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by R_Spaghetti 255 days ago
In red on your site: > Other Finance Apps: > Risk of sharing personal data with third parties In green: > Write-It-Down.com > Built on Google Sheets

I agree that putting your personal data into a free Google account indeed isn't a risk of sharing it with third parties. It is a guarantee.

2 comments

[I have no personal involvement to this project, but I'll defend it anyway. And I am sure you knew what they meant, but still chose to write a pedantic comment]

If you use Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube etc, you already share a lot with Google; this spreadsheet is unlikely to make any different. If have managed to de-Google your life, good for you. Don't use this product either.

Other finance apps (I used to use mint.com before they shut down) require direct connections with your bank and investment accounts, generally via Plaid or Yodlee, and sometimes directly. This product avoids all that.

Now I personally don't think it's useful to me, since there are just too many expenses to keep track of, and doing it manually is too much work for me to even attempt. But privacy to Google would be pretty low on my list of concerns when using a spreadsheet.

How many expenses do you really have on a daily basis that they are too much to track? I don't like a spreadsheet for this since they have bad input UX on phones. I use a custom app I built and even though it is manual I don't really feel it since I have optimized the UX for n=1 and it just becomes a habit. I tried all these other automatic tracking apps like monarch money,mint,YNAB et al but they are just not real-time enough for me and don't keep me in touch as much, also the obvious data lock. Maybe I'll make it public someday but I haven't mostly because the common sentiment online is 'manual tracking is too much work' when it really isn't if you do it as you go vs all at once at the end of month etc.
Any meals/coffee/drinks outside, streaming subscriptions, gaming purchases, shopping, groceries, child activities, home services, mobile, gas + ev charging, home utilities, occasional cleaners, charity, hotels/flights, ubers....and there are probably things that I am missing.

Feels like a lot of work to me to track everything. And it's impossible to ask my partner to do the same.

Agreed, I’d pay for an Excel or LibreOffice Sheets version of this
I might just make one then :D
If you do, and you remember this comment, let me know :)