bobblywobbles

This is why I wrote free, open-source budgeting software. All of the source is available on Github, and it is available on all OS-es.

https://github.com/reZach/my-budget

I'm tired of people being sneaky and selling all of our information and making billions off of us. Of course, we let them, but only because it's very confusing reading (and understanding) all the legal jargon.

(FYI - I'm actively developing this software, so if you have comments or wants, let me know and I can see if I can make it happen for you. Thanks friends of HackerNews).

As the author of a free open-source budgeting software, you yourself own all your data, nothing goes off your computer. Of course it's not as fully-fleshed out as Mint yet, but it's getting better every commit:

https://github.com/reZach/my-budget

Store pointers to data. Exactly how I try to remember things, it works very well.

Very excited about this. As someone who contributes to open source software, I'm excited for these changes.

Again, they can preach all they want and try to convert, but it's up to the individual. We can tell all the people we want to be good people, but its ultimately their decision.

So, to that end, let's ask ourselves - why don't we find churches interesting? Are they boring, are they full of ceremony? What's the point, we might ask? Do we have other "better" things to do? Do we not trust they are authority on morals, or do we not care about becoming more virtuous?

A church, or other "good community" doesn't make people better, this is an individual's decision. Of course, it attempts to make good in the world, but the people inside this community make the decision to be good or bad on their own.

I say this to protect churches and other good communities.

Yes, but that happens everywhere. It's very easy for us to point fingers at a group labeled as "good" and point out their flaws, when in fact these flaws exist everywhere.

Much easier to call out a group that is "good" that they are "bad", when in fact the "bad-ness" gets spread equally around people whether or not they are in this "good" community.

Are any of those free to use? Plaid has a free tier but it is limited. I will investigate the others.

I greatly struggled too, I didn't get it. For a long time, programming was very hard. But eventually I understood, and then was challenged again with new concepts. This keeps on happening and I continually learn and am challenged, but reading your post doesn't make me think you aren't a hard worker.

I think you are struggling with learning a language instead of learning how to think logically. Instead of learning a language, learn how to break up a complex requirement into discrete steps. An example --

I ask you to save inputted text into a text file called "file.txt". What are the steps you need to take (to write this in any language?) This comes with experience but I'll walk through it here:

1. Take in input from the user. 2. Write out input into file.

I don't know everything, so when I forget, I google this stuff. "How to take in input in C++". Okay, I understand what I need to code. Next, how to write a file "how to write a file in C++". Done. By combining these steps, I've accomplished my goal.

Basically, my whole experience has been following this pattern of taking a problem, breaking down it into individual parts, coding these individual parts, and coming up with the solution. However, with each step, you get into deeper detail. How do you take in input in C++? Well that's with cin, what's cin? Google C++ cin, ah okay. etc. As you program more, you start to memorize these steps, which lets you code faster and better quality. Instead of googling things, you remember that you have 2 steps you need to do to write out a file. Of course, working in different languages is basically the same, just different syntax for the same thing. I'd focus less on different languages and just one for the time being.

Take a read on a post I wrote up, I hope it's helpful: https://debugandrelease.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-become-b...

Their free tier is only 100 "imports". After that, you are looking to pay $500 USD/mo. for unlimited - which simply isn't an option for a free app.

Super interesting execution, I really like it!

I'd have to see if it has all the building/signing and packaging support as electron. Thanks for linking!

Author here of My Budget.

Yes, that is one of the things I'd like to reduce. I will be focusing on reducing the size of the app. The app you linked, looks nice too.

There is now a wiki page on how to use the app. There is a link in the "Help" menu while using My Budget that takes you to this page: https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/New-user's-guide.

I took a bunch of your suggestions in the latest version: https://rezach.github.io/my-budget/

It's mainly electron, but I'll look in the future to cut down the size.

(My Budget author here).

It's taken mostly from EveryDollar, or envelope-budgeting if that is a good analogy.

I would do the same.

Accessing your bank information is optional, and only works for Discover right now.

Noted, I will consider updating the text to something more formal. Others have said that because it is in lowercase, it isn't as trustworthy. Thanks

The data is encrypted using the Crypto library from Node (https://nodejs.org/api/crypto.html#crypto_crypto_createciphe...).

The passphrase and IV are used to encrypt/decrypt the data using the aes-256-cbc algorithm (https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/blob/master/app/crypto/c...).

Thanks for your input, and trying it out. I'm trying to continuously improve the software.

Author of My Budget.

I never thought of that.. it can be an option, although it wouldn't work if you ever lost internet. I'll consider it!

I'm working on creating reports, which would act on historical data. Forecasting is something I haven't yet thought about, or how that might work. Care to give me your thoughts here?

I'm the author of My Budget.

Author of My Budget here.

All good suggestions, thank you. Workflows and guides are what My Budget is lacking, as more core features are being built out. They are on my to-do for the app.

The unique features are: - It's offline (we aren't saving any information about your budget) - Your data can be optionally encrypted at-rest - Limited support to auto-sync your transactions from your bank

A typical workflow for version 3.0.0-beta+ is to add your sources of income. Then, add categories of transactions you have (by category and subcategory). Next, add transactions based upon your categories and subcategories.

Reports and other features like multi-currency/account/users are coming soon.

Author of My Budget.

These are all good things to have, several of them are already on my roadmap (https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features).

If you'd like to offer more suggestions, please come to the slack and talk to me "zachary" there, thanks! (https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg...)

Author of My Budget here.

Ah, thanks - I thought I improved it from earlier versions. What in specific do you not like about it? Specific things can help development further.

OFX is the API they use. You need specific credentials that can be found online. If a bank doesn't offer OFX support, you can use the tried-and-true method of web scraping the information out, which is what Quicken does as a last-resort.

Author of My Budget.

Sync is meant to sync transactions from your bank. Right now it has rudimentary screen scraping, and since I don't have infinite throughput, I wrote a way for others to create these methods for their own bank. Once it's working, I can add it into the app and others can use.

I'm trying to get OFX support, which is the much-requested "auto syncing" feature that everyone wants.

Author of My Budget.

I'm taking inspiration from YNAB, as it has a rich feature set. Also open source so that's a plus! Thanks!

Author of My Budget.

I'd like to incorporate reports, that is something that is in my roadmap. Are there other features of beancount or ledger cli that you'd like to see in My Budget?