Ask HN: Any nicer alternatives to Mint for personal budgeting? - newsisan
======
aeharding
Any chance you could check out my side project, Financier?

[https://financier.io](https://financier.io)

I just recently launched, so there might be rough edges. It's almost feature
complete, though. It's very similar to YNAB 4. It's $12/year with syncing. No
signup is required and no internet connection is required -- it syncs when you
have a connection. Mobile app to come!

I would really appreciate any feedback. :) For the next week, I'm giving out
the first year for free (just email hello@financier.io or PM me on reddit).

I have a recent Reddit post with more info here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/527wiv/ynab_alternati...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/527wiv/ynab_alternatives/d7ich7q)

Thank you! Alex

~~~
mod
That's an interesting subscription model. I'm curious how it'll turn out.

In the meantime, I wasn't sure what "sync" meant in the context of your app. I
had to read a lot of your page before I understood (even after reading this
post first).

I actually thought you meant syncing bank accounts or something similar.

~~~
ecubed
+1 for not understanding sync. Was also looking for a way to sync transactions
from bank account.

------
Jtsummers
What else have you used and what are you looking for? Specifically, can you
list features (essentials and nice-to-haves).

Do you want it browser based? Standalone - mobile, desktop, both?

Does it need auto-import of transactions from your financial institutions?

Do you need budgeting or accounting or both?

EDIT:

I've used Mint for a long time, I like them for tracking my accounts but never
quite got the hang of using it for budgeting.

I liked YNAB (standalone) for putting my inflow/outflow in terms of a monthly
view, and their general financial philosophy is really good for people trying
to get out from under debt (even small amounts) and move towards being more
financially stable. It's useful if for nothing other than that. Their reports
were also nice ways to view my money over time, to see where I could cutback
on spending to make room for savings or other planned spending. It doesn't do
auto-import, but does handle importing CSV files if you can download them from
your bank/cc company. Other pros, it works on mobile and desktop using dropbox
as the syncing mechanism. This is nice since that means syncing _isn 't_ tied
to YNAB (though does require Dropbox to continue operating, safe for a few
more years I imagine).

I tried their web version and was left dissatisfied. Lacked reporting, but
gained auto-imports. So tradeoffs, also cost $5/month (discounted if you pay
for the whole year).

I like ledger as an accounting tool, but I haven't got the hang of its
budgeting mechanism. It's a CLI tool, but uses a plaintext file for managing
your transactions. ledger-mode in emacs is solid, and it plays well with org-
mode. I won't say this is "nicer" than Mint. It is, however, a good bit more
powerful. It's a full-featured accounting system that's fairly approachable
for programmers (IMO). There are some variants like hledger which are mostly
compatible, but also offer some extra niceties like a self-hosted web
interface.

I tried GnuCash, but found its interface on OS X particularly unpleasant and
buggy so I didn't get far. More feature complete for accounting, I did setup
budgets and thought I'd like it. But, again, the glitchy interface on OS X
drove me away from it before I got far enough to really decide.

~~~
nbaksalyar

        > I tried their web version and was left dissatisfied. Lacked reporting
    

It's a shame that there is still no official reporting (9 months since the
release already!).

However, if you absolutely need it, there's a browser extension called Toolkit
for YNAB: [https://github.com/toolkit-for-ynab/toolkit-for-
ynab](https://github.com/toolkit-for-ynab/toolkit-for-ynab). Besides reports
it adds some more essential features like search.

------
vishalzone2002
We are working on building
[https://claritymoney.com/](https://claritymoney.com/) . Any mint user out
there should definitely check us out. We are funded by top investors and led
by a experienced founders. We are taking a serious and strategic approach
towards personal finance. We are accepting Beta sign ups currently but you can
find some helpful screenshots on the website. Hope this helps !! Let me know
if you have any more questions !!

------
mordocai
I like YNAB, and personally I like the SAAS version as I found having to sync
via dropbox annoying and I'm a linux user so having to run it in wine was also
annoying.

