »

I use Monarch. I pay a monthly fee for it, but it has zero ads, tracks all the accounts I care about, and gives me a simple interface for the "envelope method" on web and mobile. I've used Mint, YNAB, and several other tools. This is my favorite that I've found so far.

Link: https://www.monarchmoney.com/ Referral link: https://www.monarchmoney.com/referral/chszg37bgv

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

#9

Post by Larrikin »

I've recommended YNAB to everyone who has asked me what I do for tracking my finances. I've been using it for 5 years now. I balked at the idea of paying for it but at the end of the free trial I was hooked, it just helped so much. All but one person I recommended to ended up integrating it in to their lives as well

The idea of surprise charges is completely unknown to me. It takes a little setup initially, but it gets you into checking your finances briefly every day which makes sure you are briefly checking whether you are going over your budget. You wake up in the morning with your transactions from the previous day and it does a fantastic job of matching them to your categories in your budget.

Unlike other systems you can't budget money that you don't have, so you have to break up your budgeting on a schedule of when you get your paychecks. You get into the habit of budgeting for your debts, bills, and things you are saving up for and you get to see how much you have left over for everything else in your life. It tracks average spending per category as well.

It's fantastic for tracking spending and debt but it's meant for your daily finances. It's not great at tracking stocks, 401ks, etc. But it's not meant for that and doesn't try to be

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

#10

Post by wanobi »

hot_gril wrote: post #4

What about Excel wasn't working for you? The one time I had to sit and figure this out for $130K of wedding expenses, I downloaded CC/debit CSVs from my banking site, loaded them into Excel, and categorized them there in a semi-automated way. Overall felt pretty efficient and accurate, only snag being a few cash payments I had to note down manually. Other than that, I don't do anything more than watching my "total as…

I think excel is great for seldom use. But, it gets annoying (for me at least) to use for something that I need to edit everyday.

Also, don’t like MS Office (feels like bloat) and Google Sheets ( slow for me at times). I do use excel though for something that I don’t need to edit that often.

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