I’ve been trying to get my finances in order for a while. I’ve been looking up different software to help me budget, but I can’t find privacy respecting software besides Firefly III, which is self hosted. I usually try to find a few options then evaluate from there, but was wondering if you guys had any recommendations to throw in the mix!
All banks I’ve done business supported exporting CSV or OVX files of transactions so you don’t need a third party connection into your bank account, although that is an option. It depends on region, but banks are only required to retain data for certain periods of time, and keeping a history of each transaction can be useful for budgeting or investing.
Ok, so you want to be able to import CSV’s to the budget program. I thought spreadsheets can do that though. Maybe it gets too complicated.
Spreadsheets can do that and you can set them up to automate a lot of the work. You need to be very good with your software though - it’s too complex for the majority of users.
You also risk that someone is either discouraged / overwhelmed and gives up, or spends all their time learning to automate data manipulation instead of budgeting, or that they make an error and don’t realise.
Automating that data manipulation is very valuable and the main benefit I find to budgeting software.
That said, I’ve set up my budgeting in excel because I do know what I’m doing and I haven’t found software that is flexible enough for my needs yet 🤣