diff --git a/content/posts/plaintext-accounting.md b/content/posts/plaintext-accounting.md index 4ea18c6..565dce5 100644 --- a/content/posts/plaintext-accounting.md +++ b/content/posts/plaintext-accounting.md @@ -47,22 +47,42 @@ my student job allowing me to avoid explicitly budgeting my money. ## Why do I want an actual accounting solution? -* some people use their head - * I used to do that for a long time - * I want more fine-grained control and analysis of my habits - * I'm somewhat of a airhead, suffer from one-click-purchase-syndrome -* some people use a spreadsheet - * bothersome - * easy to mess up - * hard to version - * I like `git` -* I want - * foolproof - * exhaustive - * powerful analysis, and trivia - * how much have I spent at my neighbourhood bakery in the last semester ? - * pretty interface - * FLOSS and forward compatible +As you can see from my history, I have spent my whole life until this point +without using any form of accounting. Some people keep going their whole life +without ever explicitly using any accounting solutions, having a ball-park idea +of how much they have spent and how much they can afford to spend later. + +This, however, does not accommodate me anymore. I want to have more fine-grained +control over my money, and be able to track and analyse my spending. I also know +that I am somewhat of an air-head, and tracking my money explicitly will +probably allow me to avoid, or at least reduce, lifestyle inflation once +I finish school and enter the work-force. + +To that end, some people use a spreadsheet and simply keep track of their +transactions as a row of in-n-out flow of money. This is also problematic to me: +it is bothersome to come up with a useful template for budgeting, easy to mess +up my reporting, especially with transactions that are harder to model using +a simple template. Furthermore, it is very hard to version a spreadsheet, being +a programmer, and lover of the command line, I want to be able to use `git` to +keep track of my budget through time. + +The perfect system for me has to be: + +* foolproof: it is hard to mess up my reporting, and easy to know when I make + a mistake, +* exhaustive: I can use the same system to keep track of my money, my + investments, my debts, and anything that I would like to track, +* data-oriented: it should allow me to process my data and do some powerful + analysis on my past transactions: I want to be able to know how much money + I have spent at my neighbourhood bakery in the last semester. +* have a pretty interface and export abilities: this allows me to talk with + a banker or an accountant without them having to know how to use my accounting + system, +* be [Free and Open-Source Software][foss]: I can tinker with the sources if + something isn't to my liking, and more easily ensure that my data will still + be usable 20 years down the line. + +[foss]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software ## Beancount