
Ask HN: How do you track your personal expenses? - cactusface
My girlfriend tracks our expenses for each month on a piece of paper as follows:<p><pre><code>  amount, location, category, date, payment method
  $50, Whole Foods, food, May 19th, MasterCard
  $19, taxi, transportation, May 23rd, Visa
</code></pre>
At the end of the month, she adds up the amounts for different categories and payment methods.  It&#x27;s a bit of a chore to do it manually.  I know how to process this with a text file, but I&#x27;m wondering if there are any good iPhone apps that will do this.  Failing that, a simple browser or cross-platform desktop app.  There must be something but I have no idea where to begin.  I don&#x27;t really want anything more complicated than what I&#x27;ve described.  Quicken or whatever the heck is too complicated, I would rather try and hack something into Excel.
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i0nutzb
I'm using YNAB for about 2 years now and even if has it's own downsides (e.g.
not available on Windows Phone), it's fairly good (if you add a lot of items
while you're mobile, you'll have smart..ish matches for payee and categories).

You can use my referal (and get $6 discount):
[http://ynab.refr.cc/ZCDFD5D](http://ynab.refr.cc/ZCDFD5D) or clean url:
[https://www.youneedabudget.com/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/)

~~~
cactusface
I'll try the demo out first, cheers.

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nklas
I've just made a simple django app to keep track of my expenses.

It's pretty simple, but still very useful. Supports tagging for easy filtering
and will automatically convert any items in a foreign currency into my
currency (SEK), useful when you are traveling and want to compare prices in
different countries for similar.

