HN Explorer

Ask HN: Anyone here doing personal income/expenses tracking?

6 points by inovica ↗ HN
Hi there

I'm just looking for some personal (rather than business) expense tracking software, preferably online. Thought I'd ask if anyone here here has created anything like that or if anyone has anything that they would recommend.

14 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] thread
charliepark
I know the space well and would be happy to help. I made https://www.pearbudget.com. Depending on what you're looking for, it might be just right for you. Or, of course, it might not.

If you let me know what you're looking for, I can help you find something. Either here or on Twitter (@charliepark).

inovica
Thanks! I'll check out Pear Budget. Basically we use Quickbooks for our accounts, but I've been finding that I don't really know how much we (my family) spend. With the New Year I'm wanting to get a handle on just how much things are costing - fuel, entertaining etc.
charliepark
The scenario you're describing is exactly what we focus on. Ultimately, there are three different ways we "spend" money. There's how we want to spend money, there's how we think we spend money, and there's how we actually spend money. A good expense tracking / budgeting tool is going to bring all three of those circles into alignment. Also, our opinion is that the tool shouldn't be too complicated. Most people only need 1% of the options Quicken gives you. I have more opinions on it, but I won't flood HN with them right now.

I probably won't be checking this thread super-often, so if you (or anyone) have any questions, or if there's a specific feature that you need to have available in a budgeting app, ping me on Twitter.

rudasn
I'm working on an expenses/purchases app at the moment. I have small businesses in mind but I am also considering a personal aspect. What is it that you want to get out of such an application?
inovica
Hi there. My requirement isn't really small business as we currently have an in-house book keeper and we use Quickbooks. It's for personal use. I just want to be able to put in our regular monthly income/costs and then evaluate spend (for example on beer!). I've done some analysis and turns out I spend nearly $200/month at a local pub (bar), so that prompted me to start looking at everything to see where I could reduce easily
rudasn
I have that same problem as you. Since my personal monthly budget is very low I tend to keep track of my expenses closely. I still don't know how exactly I'm going to market my app but I'm leaning towards having a "personal" version without the stuff businesses need.

If you want, drop me a line at my-hn-username at gmail (or checkout rabbitpurchasing.com) and I'll let you know when my app is ready - you will be able to record and know that you spend X per month on beer.

inovica
I've had a good look today and there's not much out there that's good. There's a few decent Mac apps (I'm Mac-based) but I'm looking for web-based as thats what I'd prefer. My situation here is that I earn decent money from my business, but my personal spend is not really recorded and the small amount of analysis that I've done has shocked me at the money I waste :)

In terms of marketing your app, maybe you could focus on how your app will let you focus a bit more. Just a thought

kleinsch
We've got our budget set up using Mint.com and evaluate it using their tools. Since they're the 800 pound gorilla in that space, how're you thinking about differentiating from them?
inovica
Firstly we're not planning on differentiating from them - I'm looking for something to use for myself (not to build something). Also, I'm based in the UK and am unable to use Mint
rsepassi
Yeah, Mint.com is pretty awesome.
luckyisgood
I'm using www.pearbudget.com, I just upgraded to their paid account recently. It is simple enough not to be a hassle, and its tags system allows me and my boyfriend to track our expenses together, knowing how much either of us spent separately. I can recommend it.
raintrees
I use a spreadsheet. Why not start with Google Docs for same (online requirement) to get started?

I found that getting a read on financial affairs for a couple of months was good enough for me to create personal budget expectations, arrange my income accordingly, project future income/savings, etc.

I just check back in occasionally, and do the project again. I have too much on my plate already to add another daily/weekly ongoing requirement. ymmv...

inovica
Good idea. I think I'll give that a go
vsync
GnuCash is great; I use it for both personal and business.

If you have it use PostgreSQL for the data store you can run it at home (keeping the database there or on a server somewhere if you like) and then connect to it from another machine wherever. I haven't tried that yet as it's a new feature in 2.4.0 which I just upgraded to.