Plainbudget: Minimalist Plain Text Budgeting

Is it ridiculous that I have to pay money every month just to get my transactions in a useful format? Yes. But that isn't their fault, in my opinion.

They charge $7/mo and Netflix charges $11, while I personally get way more value from my $7 going to YNAB. :)

Personally I don't transaction import capabilities (nor could I have used it to be honest as they don't have support for German banks). Tracking my expenses as I make them is half the benefit of YNAB for me. Makes me acutely aware of how much I am spending and how much money I have left.

I have to manually go in and update my balance for investments once/month or so. They're set up to "track", but functionally do not.

I think this answer explaining your most common usage actually explains better what you've built and its (unstated) philosophy. What you've created is a "scratchpad for arithmetic" that parses the numbers in plain text.[1] (Or stated another way, a "freeform spreadsheet" without the row col gridlines.) You then choose to call that functionality "budgeting".

My lightbulb moment: This is why non-existent datetime data isn't "missing" in your tool because "math scratchpads" don't need dates. I also see why you see your tool as "simpler" than the other text-based accounting tool "ledger-cli". ledger-cli is definitely not a math scratchpad; it's based on transactions of debits/credits which is overkill for a scratchpad.

I understand it better now. If you want to call your text parser math scratchpad -- a "budgeting" tool, I won't quibble with that. However, a lot of other people think of "budgeting" as money planning with a time horizon beyond the boundaries of a scratchpad. My earlier comments were based on that wider expectation of "budgeting". I'm not saying a budget tool has to be as feature-heavy as Quicken or Mint but many people would need something with slightly more functionality than a math scratchpad.

[1] Your parsexxx() functions are not specific to the domain of money budgeting but for any numbers with text labels to be added/subtracted/multiplied: https://github.com/galvez/plainbudget/blob/master/src/pages/...

Most people have money allocated for specific categories when they budget, that doesn't mean they are living on the razors edge if they simply wanna know how much more they can spend while still adhering to their predefined budget!

A lot of people (including me) have savings as one or more line items on their budget.

My budget is super duper simple:

1) Put the bills money direct deposited into in one account - that is money for mortgage, streaming services, taxes, insurance, water, and electricity.

2) Put a predefined savings amount direct deposited into savings and investment accounts. This includes 401k deductions.

3) Put the remaining money into a third account and spend it all however I want. I'm on budget as long as I don't spend more than what's in this account.

Of course you should also have a third account for savings. :)

The other option is doing the same with credit cards, though you'd have to work backwards with credit cards. Basically, have a groceries credit card, a dining out credit card, etc. If you look at the balance you can see you have $200 in dining purchases this month and you budget is $250, so you have another night out budgeted for the month.

I looked over your site's examples and the conceptual primitives you have designed ("value groups", "cashflows", "expenses") do not seem to be powerful enough to manage "budgeting". Yes, you're deliberately trying to make it "simple" but text entries without date timestamps metadata for each transaction and without accounts/categories/buckets/tags will impede disciplined budgeting. Your (lack of) metadata primitives is too simple.

Based on your example, each "value group" doesn't seem much more than an isolated group of arithmetic operations which is similar to punching in some calculations on a desktop calculator[1]. E.g. one enters a few calculations which shows up on a paper tape, presses "C" to clear and punches another group of calculations, and presses "C" to clear, etc. Your text system has obvious advantage of "text labels" over the desktop calculator but it doesn't have enough metadata primitives (e.g. timestamps & tags) to produce budget forecasts, goal planning, savings schedules (e.g. college fund, vacation fund, retirement, contingency reserves for house repairs and car repairs, etc).

https://www.google.com/search?q=adding+machine&source=lnms&t...

I keep my eyes primarily on the monthly Running Balance line, and specifically, the Year End Target (the rightmost item on that line). Those are the KPIs (key performance indicators) that I monitor.

The calculations are fairly simple. The running balance Total Income - Total Expenses + PrevRunningBal. (PrevRunningBal is 0 and excluded from the formula in the first month).

Once-off Expenses is a category that's expanded out in the bottom so I have a better sense of where I spend chunks of unbudgeted money. It's summed up in the Expense item "Once off Expenses".

I also have a monthly buffer as a safety factor, in case I overspend.

As you can see I don't track expenses at the receipt level (too tedious), just on the gross level (and only if it's above a certain amount -- I don't sweat a $2 pack of gum).

For me this is a good balance between a too-loosy-goosey budget that is useless and a too-detailed-budget that is tedious to keep up.

This is enough to keep me on track for the entire year, and I usually end up with quite a bit of spare change at year end.

And the links from there are a pretty good start. Start with just basic asset tracking (checking, savings) and liability tracking (debt, CC) and get into the routine of it. Then you can add in your investments and other assets (car, home, stocks, foreign currency holdings, etc.). If you don't care about a slightly inaccurate history, just add the stocks later on at their present value, or go back and find your initial purchase dates and cost basis and let ledger calculate your present gain/loss.