Two people. Eighteen accounts spanning checking, savings, credit cards, investments. Three currencies. Twenty minutes of work every week. One net worth number I actually trust. The payoff: A single, trustworthy net worth number growing over time. No app did exactly what I needed, so I built my own personal finance system using plain-text accounting principles and a powerful Python library called Beancount. This post shows you how I handle imports, investments, multi-currency, and a two-person view. How I got here It all started during the 2021 tax season. I had blocked out an entire weekend and was juggling statements, trying to compute capital gains, stressing about getting the numbers mixed up. “This is chaos”, I thought. “There must be a way to simplify this with automation”. Being a software engineer, I did what felt natural and hacked together a bunch of scripts on top of a database.
  • logging_strict@programming.dev
    1·
    25 days ago

    Surprised this post received no love.

    Well written. Presents an intriguing argument for plain text + git + grep + plugins over SQL databases.

    Too many possible paths to spend our time on and only one person, yourself, to do it.

    The only objection have is with what the OP considers to be an investment. Some things oddly missing:

    • cryptocurrencies

    • investments outside of the Wall Street gambling dens of declining purchasing power

    • precious metals

    • only interact with peers is settlement of tiny debts. No investment in their enterprises or community

    If everyone followed the OP’s pattern of investment, there would be no real economy.

    So the article is slightly cringe worthy; reads like propaganda for indoctrinating children.

    See that pretty chart going up, that is your total personal wealth losing purchasing power. Will wake up one day a trillionaire that can’t buy a loaf of bread.