Ask HN: What money management tool do you use?

11 points by bluepanda_ 12 years ago | 14 comments

And what are its advantages and disadvantages? I am looking for a tool that keep things simple, while doing what it does best.

smartician 12 years ago |

Not sure what exactly you mean by money management, but to have an overview of my finances, i.e. see all credit card, brokerage and checking accounts at once, and to track spending, mint.com is awesome. It saved me a fair amount of money once when I caught a credit card fee I was unaware of and missed on my statement, and I could call and cancel that service in time to get a full refund.

It's a bit unsettling to give all your financial account logins to a third party website, but I trust that a company like Intuit has decent security...

stevekemp 12 years ago |

I have a simple online application which allows me to enter my recurring expenses and salary payments.

That allows me to compare my bank balance on any given day to the "expected" total.

http://static.steve.org.uk/expenses/

I've no patience for writing down every transaction, and over here in the UK there is no mint-like service I'm aware of. (Though I'd probably be unwilling to share my bank login details with a third party anyway.)

bluepanda_ 12 years ago | |

It would be perfect if I could add one-time expense/income.

stevekemp 12 years ago | | |

Patches welcome!

More seriously if you could explain how you'd like to see it done I'd be happy to try adding it.

bluepanda_ 12 years ago |

Thanks for all the suggestions. To be more specific, my situation is that I'll be making $x this summer, in addition to making $y/month and spending $z/month. I need to visualize these data to determine whether I can afford to make that $x/k expense (i.e: expense that represents a part of x that is less than x) and still have a margin m, where m is defined as financial "safety". Sorry if it's confusing, but I hope it makes sense.

As smartician suggested, Mint is great to get an overview of one's finance, but it doesn't let me visualize the above amounts.

As ragatskynet suggested, spreadsheets are the most obvious choice, and the fact that I can "complicate them to the level [I] want" should allow me to plot the above amounts as I need, but I was trying to find a more elegant way to do this than using excel.

I will be looking into the other suggestions. stevekemp's seems to be just what I need.

zrail 12 years ago |

I use Ledger CLI[1] along with a bunch of custom reporting tools. Ledger uses a simple-to-use plain text format and runs queries with a command line program. I've been keeping my finances with it for six years, it's the only system I've ever been able to use consistently.

[1]: http://www.ledger-cli.org

bwr 12 years ago | |

Not related to finance, but for people who enjoy Ledger and need a calendar application, there is remind[1] which works a lot like Ledger. I just have remind run from my bashrc to print out my reminders at the top of every new terminal. It works great for me.

[1]: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind

ragatskynet 12 years ago |

Not sure if that is what you are asking, but I am tracking my personal things in an Excel table - you can complicate things to the level you want.

zensavona 12 years ago |

YNAB (You Need A Budget) is the only budgeting tool I've actually found useful personally.

mknappen 12 years ago |

Step 1: Stash a healthy % of all income into savings. Step 2: Live off the remainder.

strobe 12 years ago |

some time ago I used Gnucash, it's simple and effective tool but it's has not ideal UX

stevoo 12 years ago |

expensify i found to be usefull.