I manage my money using plain-text accounting (specifically, hledger; though the choice of tool is unimportant), following a YNABish approach. The four YNAB rules are:

1. Give every dollar a job: money is split into named categories, don’t have any “general savings”.
2. Embrace your true expenses: large expenses (like a rental deposit, or Christmas gifts) are planned and allocated for in advance, as a regular monthly contribution.
3. Roll with the punches: if things aren’t working out, adjust the plan rather than lie to yourself.
4. Age your money: try to save more of each regular expense (rent, travel, etc) than you spend in a given period.

Why track my finances at all?

• Makes me more conscious of my spending.
• Lets me see how my spending has changed over time.
• Lets me plan for the future with some degree of confidence.

This memo is concerned with my mechanism for implementing this approach. It could serve as a starting point for your financial planning; but working out what your savings categories are and how to allocate your income to them requires introspection.

## High-level metrics

While the most straightforward metric of financial health is the balance of my budget, and that’s the main thing I look at when making day-to-day spending decisions, there are a few other high-level metrics I keep an eye on. These are:

• Net Worth: if I paid off all my liabilities right now, how much of my assets would I have left?

net worth = assets + liabilities

With plain-text double-entry accounting, assets are positive and liabilities are negative, so you get your net worth by adding them.

What good looks like: this metric is red below 0, green otherwise.

• Savings Rate: how much of my income am I saving?

savings_rate = (net_income - expenses) / net_income

I plot the savings rate for each month on a graph, and use the mean monthly savings rate as the high-level metric.

What good looks like: this metric is red below zero, yellow below 33%, and green otherwise.

• Runway: if my income stopped right now, how long would I be able to survive?

runway = assets / average_daily_expense

I use two versions of this metric:

• Short Runway: only considering my bank accounts and emergency savings (in Premium Bonds).

• Long Runway: taking all my assets into account, as if I sold all my investments in one go at their current price.

What good looks like: these metrics are red below 60 days, yellow below 90 days, and green otherwise.

• Student Loan: I want to get this down (or up, since it’s a liability) to zero.

What good looks like: this metric is red below -£10k, yellow below 0, and green otherwise.

• House Deposit: I’ve decided to start saving for a house from the 2021-22 tax year. This’ll be a very long term thing.

What good looks like: this metric is red below £25k, yellow below £50k, and green otherwise.

## Dashboard

I import my hledger data into influxdb with a script which runs nightly, to power a grafana dashboard on my home server. There are a few parts to it:

1. High-level metrics: as explained in the section above.

2. Overview: statistics on my hledger journal; my asset allocation; a graph of my net worth; a graph of my credit card balance; and a graph of my cash flow / savings rate.

3. Savings targets: red up to 50%, yellow up to 75%, and then green. I’ll hit most of these targets by the end of March 2021.

