Ask HN: How do you keep track of your personal finances? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you keep track of your personal finances?

14 pointslumannnn21 comments

I'm currently working on improving the way I keep track on my personal finances. So far, I export data from my bank account as a CSV and run it through a simple Python script which then crunches some number. This works pretty well and gives me a rough overview, but I tend to postpone the whole process and end up doing it way less than I'd like to.

I've have yet to try different tools, such as http://www.youneedabudget.com/ or https://www.mint.com/ (although, I might not be able to use the full potential. I'm from Europe and most tools/services I've found so far are based in and focused on the US) but I was wondering how you deal with keeping track on your finances? What tools, apps, systems, strategies do you use?

Thanks for your time in advance, have a great day!

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I haven't used it for personal finance, but ledger would probably cover your needs, and works from the CLI. You can keep your plain-text ledger file in version control etc. also.

- http://ledger-cli.org/

(There's also hledger that has a few extra features, but is largely compatible with ledger).

Im using YNAB - You Need A Budget. I can honestly say its changed my life. I would definitely recommend signing up for their 9 day email course. Ive been using it for about 5 months now and its made a huge difference to my life.

So do I. Currently, I use YNAB [1] - You Need A Budget 4 (desktop version). If you are a student you can propose free copy of YNAB and you can renew it as long as you're a student. Please, check this announcement http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/ynab-is-now-free-for...

[1]: http://youneedabudget.com/

An alternative to Mint is http://www.hellowallet.com which I like more.

But analyzing transactions in your accounts is all about looking at the past. You might consider focusing on the future instead. For example:

1. Plan how much you want to save for retirement, vacation, etc. and how much you'll need to pay bills

2. Set up some automatic transfers to save the money for #1

3. Have fun with the rest / invest

#1 is easier said than done. Financial advisors can charge US$2000 to create a good plan. We're building a tool now to automate what they do.

My primary bank account have some Internet/mobile banking features where you can see your current spending, some prediction till end of month.

It's just simple overview because I have more bank accounts (due to security reasons). Personally the best way how you can track your spending is to create own customized reporting system. It will require tune up at the beginning but it worth. At least you will learn how to think about entire process and your spendings, which information is valuable and which not. You will be able create some additional features (like spending categorization).

I have more personal "tracking tools" (spending, time tracking, writing, idea etc.) written in excel, some in power-shell, some of them in HTML and PHP.

Other point of view is your psychological attitude to money. If you are responsible with spending your head might be enough. From my experience, money invested to food, bills and mortgage are "sunk costs".

Detail mortgage tracking is different story. It is always good to know how much you can save with different payment attitude.

I do budgeting in Google Sheets and use Mint for historical reviews. I recently helped my gf go from minimal money management to proper budgeting, forecasting and tracking, so I learned from experience what steps can be helpful to take and in what order to help understand things.

I think if you earn less than or equal to what you spend, the most important information is where your money is going so you can be aware of what is happening. If you earn more than what you spend, you want the same thing plus an ability to save and invest in something and track that.

I would suggest starting with something manual (ie. Google Sheets) and then automating once you see how everything comes together. Do things that don't scale (ie. enter every transaction) until you feel more in control, and then automate with Mint or similar tool for European market.

I highly recommend manually tracking in spreadsheet in addition to whatever automated tool you use. You can start with a simple, date, merchant, thing, and amount columns.

I used to use a spreadsheet. Then came Mint, and I thought my days of manual work were over. But then I realized that now I was less careful with my money. I would check Mint daily, I would look at each transaction but by removing manual step of inputting amount spend, I sort of got immune to big or a lot of spendings.

Now in addition to Mint & Personal Capital, I also record each transaction almost daily. This way it is very hard to ignore multiple transactions in a row for dining out or buying junk etc.

Also if Mint goes away or they start charging you will still have your spreadsheet.

