| I'm a big supporter for gnu ledger: https://www.ledger-cli.org/ If the itch you're trying to scratch is two parts "control" and one part "understanding", it's a scratcher like no other. Since everything is text-based, you can slowly automate all the boring parts, as soon as they become boring. At this stage, I have a scraper that downloads plaintext bank statements, payslips, and 401k transactions, a transformer script (mostly `awk`) that converts those csvs into ledger's format, a makefile that coordinates it all, and a git repository that all this crap lives in (raw data, processed data, ledgers, and code). I use this to track investments, settle debts among friends and roommates, keep track of tax deductions, and maintain a birds-eye statistical view of my accounts. I check in about once every 3 weeks, I'd guess. I spend maybe 1 hour updating the ledgers and balance-checking, and another hour iterating on some module or another. It's more work to maintain, but it's a labor of love, and I've learned a lot about accounting and programming along the way. It's like a meditation practice at this point. Plus, if in the future I ever want to start a business, I'm very confident that I'd be able to keep track of my own finances without needing to hire someone or pay for accounting software, at least for the first couple years. TLDR; vim + ledger + puppeteer + gnu utilities. |