
Plainbudget: Minimalist Plain Text Budgeting - jgalvez
https://galvez.github.io/plainbudget/
======
iambateman
If you haven’t checked out YNAB.com, it’s my go-to for budgeting. I find it
useful because it has auto-import like mint, but with flexible categories.

There’s no way I’m going to enter in every transaction (not to mention the
dozen automatic subscriptions). To me, automatic import is a must. From there,
it does a fantastic job of helping me plan for next month and track spending
across time.

After 2 years, I have a clear sense of how much we spend on car repairs,
vacation, Christmas, etc.

Anyway, I’m not affiliated with them, I just enjoy the tool.

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jgalvez
I just realized something sad: the reason I never went through using any of
ledger-cli, YNAB and Mint etc is that I never really made enough money that it
got so complicated it wouldn't fit a single file (lol)

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pvinis
You have to start somewhere, right? :D Also, these tools are not for managing
your multi-millions. They are for making you aware about your spendings and
earnings, so you can plan better. The numbers are not important. The
percentages are, though. (Disclaimer, I am not using any of these tools in
their full potential, but I'm trying. I have used ledger mostly, and now I am
trying out ynab. I want me to get better with money management.)

~~~
infinite8s
Yeah, once you hit the multi-millions money management means a completely
different thing!

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txmjs
Really great project! Good work. Love seeing Nuxt in the wild too.

Reminds me of Numi[0], a really beautiful text calculator I've been using on
MacOS for a few years now.

[0] [http://numi.io/](http://numi.io/)

~~~
jgalvez
Woah, loved that app :) Lots of cool stuff that can be incorporated into
Plainbudget's "sheet syntax" over time. Thanks for sharing.

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vinceguidry
I have a hard time believing that any technological solution can really help
with budgeting. At the end of the day, it's about choosing how you want to
spend your money.

Either you know where your money is going or you don't. If you don't, then
maybe a few months of tracking expenses will tell you, but once you do, it
then becomes about the internal struggle of telling yourself not to spend
money you really shouldn't be spending, and this battle can't be fought with
an app.

Maybe if you made a ton of money and it didn't make personal sense to track it
all. I can see maybe a personal accounting app that involved actual people
logging into your bank accounts and actually looking at what you're spending
maybe being a thing, but that's called hiring an accountant and has been a
thing for centuries.

Difficult to see this problem yielding to any kind of tech solution. I say
this as somebody who maintained his own expense tracking app for months before
dumping it. Nowadays I just look at my bank statements if I'm confused.
Doesn't take long to find out what I need to know.

~~~
threatofrain
I'd be curious if insight helps in self control, but I don't think manual
entry is the right way to go either. However, I do think that in an age of
data vacuuming people do need some kind of automated solution that isn't
present on the market.

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miles_matthias
For me, none of these budgeting tools attempt to answer the one question I
think is the most common amongst people: "Do I have enough budget remaining in
this month to afford this purchase?"

That's harder than it seems. For example, if you're debating a purchase on the
10th of the month, there are a bunch of bills and other purchases you're going
to make the rest of the month (groceries, eating out, etc.) so you don't
really know how much is remaining that you have to spend.

I use a Google Sheet that has taken me years to iterate, which knows the
current date, tells me what expenses I'm going to incur over the rest of the
month, along with a column of estimated numbers I guess at (cost of groceries,
eating out, etc. for the rest of the month) and then tells me what my true
remaining balance is.

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mynameishere
If you have to ask that question then you are living on the razor's edge, and
therefore the answer is "no".

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maxerickson
Depends on how you budget. If the amount you are calculating on the 10th is
the amount you have left after fully funding your retirement accounts and
setting aside some long term savings, you aren't on the razors edge, you are
just checking to see if the purchase fits into your short term discretionary
budget.

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wenc
This is nice, but for budgets to be effective, they need to be across multiple
time periods.

Budgeting is like an optimization/monitoring problem with 2 objectives:

1\. monthly cash flow > 0 (don't ever let your cash situation go negative e.g.
credit-card debt)

2\. maximize(Year End final balance)

I have a Google Sheets doc that I've used for years where I have inflows and
outflows by month, and a year-end balance that is automatically calculated.
This lets me see what my projected cash status will be at the end of the year.

At every month, the cash flow (in - out) is calculated -- this prevents me
from going underwater at any given period.

Having a dynamically updating spreadsheet helps you to monitor those two
objective functions and make course-corrections.

It's simple, it's cloud-based and it's available on all devices.