I'm using https://www.simple.com/, which is a debit card but really a PFM (personal finance manager). I have a ton of goals set up with automatic daily "savings" that move a small amount of money into my goals (ranging from "haircut next month" to "Portland trip"), and Simple calculates how much to move each day based on the amount I need and target date the money's needed. Pretty granular, and I feel pretty in control without any spreadsheets or charts.

In Brazil, there is a very cool app for that named as "Guia Bolso". You do not need to input data, it gets all the data from your bank account, generating reports and graphs about how you are spending/saving your money. The founders are former Mckinsey's consultants.

Unfortunately, one requires money to be able to keep track of it.

Someday. :(

What? I'm not being dickish, but can't you not see how your answer is a direct reflection of your reality?

Even more so, if you have less money you need to track it a lot more than those that do.

In my mind mostly. I keep track of the big pieces - the university debt, the stock portfolio, the bank account balance. On the day I get paid, I take out a chunk to repay debt, and take out a chunk to move to the portfolio, and whatever I have a left, it's a game of making it last. I keep a lookout every week on my expenses and make sure I have enough to last to payday.

For debts I use ReadyForZero.org and for the longest I did use Mint Bills aka Check aka Pageonce but Inuit has turned it into shit.

I still have a Mint account but rarely login to it.

#BugetFail

I used to use Xero's personal finances tool before they shut it down. I've started using Money Dashboard which seems pretty decent too.

I'm eating my own dog food and using the budgeting portion of the financial planning software I'm creating.

I do really like YNAB though.

Printed monthly calendar. My wife and I sit down on Thursday nights, eat Chinese and do the bills.

In my mind, but I would not mind a reminder to tell me I have to pay something today.

using an excel spreadsheet! google drive mostly

Yup, nothing like a good old fashion Spreadsheet. I've had one going since I was 17 (almost a decade!) and it's helped me pay for university.

I use moneylover, works well.

Tried many alternatives, from GNUCash to MS Money to various iOS apps to heavily smart/complex spreadsheets to solutions in the local Brazilian market (GuiaBolso and Organizze).

GuiaBolso is most of what I use today, beucase it works like Mint, auto sync with banks. In Brazil, Mint does not work and getting statements automatically is a major PITA, so much that GuiaBolso is a major, funded startup, relying mostly on the auto sync feature.

Even then it's a bit ugly, they likely use web scraping, you have to share your internet banking password with the app, and some banks go the extra mile to prevent scraping, such as requiring a one-time access token (time generated) each time you want even to check your balance.

Good thing is, in most major banks, your "internet banking" password is a read-only one, since you need a second auth step to move money in any kind of fashion (either by entering the plastic card PIN, or by authorizing with a QR code from a previously-authenticated smartphone)

Side note: Brazilian banks, if you're somehow reading this, please add some dead simple, read-only, API-like mechanism to let me (or apps) automatically download statements.

It also attempts to autocategorize your transactions using black box magic (likely by your own historical categorizations + heuristics or some degree of machine learning as a catch-all net), and it gets most things right (especially credit/debt card spending, where it gets like 90% right), so that's a good start.

While it has nice features, it still doesn't do all I want. In pretty much every solution I tried, there was always something that was not quite how I'd like it to be.

So I decided to roll my own - I scrape data from GuiaBolso to an sqlite database, mix it with manually entered data (which I grab from sources where GuiaBolso does not reach), and built some Python scripts to fit things into my own category structure (GuiaBolso does not allow subcategories), and crunch numbers for more sophisticated analysis.

I did this because while GB's graphs cover some basic needs, there were still things left unanswered - how much do I spend per day of the week? Per day of the month? Only in a certain category, to avoid odd transactions interfering with the analysis? Am I spending more in large purchases from time to time, or consistently?

There's no way GuiaBolso will offer all of this, and it also does not offer any kind of data export (I would guess that their current business model depends a lot on data lock-in).

I also ordered a NuBank credit card, a smart-ish credit card, where everything is done via app or otherwise digitally - spending tracking, payments, order details lookup, etc, which I plan to try over the next few weeks and maybe integrate into my workflow somehow.

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