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