Comment by kassner

1 month ago

In the 2010s I had used virtually all existing Personal Finances software on the internet and ended up building my own [1] that I still maintain and use to this day.

A ton of software out there was too US-centric, sometimes not even supporting multi-currency, or the UI being terrible to a newcomer. I've recently tried Beancount, but it still didn't convince me to switch over, because:

1) Double-entry bookkeeping is about what happened, and I want the software to tell me what's coming up. I can still handle that in Beancount, but it's unaware of $CURRENT_DATE, making it labour intensive: if you post an expense for the next week, it will already deduct it from your balance, you'd have to post the item as a liability, and then later move the liability to an expense once it actually hit the bank account (and you have to do that manually);

2) I matured my personal finances by following the YNAB method, and I'm not sure how to apply that to DEBK;

3) I think most people use a Personal Finances software differently than me. I see discussions about importing transactions and monthly reconciling. I open it nearly daily to check what is coming up, and I post transactions as soon as they happen. I want to know how much clothing/groceries/restaurant budget I have left before I leave home;

Any tips on how to handle those things on Beancount/DEBK, or that's just not for me?