tomottoe
1d ago
This is where I’m not so sure. Current iterations as far as I can tell generally use “Oauth” which again is a bit of a black box but from what I can tell you’re logging into your bank and giving plaid an access token, which I think can be configured to be read only. Although more black box. In practice, plaid doesn’t have your password generally (although maybe for some banks as your link discusses.) what it can do with that token (is it read only?) is even read only bad enough? Etc. is up for debate.
tomottoe
1d ago
So I've recently been getting back into managing my personal finances. Historically I've used a mix of beancount, fava, and beancount importer as a combined method of getting my finances into a digestible format. The reason I stopped after 2+ years of tracking is that certain banks will change their export format every once in a while and I found every few months I'd go on to update my bookkeeping I would have to rewrite my importers. Part of the problem could be I dont fully understand the code behind it, therefore rewriting the importers became harder than necessary, but I've taken this opportunity to look into other methods. For posterity, here's what I've found in order from most managed to least managed in terms of alternatives, with my current method falling somewhere near the bottom:
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Monarch Money: https://www.monarchmoney.com/
Paid. 6$ per month. Uses a mixture of commerical importers (Plaid, MX, etc.) to track both investments & current account balances. Haven't tried yet.
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Copilot Money: https://copilot.money/
Paid. Very similar to Monarch money. 8$ per month. Also uses commercial importers, although less of them than Monarch Money. Reviews say it breaks sometimes, although those could be more historical.
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Actual Budget: https://actualbudget.org/
Self-Hosted via docker. Able to sync with a semi-commerical integration called simpleFIN-bridge which uses MX on the backend https://beta-bridge.simplefin.org/ This seems somewhat legit but also somewhat sketch as there is no privacy policy etc. In terms of the actual 'actual' software. The native CSV import function is great. My main pain point is that it isnt Double-Entry Accounting, and there doesnt seem to be a way to specify a X-x-X date account balance y was z$. There is a way to reconcile to today, but in their method that just means add a reconciliation amount of xxx$ to fix whatever it is off by. I dont like this. Previously I was tracked meticiulously and it made sense. I also dont see a method to track investments, ie you own X shares of Y stock that are worth Z today.
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Maybe: https://maybe.co/
another pretty app self-hosted via docker. Apparently there was a large dev push behind it that folded and they decided to open source the code base. I like this. For importing options, so far I've only seen import via csv. When doing so, they have a myriad of options, and it works well enough. It also allows for syncing investment holdings and updating their prices on the fly. For this, it makes it the most promising. What I dislike most about it is when automated sorting fails, the only method I've found for correcting categories etc, it manual with a lot of clicks. I liked the streamlined nature of beancount importer where I could bust through 1000 transactions in a couple minutes. I'm still testing to determine if there is a way to do this quickly with maybe.
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Firefly III: https://www.firefly-iii.org/
Also does not support tracking investments as part of networth. I think for this reason alone its off the table.
I like the idea of using plaid, and accountants I've talked to show support. Hackernews is skeptical of it. I guess I'm asking the motte, do you use a plaid like software and trust it? It seems many banks now support Oauth. I have not yet, but would like to. I would probably be willing to pay for monarch or copilot if I did trust these integrators.
Generally not super complicated. Although seems to grow somewhat more complicated as time passes. Get a credit card at a separate bank, get a company 401k at some weird holdings company that can’t be changed. Etc.
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