~~~
asselinpaul
Could you possibly share it (with demo numbers)? Interested in setting it up
for myself.

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wenc
Sure. Here's a screenshot of a sample I mocked up (with fake numbers and fake
categories) [https://imgur.com/a/tJUcJE3](https://imgur.com/a/tJUcJE3)

I keep my eyes primarily on the monthly Running Balance line, and
specifically, the Year End Target (the rightmost item on that line). Those are
the KPIs (key performance indicators) that I monitor.

The calculations are fairly simple. The running balance Total Income - Total
Expenses + PrevRunningBal. (PrevRunningBal is 0 and excluded from the formula
in the first month).

Once-off Expenses is a category that's expanded out in the bottom so I have a
better sense of where I spend chunks of unbudgeted money. It's summed up in
the Expense item "Once off Expenses".

I also have a monthly buffer as a safety factor, in case I overspend.

As you can see I don't track expenses at the receipt level (too tedious), just
on the gross level (and only if it's above a certain amount -- I don't sweat a
$2 pack of gum).

For me this is a good balance between a too-loosy-goosey budget that is
useless and a too-detailed-budget that is tedious to keep up.

This is enough to keep me on track for the entire year, and I usually end up
with quite a bit of spare change at year end.

~~~
o_enix_o
One question - what do you do with the End-of-Month Reconciliation? Is that
something you fill in every month?

~~~
wenc
Yes. If my running balance doesn’t match actual cash in my bank account, I
just enter a correction and an in-line comment describing the cause of the
discrepancy. However often I find I’m usually in the right ball park (my
recurring expense patterns are very regular) so I rarely use that field.

Also I’m rarely off budget by a lot, partly because of the visibility this
tool provides. My feedback loops are tighter due to monitoring.

You can also do what-if scenarios pretty easily, e.g. can I afford a vacation
in Spain in a particular month without dipping under, how much of a raise do I
need to ask for to hit a target, etc. You can play around with timing and
amount.

A spreadsheet provides you with all the metaphors you need to do planning and
budgeting efficiently. It’s a solved problem. It’s really hard to beat.

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nyamada
are you familiar with this project?

[https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)

~~~
greenleafjacob
Also a fan of ledger. See
[http://plaintextaccounting.org](http://plaintextaccounting.org) for some more
details on its workflow.

~~~
kqr
I'm a huge fan of double entry accounting, regardless of vessel (I do it in
Google Sheets from time to time), even for the simplest things. Very flexible
and powerful, yet safe.

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kashyapc
Also in the same vein of plain text (command-line only): GNU `pem` (Personal
Expense Manager):

[https://www.gnu.org/software/pem/](https://www.gnu.org/software/pem/)

It's a single Perl script. Used this for my monthly expenses before I bought a
"smart phone" a few years ago. Since then I use a more crude method -- the
'Keep' utility on Android as an "expense manager". A note with tick boxes,
where each tick box denotes an expense entry, later do the math, I know it's
super inefficient, but I don't want to install yet another application).

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galfarragem
You don't need a budget, you need to feel in control of your finances and
knowing your net worth is the way to do it. Knowing that I spent $312.23 on
groceries is not.

If/when your net worth is too risky for you get more tight and try to improve
it every month. If/when you feel confortable with your number you can loosen
up. I started to track it in a spreadsheet every month. I loosen up to every
quarter. This is my new religion.

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wodenokoto
When I change one of the values in the Expense A group, the top expanse A
value doesn't change in the top group, which is sort of dissappointing. Is
this by design?

    
    
        + 1000 Salary
        -  700 Expense A
        -  200 Expense B
        -  100 Expense C
        =    0 
    
        =  800 Expense A
        -  300 Car payment
        -  150 Plane ticket x 2
        -  200 Utilities bill

~~~
jgalvez
There you go:

[https://galvez.github.io/plainbudget/?named-
groups](https://galvez.github.io/plainbudget/?named-groups)

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amerine
Feels like a mini calca. Nice, thanks!

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viiviiviivii
Neat!

