Wife approved Self Hosted finance app

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

How far diverged has it become from maybe Finance?

Disclaimer: I am the maintainer of Lumina Finance I personally use Lumina Finance on a daily basis, and it has helped identify trends in my overall spending. I use the insights tab to look back over the last month/quarter and compare it to the previous time period and see which category has changed the most for me. This can help me identify worrying patterns so I can dive deeper into the actual transactions to determine where the increases came from. I can also keep an eye on my monthly savings rate to make sure that I'm on the right track in terms of balancing my expenses and income. I also keep track of my credit utilization rate to keep it below the 30% magic number to avoid any potential negative credit score impacts. The accounts overview's merchant and category breakdown on my credit cards is another feature that I use to make sure that I'm using the card on the right category to maximize my points and cash back. :)

My wife doesn't like dealing with money either so I don't get her involved in this tedious part. She just need to know what card to swipe, what's the daily budget and stick to it. I handle the rest. Worked out well. Most of the time, you can categorize a transaction easily based on the merchant name

It seems to be OP's current app

Could you elaborate on how this bot understands what text is important and extracts that data to input to firefly?

I use actual. The wife only uses it once a month when we have our monthly finance meeting. There are usually 10-15 transactions I don't know where they go and she just labels then in the correct expense and then we use the extra time to review. I share this cause I learned some people don't ever want to review their finances so whatever you use your wife will find a reason not to use it cause likely her brain does not accept it. It's ok. I don't judge my wife cause of this or get frustrated anymore. I just meet her where she is and it works great for us.

This is what I use and while I’m not married I’d argue this is one of the best self hosted budgeting apps if you just need something simple.

I fixed this by budgeting a month ahead, which is sort of counter to envelope budgeting. I moved enough money for a normal month into checking so that I can cover the entire month with cash on hand. I then move new pay checks to next month to keep everything in check. That way, during the current month, if I go over I can move money from another line item budget and not spend more overall. I also roll unspent money in a line item to next month. That way, I can both have breathing room if I go over, or transfer more into savings.

I use Actual as well. Wife doesn't touch it. I just come up with monthly report and email her.

I use firefly iii but I created a telegram bot for my wife, so she can forward any receipt/bank transfer screenshot/pdf document and it'll be recorded in firefly.

“I just meet her where she is and it works great for us” Sounds like good wisdom to me

My wife still prefers excel, trying to get her into firefly iii though

I’m using https://sure.am because has good features, also because supports simplefin (and others) as mechanism to sync bank info. I’m developing a software to “easily” implement scrappers from bank websites.

I haven’t used it yet, but I showed my wife the demo of sure.am and she really liked it.

Actual budget?

Hi guys, just curious, how one of these apps has help you ? I get the “know in what are we spending our money” but besides that, what use you give to them or with witch point? Im genuinely asking because I did it once and for exemple I say to my wife “we’re spending x in groceries by month, but last month it was a bit more” and she would say “ok, thanks for the information” and that’s it 🤣 and I get her point, we’re not going to change our behavior for that amount

I added a Telegram bot with Claude Code - we can send voice messages, photos, screenshots or text and the bot intelligently adds them to Actual Budget. She absolutely loves it, there are no more gaps in our tracking ;)

I use actual, it’s definitely the simplest of the self hosted (atleast that i have used) Ive tried firefly, gnucash and my own excel spreadsheet. Idk if this helps but being able to upload a csb then categorize or even just sync to bank os really nice. And Actual has enough functionality for me to be happy, and is simple enough for my wife to understand.

we use an excel sheet lol

You should check out wealthfolio Quite a lot of features, open source, self host able and nice UI

whisper.money perhaps?

we ditched apps and use a nextcloud sheet for bills she finds it calm

I use YNAB so I'm not commenting on the self-hosted options but I feel I need to share this based on other comments here - When I do my monthly review with my wife after the kids are asleep, I make sure to buy chocolate and other puddings she enjoys. We eat the chocolate while we do our review and the pudding is for afterwards. It helps. A lot. God speed brother. 🫡