After trying Mint, YNAB, Personal Capital, you name it, I could never settle on the one program to help me with my finances. Out of all of them, I liked YNAB for my needs the most, but the way...
After trying Mint, YNAB, Personal Capital, you name it, I could never settle on the one program to help me with my finances. Out of all of them, I liked YNAB for my needs the most, but the way it's set up is a bit confusing and not exactly what I'm looking for.
That's when I discovered plain text accounting with Ledger (and Ledger-likes like hledger and Beancount) in the command line. I wanted more control over my finances with manual input rather than automatically generated transactions pulled from my bank, and it does just that. It requires a bit of accounting knowledge, but you can always start with the basics and add more intricacy as time goes on and you learn more accounting principles.
Ledger uses a plain text document that you create and edit to interpret data and offers a wide array of tools for reports and visualizations. Hledger, the flavor I'm currently using, also provides a console and web interface and is written in Haskell rather than C++. I could go on and on about the benefits of keeping your finances in a single text file locally, but I'm still learning the ropes so it'd be best to just check out the site I've linked to learn more; it's got tons of resources and tutorials on plain text accounting.
Anyone here already use the command line for personal finances? How do you like it compared to things like Mint, YNAB, or even Quickbooks?
I used to use it a bunch, but while I didn't mind much of the classification work, the thing that I really needed to do any couldn't find the time for was automating the feed from my bank and...
I used to use it a bunch, but while I didn't mind much of the classification work, the thing that I really needed to do any couldn't find the time for was automating the feed from my bank and implementing some simple statistical learning for matching up recurring payments.
After trying Mint, YNAB, Personal Capital, you name it, I could never settle on the one program to help me with my finances. Out of all of them, I liked YNAB for my needs the most, but the way it's set up is a bit confusing and not exactly what I'm looking for.
That's when I discovered plain text accounting with Ledger (and Ledger-likes like hledger and Beancount) in the command line. I wanted more control over my finances with manual input rather than automatically generated transactions pulled from my bank, and it does just that. It requires a bit of accounting knowledge, but you can always start with the basics and add more intricacy as time goes on and you learn more accounting principles.
Ledger uses a plain text document that you create and edit to interpret data and offers a wide array of tools for reports and visualizations. Hledger, the flavor I'm currently using, also provides a console and web interface and is written in Haskell rather than C++. I could go on and on about the benefits of keeping your finances in a single text file locally, but I'm still learning the ropes so it'd be best to just check out the site I've linked to learn more; it's got tons of resources and tutorials on plain text accounting.
Anyone here already use the command line for personal finances? How do you like it compared to things like Mint, YNAB, or even Quickbooks?
I used to use it a bunch, but while I didn't mind much of the classification work, the thing that I really needed to do any couldn't find the time for was automating the feed from my bank and implementing some simple statistical learning for matching up recurring payments.
We have appreciate the effort that some people had to aggregate this amount of information in a single place/webpage.