Ask HN: Personal finance tool / app for envelope budgeting
TL;DR I'm busy looking for a new budgeting / personal finance app to do envelope budgeting with and wondering what you use / can recommend.
I used to use Banktivity with no avail - it was buggy when it came to envelopes and on top of it didn't handle multiple currencies well either. Next I moved on to MoneyWiz (and is what I'm currently using) and unfortunately I'm finding similar issues. The app is extremely slow (5 → 10s per transfer) and I'm starting to notice more bugs & inconsistencies - currency conversions aren't consistent, deselected accounts' transactions randomly appearing etc.
Quite honestly, me an my SO spend more time trying to "have the numbers line up" rather than actually using our budget to our advantage.
Why is it so difficult to find a stable and reliable tool - especially in the personal finance sector?
In terms of functionality that I'm looking for, I don't think that I'm asking too much: - native envelope budgeting (with envelope convenience features would be even better e.g. transfers, easy distribution of money, calculations ...) - multi currency support (ideally with static currency override) - categories with at least 1 level for organizing - split transactions (across multiple categories) - tags (for a 3rd dimension of reporting) - MacOS (or webapp) + having an iOS app would be ideal - EU bank account sync would be fantastic - Custom reporting - the cherry on the top (for a web app) would be an API for me to tinker with (not required).
I've been having a look at YNAB and it looks very promising. It pretty much ticks all my boxes except for tagging and my bank is not supported for syncing.
I've also thought of building a spreadsheet myself, but just not convinced it's worth the maintenance & hassle + how easy it will be to implement the above. The idea of an SQLite db has also crossed my mind, but that might be a stretch for my skills.
Buckets is next on my list to evaluate (https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/)