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by skwee357 163 days ago
I have 14 years of personal (and 2 years of sole proprietorship) finance data in beancount. I tried all the available personal finance apps there are, from cloud/online offerings to offline apps. Eventually, I settled on beancount because it is the most versatile file format. In addition to tracking finances, I can track stocks, unvested RSU grants, vacation hours, and even personal training I have paid for but yet to use.

It's cumbersome at times, and I do miss the (G)UI of entering transactions, but with (neo)vim I got used to it and I breeze trough my finances in 15-20 minutes once a week.
3 comments
lloydatkinson 163 days ago
How US centric is the software? I've found that a lot of these accounting/finance type programs have very prescriptive ideas and expected usage of it that doesn't really seem to even remotely match the type of exported data I get from my UK bank account.
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lalitmaganti 163 days ago
The core software itself is completely agnostic to currency or country. Otoh the importer ecosystem is somewhat US focused but a) you can easily write importers yourself b) I just published importers for a bunch of UK institutions (e.g. HSBC, Barclays, AJ Bell) - see the other post hanging around the HN frontpage :)
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commandersaki 163 days ago
Do you manage your beancount files in version control? Or just keep free floating files around?

I'm intrigued by this and now thinking I should start doing it. Just start with a clean slate for 2026 and see how I go.

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skwee357 161 days ago
I have a git setup and I commit once a week, but don't currently push it anywhere. I do want to install a git server on my home server at some point, as I don't intend to push my financial data to any of the SaaS git offerings.
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altmanaltman 163 days ago
it's good (even novel) if you're a dev or are used to working with this kind of interface.

But for the vast majority of people (even including devs), this will not be ideal at all and most people don't really care about it being in text files.

What I'm trying to say is that its designed for a very specific niche userbase and I doubt most people will have the same experience as you described after trying every single personal finance app to settle on this.

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