

Ask HN: How do you manage your finances? - cantlin

As a youngish guy with no significant assets financial management or planning has never been something I&#x27;ve invested in mentally. Increasingly though lack of visibility around where my money is coming from and going is becoming pretty frustrating.<p>What strategies have smart people adopted to accomplish some of the following:<p><pre><code>    * Monitor, graph and predict money I&#x2F;O.
    * Identify major cost areas.
    * Track and improve credit ratings.
    * Quantify potential for lending.
</code></pre>
I bank with HSBC in the UK, but I have no problem changing that. Having just had to resort to Javascript[0] to get a CSV output of my previous transactions this seems appealing. Is anyone doing modern UX design in online banking? Or are their other services out there to fill the gap?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;cantlin&#x2F;5798166
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mmcnickle
RBS in the UK provide an industry-standard XML dump for each of your accounts.
There are several online service that will take that file and categorise your
transactions and forecast your cashflow for you.
[https://www.mint.com](https://www.mint.com) is one such example.

I evaluated several a while back, but found them all to be lacking, especially
with respect to accurate cashflow[1] and budgeting[2]. I also wasn't very keen
for a company to have access to my financial data. I now have a homemade app
that uses the XML file to get the info I want out of the transactions and
display it how I want.

[1] Cashflow was generally not fine-grained enough for me, my account would
show as being fine over the month but there would in reality be days where it
would be overdrawn.

[2] Budgeting was very naive. Budget £200 for groceries, it would budget you
£200/days_in_month every day. Not very useful if you do a weekly shop.

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oaxacamatt
Keep a budget. For 2 or 3 months be fanatical about writing down everything
you buy and then analyze it. Ask yourself, 'what could I have saved on?' for
example, made lunch more often, buy 1-2 cd not 10, etc. etc. Then set a budget
from what you learned and monitor that.

Raise your credit score most effectively by buying something like a car or
home and paying it off RELIGOUSLY. Try VERY hard to not be late. Set up direct
payments thru your bank, etc.

Get One credit card (not just a debit card for your checking act.) and NEVER
be late with that either. By one thing a month to keep it active and pay it
off right away.

Shop around for stuff you want. Look all around compare and don't make those
impulse buys.

As much as I hate the credit spiral we all are in, you have to game it to your
advantage.

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waster
In addition to oaxacamatt's excellent advice, you can use Excel or create a
Google spreadsheet to track your expenses over the course of a month, or even
a week; make budget categories, write everything down, and then start by using
a week's or month's (or whatever period's) worth of data to formulate a target
budget.

Then create a budget-vs-actuals version of your spreadsheet. When you have a
periods worth of data, see if you need to adjust your budget (hopefully
downwards, but you don't want to be shooting for some unrealistic numbers, so
do adjust categories upwards if you need to do so to be realistic), and then
continue to compare periods of actuals-vs-budget.

I also find it motivating to keep a list of "Yay!" and "Boo!" items,
completely informally/separately from my spreadsheet. It's just a thing where
I can write down things like, "Yay! Brought my own coffee to work instead of
buying out" or other such little victories. The Yays can be more motivating to
me than the Boos, but it might help to track both to see where you think
you're breaking your own budget.

And this can all be adapted very easily to a work budget, startup or even an
established business.

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Trogdor0617
Gnucash is a delightful piece of software, comparable to Intuit's Quicken ...
but, naturally, Gnucash is free.

Keeping an eye on your budget and watching the graphs is _indispensable_ in
terms of helping you manage your money. After all, you can't make tweaks if
you don't know what's going on. Obviously you want to live below your means if
you want to be successful, and you want to trim categories that seem to be out
of control ... but this can only happen if you are proactively aware of where
your money is going.

I've heard it explained this way: "managed money goes farther". If you make a
budget (a plan, really) for your money, you're telling it where to go. If not,
it'll easily disappear through behaviors you're not aware of.

Many people have said that when they finally started budgeting and making a
plan for their money, it felt as though they got a raise. Of course, no new
money came in _because of_ the budgeting, but the act of making and following
a written plan led to far less waste, achieving the same effect.

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olaza
I was asking myself the same questions and ended up just writing an app - my
first one - that simulates your future financial I/O based on earnings and
spending etc. It's free:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codelemma....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codelemma.finances)

What the app does is it takes your income, expenses, savings and debts, and
generates tables and graphs showing future monthly cash-flow, savings, net
worth. Each element may be independently configured with rates, amounts,
durations etc.

It's my first app so I'd be very happy to hear feedback on usability,
usefulness, etc. Thank you.

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joshstrange
Mint is awesome and I really like my bank Simple
([https://Simple.com](https://Simple.com)). It makes it easy to set goals and
monitor your money. If anyone wants an invite you can email me I have 9 at the
time of writing this.

~~~
cantlin
Sadly neither Mint nor Simple are available in the UK.

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Sealy
I used to use a lot of budgeting tools like Microsoft Money. At the end of the
day I realized that they were all a waste of time. No amount of new bank
accounts helps you make more money.

Everybody has the same common goal of making more money. The only way to do
this is to earn more and/or spend less.

No amount of time spent budgeting, forecasting or plotting graphs helped me
earn more money. Maybe it would help you keep an eye on your spending. If you
are good at that, then there is no need. Spend your time setting up a startup
instead.

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hugovie
How about Money Lover App
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookmark.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookmark.money&hl=en))?
I have used it for a long time. It was good, but keeping spending info was
actually a challenge.

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Jeremy1026
Service to fill the gap in online banking - Mint.com

