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Comment by iambateman | Hacker News Reader

If you haven’t checked out YNAB.com, it’s my go-to for budgeting. I find it useful because it has auto-import like mint, but with flexible categories.

There’s no way I’m going to enter in every transaction (not to mention the dozen automatic subscriptions). To me, automatic import is a must. From there, it does a fantastic job of helping me plan for next month and track spending across time.

After 2 years, I have a clear sense of how much we spend on car repairs, vacation, Christmas, etc.

Anyway, I’m not affiliated with them, I just enjoy the tool.

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I just realized something sad: the reason I never went through using any of ledger-cli, YNAB and Mint etc is that I never really made enough money that it got so complicated it wouldn't fit a single file (lol)

Living a life aiming for this simplicity seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

HA! Well your budgeting tool is nevertheless quite minimal and beautiful. Thx for sharing. ;)

You have to start somewhere, right? :D Also, these tools are not for managing your multi-millions. They are for making you aware about your spendings and earnings, so you can plan better. The numbers are not important. The percentages are, though. (Disclaimer, I am not using any of these tools in their full potential, but I'm trying. I have used ledger mostly, and now I am trying out ynab. I want me to get better with money management.)

Yeah, once you hit the multi-millions money management means a completely different thing!

You really don't need a lot of money to use something like YNAB. I have been using YNAB for nearly 5 years now, and it has in fact made me feel a lot richer! It puts you in full control over the money you actually have, and gets you into the habit of saving for the expenses you will have before they are actually due. That way spending the money doesn't feel like a burden and has no noticeable impact on your ability to pay for other things. Highly recommend checking it out irrespective of how much money you are making!

Create the habit of using powerful tools while it's easy! That way, you won't fail to do so later on when you have more money.

While YNAB is great, it's a shame they moved to a subscription based service.

I mostly agree, except that bank connection is a moving target and they pay a vendor to supply the connection logic.

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. :)

Who are they paying, out of curiosity?

Plaid[1] is only company I know of offering this sort of API. Maybe there are others, I wasn't able to find any from a quick google search. You can actually get a dev account (free with up to 100 bank accounts) and pull your own transaction data with it. I've been meaning to write a little tool to import from them into GnuCash.

[1] https://plaid.com/

I believe Yodlee also offers this type of API.

https://www.yodlee.com/products/

I happen to have been looking around at this earlier today.

I found an open source project named Firefly III[1], that uses an API called Spectre[2]. Same deal, free for a certain number of bank accounts, but looks like you need to contact them to set up your API access. Incidentally, I recently saw an iOS app that had been using the Spectre API as well.

[1] https://firefly-iii.org/ [2] https://www.saltedge.com/products/spectre

+1 Bank connections are absolutely a moving target. They are also human beings who have ongoing needs to survive and feed their own families, while dealing with customers who expect ongoing additional bug fixes and features to keep appearing in the product.

I can't even use the bank connections, so they aren't important to me.

I'm sticking with the classic version.

The x costs $y, and a costs $b, argument doesn't scale at all.

In Europe there will soon be a law called PSD2 which results in banks being obligated to provide an Api to access your bank account from external apps etc.

So no more paying for access to your own data...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive

Very interesting! The PSD2 directive has come into force on 13 January 2018, and Italy should have already passed a law last year, but I still know nothing about API possibilities.

Yea, in the Netherlands it was delayed to spring 2018 (which would be now.) But it's not active here yet either.

I read somewhere that they suspect banks are deliberately delaying this because payment data is worth a LOT of money. And banks will loose the "monopoly" on this data. There have already been raids here to investigate whether they are deliberately delaying.

Also, for example, PSD2 means external apps can make payments (if you permit), so basically your bank software can become 100% superfluous. So banks are afraid customers might "loose touch" with their brand.

Is it only Banks and not Payment processors? I mean knowing my banks money incoming and outgoing is kind of not much use. Since they don't ( or do they in EU ?) have any record of my Visa Credit / Debit Card spending data.

It is one reason I wish tools like Apple Pay should allow / had the option to retain those data for me personally only. And have the financials will work out all on my Phone and no where else. How much did I brought these and that, per month.

Of course they still charge the subscription in the uk where they don’t have automatic import with any bank I’ve tried, which is pretty crap. I really need to switch back to ynab4 or something else I guess.

I understand why they did it, but I am not at all a fan of it either. Still using YNAB4 (classic), and will continue using it until it stops working.

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 can't use the import capabilities, as they don't support the banks I use (I'm not American). I'm using YNAB4 too, and will never go to the subscription.

Same with TextExpander and other apps, I'll give up on them once they stop working—or even before that happens.

I've seen alternative that tries to stay free (https://www.everypocket.com/), but as I have no personal experience with YNAB, I can't tell how different it is or how many functions are missing. I still use Excel sheet

I really like the budgeting approach in YNAB, but the software could do with some more reporting capabilities, as well as being able to track investments and so on.

I've never found the 'perfect' piece of personal finance software that works for me. Some people say MS Money Sunset is the one true way but it sounds like a pain to get working on OSX.

Could never get on with the double entry approach in ledger or GNU cash, the workflow/approach just doesn't feel intuitive to me and I struggle with it.

Completely agree. Reporting in YNAB is a weakness, and investment tracking is downright silly.

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.

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