One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household
7 hours ago
- #personal-finance
- #double-entry-accounting
- #plain-text-accounting
- The author built a personal finance system using Beancount, a Python library for plain-text accounting, to track net worth across multiple accounts and currencies.
- Double-entry bookkeeping is central to the system, ensuring every transaction balances and nothing slips through the cracks.
- Plain-text accounting offers auditability, version control, privacy, and scriptability, making it a robust solution for personal finance.
- The system automates transaction imports from PDF statements, which are often more reliable than CSV files, and categorizes transactions semi-automatically.
- Investments are tracked as commodities, with detailed account structures for stocks, dividends, and capital gains, enabling accurate performance tracking.
- Multiple views (e.g., net, gross, CGT) allow for simplified daily use or detailed tax-time analysis without duplicating transactions.
- The system scales to handle two people's finances, combining individual and household views while maintaining legal ownership clarity.
- A weekly ritual keeps the system updated, involving statement downloads, categorization, and sanity checks, taking about 20 minutes per week.
- Key principles include double-entry everywhere, plain text as the source of truth, and tracking at the most granular level for flexibility.