~~~
bananabill
Echoing everything stated here.

YNAB recently got the ability to automatically pull your bank transactions,
but I would actually recommend against this for a few reasons.

1\. This the same problem mint has, there's a delay on the order of DAYS a lot
of the time. Makes it hard to tell how much of a given category you have left.

2\. Actively recording expenses the second you spend the money is easy, and a
really good habit, because you'll be more in touch with where your money is
going, with fewer surprises.

------
afarrell
I've tried a few of them: GNUCash, YNAB, and BudgetSimple. Neither of them
were useful to me. What was useful was just every other week taking a half
hour with my wife and looking through our accounts and recent spending and
medium-term plans and just talking.

I fail to see the value in sorting my personal spending into categories,
especially when it means that I have to take a couple hours a week to either
manually enter each item or to correct the mislabeling.

------
kika
I just posted my this weekend project here :-)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490297)

But it's not "nicer" by any means, but much more private. Also, caters to
control freaks.

------
nvarsj
Another vote for YNAB! I've been using it for a few years now without regrets.
It works internationally as well :). I used mint for a while but found it
limited and buggy - it served mostly as an aggregate feed of my various
accounts in the U.S.

------
geoelectric
I'll join in with recommending YNAB, with a caveat that it's really an
opinionated methodology encoded into software, and the main benefit IMO is
from the methodology. A comparison might be OmniFocus vs. GTD.

I haven't used the newer web-based version enough yet to know whether you can
really roll your own system on top of it, but I suspect you'll find path of
least resistance is to do it their way. The good news there is that they
explain their way very well, with lots of supplementary material available.

------
j_s
YNAB has been recommended as more pro-active rather than monitoring Mint-
style.

They have transitioned to SaaS but it looks like you can still get v4 on
Steam.

------
pjbster
Have you considered getting by without a budgeting app? I used to go through
exactly this sort of mental exercise that evaluating and selecting the perfect
personal finance app would bring. It's like I could solve my financial
problems forever through the power of thought. That my ability to see where
the money was being spent was somehow impeded because I lacked the right
software.

In the end, there's only one rule that counts: spend less than you earn (or
earn more than you spend - either way, you need to have control over at least
one of these variables or you're totally fucked anyway).

Sorry to be so blunt. Of course, some people like the process of keeping on
top of statement reconciliation - hell, I used to be one of them. And there's
no doubt that watching your net worth increase will bring pleasure to your
day.

But it's easy to become obsessed. It's only now that I've surrendered the
"comfort" of knowing where my money went that I realise I was actually
stressed out all the time. These days, I'm a little more relaxed about things
- so long as we stick to normal spending patterns and don't splurge on
spontaneous things, we'll probably be ok.

In my case, I can live with this level of uncertainty. Ignorance is bliss, and
all that.

(I'll echo the other sentiments around here: YNAB was my favourite. I never
tried Mint.)

------
angei
I recently found a new personal finance app named Geltbox Money that
eliminates the need for third party aggregation services.

the user can aggregate his own data without exposing private data to any third
parties /web site.

This new technology enables the user to download his financial information
from any financial institution.

------
biagio3d
Try Fentury [https://www.fentury.com/](https://www.fentury.com/) You can link
your bank accounts, it has a browser version and a mobile app as well. I could
link my bank accounts and I'm from Romania - I can't do that with Mint.

------
elijahlofgren
I've used NeoBudget a virtual envelope budgeting system for years. You do have
to manually upload your bank transactions but I really like the visual virtual
envelope UI. [https://neobudget.com](https://neobudget.com)

------
Gelob
YNAB and I just heard of an app called moneylover

------
mixedCase
GnuCash.

------
dnh44
I really like YNAB

------
bbcbasic
YNAB 4. Not the cloud version because it has no transaction import (!)

Once they desupport YNAB4 maybe time for me to create OSS version ;-)

