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I use beancount for text-based accounting (http://furius.ca/beancount/), and fava for budgeting and visualization (https://beancount.github.io/fava/). But the tech just isn't that important, as far as I'm concerned... What actually makes a difference for me is, every morning (except occasionally on weekends), I enter the previous day's transactions, balance my books, and commit the changes to a git repo. I think balancing daily is important: 1) Balancing accounts can be a massive pain, but when I do it every day, it generally takes me about 5 minutes (so maybe 2 hours a month), while balancing at the end of the month, even if it only takes the same 2 hours, is very tedious and I have no motivation to do it, so it doesn't get done. 2) I've caught multiple instances of fraud and the occasional bank error or paycheck error within 24 hours of their occurrence. Not strictly necessary, but helpful to get it sorted right away. 3) One of the best ways to remember things is to review the next day. I find I have a much better picture of my financial state, and how much I've been spending recently, when I'm taking 5 minutes to look at yesterday's numbers, every single day. |