Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery

[damerell]

Dear lazyweb,

I want a thing, and I'm not sure it exists.

I know a few people who use GNUcash and suchlike tools, but I don't want to keep track of how much money I have; that's easy to find out any time I go to an ATM or a computer I trust.

What I want to know is my net income and where my outgoings go, and _maybe_ to keep track of internal bistromathics like "I paid this hotel bill, you buy me dinner here and there".

So, say, I tell it my income and that it comes in monthly, that's easy. I tell it the gas bill comes quarterly, and once I've told it the amount of a few gas bills it can estimate likely gas outgoings. If I make a "one-off" purchase I can have a stab at classifying it, and then it'll guess my likely outgoing on techno-toys, bicycle bits, or beer. That sort of thing.

Does it exist?

ETA: should keep all data on a computer I own or trust, in a jurisdiction I... have to put up anyway with because I live there.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

I *think* that Mint mostly does what you're talking about; my boyfriend uses it that way to do post-analysis of his budget. I'm more of a YNAB person myself but it focuses on exactly what you don't want--making sure that you are keeping your categories within their spending limits.

[damerell]

I really do mean "thank you", although I fear I should also edit the initial post to impose some extra criteria. :-/

[crazyscot]

Keeping track of where the money is going is kinda hand-in-hand with keeping track of how much you have. Doing so gives you a neat double-check that you've got everything, when you reconcile your books against your bank's records. I'm pretty sure that GNUcash can do everything you describe, even the budgeting part (though I don't do that myself). The hard part is figuring out a system of recording your bistromathics that works for you as double-entry book-keeping doesn't have a terribly intuitive way to express fudge factors; it forces you to put a value on everything that you want to express.

[emperor]

I wrote a python script; I feed it a CSV from online banking of the previous month, and over time it learns what categories I put particular things into.

It WFM, although obviously a lot of the special-casing is us-specific, but if you want to eyeball it the git repo's on chiark.

[damerell]

That sounds about like what I want. Thanks.