[candiddevmike]

Or just start over on the day (or month) you decide to import.

As someone who wrote a budgeting app, historical data > 1 year is a lot less useful than most folks realize. I would say at least 80% of folks never look back further than 6 months. It's not even worthwhile for comparing YoY as your lifestyle, the economy, etc change so much.

I ended up adding per-transaction opt-out roll up functionality for this reason, effectively squashing transactions into monthly and yearly budget summary transaction. Saved a ton of space with little loss of granularity.

[NoboruWataya]

I agree that data much older than a year is less useful, but to me, historical data going back about a year is quite useful. The main time that my records are practically useful is when I need to file a tax return, which obviously requires a year's worth of data. Beyond that, I find it quite useful to track changes in spending, earning and investments over time.

[Spooky23]

Years ago when I helped people with random computer stuff (circa 2002), I had a client who’d run into trouble with Quicken because they had about 20 years of historical data.

It was so weird to me - they were paying me hundreds of dollars so that they could reference their water bill in 1987. I have my own irrational tendencies like this, of course, but still seemed weird.

[freddie_mercury]

This was one of YNAB's big "innovations" and wasn't even technical, just social: normalising "starting over" and not fetishing historical data.