4. Commodity values: scraped daily from the Financial Times and the Coinbase API.

## Journal files

I log all my financial transactions for the current year in a file called current.journal. There are $YEAR.journal files for historic data. I also have two files which all my journals include: • commodities, a list of all commodities (currencies, cryptocurrencies, funds) I deal with. • prices, end-of-day exchange rates for all of my commodities. Rather than importing transactions from my bank or something, I enter all data manually. This may sound tedious, but I feel that the awareness I get from doing so is worth it. This is the template for a new journal file: include commodities include prices * Starting balances YYYY-01-01 ! Opening balances ... * Forecast ~ monthly Expenses ... ~ monthly Income ... * Ledger ** January ** February ** March ** April ** May ** June ** July ** August ** September ** October ** November ** December ## Financial institutions For current accounts I use: • Nationwide Flexdirect, my main bank account. Pay goes in, direct debits and standing orders go out. I don’t do much unscheduled spending from this account. • Starling, my backup account. I use this to store cash to be withdrawn and for foreign currency transactions, as Starling doesn’t charge currency conversion fees. For investment accounts I use: • Cavendish Online, for my stocks & shares ISA (invested in a passive Vanguard fund). • Coinbase, for a very small amount of cryptocurrency. • NS&I, for my emergency fund (invested in Premium Bonds). For credit cards I use: • American Express, for a cashback card. There is a small annual fee (£25), but my annual cashback covers that. Almost all of my spending goes on the Amex card, with that paid off in full every month from the Nationwide account. ## Chart of accounts The set of accounts I use is fairly stable: sometimes I’ll add one, or one will cease to be useful, but that’s a rare event. Here are all the regular accounts, which are mostly self-explanatory: • assets • cash • paypal • petty • hand—physical cash, in my wallet • budgeted—…which was withdrawn from my bank account • unbudgeted—…which was a gift • home—physical cash, not in my wallet • nationwide • flexdirect • goal • subaccounts for specific future expenses, like renewing my passport • float—cash which can be withdrawn • pending • subaccounts for money to be transferred outside of the flexdirect • saved • discretionary • food • gift • graze—monthly Graze subscription • health • household • phone • rent • social • tea • travel • utilities • starling • float—cash which can be withdrawn • patreon—monthly Patreon subscriptions (charged in USD) • protonmail—annual ProtonMail fee (charged in EUR) • roll20—monthly Roll20 subscription (charged in USD) • web—AWS, domain names, and hosting (all charged in foreign currencies) • investments • cavendish • coinbase • nsi • receivable • deposit—the deposit on my flat • equity—used for special transactions (see below) • expenses • subaccounts for various things • income • amex—cashback offers and similar • interest • job • liabilities • creditcard • amex • loan • slc—student loan • owed • subaccounts for people I owe money to An account name is the path to it through the tree, separated by colons. For example, assets:cash, or expenses:utilities:electricity. Many of these accounts do not correspond to any real-world bank or brokerage account, they are used to track the flow of money in more detail than if I just recorded which bank accounts things came from or went to. Money (and other commodities) is only stored in leaf accounts. ### The emergency fund The emergency fund, stored in Premium Bonds, is used for any surprising emergency which isn’t covered by any other category: for example, if I suddenly needed to replace my computer, or move to a new flat. It’s not something I intend to use. Some people advocate investing your emergency fund into stocks and shares, as long-term cash savings lose value due to inflation. But I, and many others, don’t agree with that. If an emergency struck, it could be catastrophic if the value of your fund had halved because the market was down. So I store mine in Premium Bonds, where it is still likely to lose value against inflation, but it won’t have any sudden losses. Premium Bonds can be withdrawn from with about a week’s notice, so I make sure to have enough cash in my bank account (and credit on my credit card) to cover any emergency for at least that long. ## !-transactions hledger allows transactions to be marked with a ! or a *. The traditional meaning of these is “pending” and “cleared”. I use ! slightly differently. I use it for transactions which are just an artefact of the way I track my finances, which don’t involve any balance changes to a real-world account. For example, reallocating my savings: 2019-08-25 ! Allocation assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:gift -£14.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea -£20.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:discretionary assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food I use * as normal, although I usually only consider cash transactions “cleared” after I check that the cash in my wallet matches what hledger thinks it should be. ## Modelling income Income is recorded as the pre-tax amount coming from income:$source, and is split across assets:*, expenses:*, and liabilities:*. All amounts are included.

2019-08-30 * Cabinet Office
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:goal:move                          £500.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:cavendish                  £150.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:flexsaver                  £250.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:patreon             £3.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:protonmail          £5.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:roll20              £5.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:web                £45.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:discretionary                £101.42
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food                         £200.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:graze                         £15.16
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:health                         £0.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:household                     £75.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:insurance                     £11.49
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:phone                         £13.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:rent                        £1400.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:social                        £50.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea                           £41.40
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:travel                        £41.40
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities                     £71.50
expenses:tax:income                                                  £839.00
expenses:tax:ni                                                      £431.83
liabilities:loan:slc                                                 £314.00
expenses:pension                                                     £367.50
income:job                                                         -£5070.36
expenses:pension                                                    £1395.00
income:job                                                         -£1395.00

Some income transactions may not have anything to do with expenses or liabilities:

2019-07-31 * Nationwide
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:discretionary                  £8.89
income:interest

## Modelling investments

The @@ form is used to exactly specify the overall price. Trading fees, if any go to expenses:fees:$broker. Transferring the cash to the investment account and then investing it may be two separate steps: 2019-07-01 * Cavendish assets:investments:cavendish £150.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:cavendish 2019-07-09 * Cavendish assets:investments:cavendish 0.65 VANEA @@ £150.00 assets:investments:cavendish A broker will typically charge a management fee: 2019-07-01 * Cavendish expenses:fees:cavendish £0.06 assets:investments:cavendish If there isn’t enough cash in the account to pay for it, some other asset will be sold. That’s bad, so I always make sure there’s some cash. ## Modelling expenses There are three types of expenses: expenses from a bank account, expenses on a credit card, and cash expenses. The former are straightforward: 2019-07-01 * Graze expenses:food £3.79 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:graze Foreign currency expenses are recorded like so: 2019-08-05 * Hetzner expenses:web 19.08 EUR @@ £17.60 assets:cash:starling:web Sometimes I’ll add a transaction note, which comes after a vertical bar: 2019-01-06 * Steam | 1644277325735538856 expenses:fun £9.29 liabilities:creditcard:amex ### Cash Cash that can be withdrawn lives in flexdirect:float and starling:float. This is because it’s useful to have cash on hand without necessarily having decided up front what it’s for, but it’s also good to bound the amount of unallocated money I have. 2019-01-25 * Withdraw assets:cash:petty:hand:budgeted £10.00 assets:cash:starling:float Cash can also be withdrawn in a foreign currency, which will have an exchange rate and may impose an additional fee: 2018-05-11 Withdraw assets:cash:petty:hand:budgeted 10000 JPY @@ £70.41 expenses:fees:currency £1.99 assets:cash:starling:float Cash expenses require an adjustment to the appropriate budget category, transferring money back to the float to represent that that money has been allocated and spent: 2019-01-25 * Post Office expenses:other £1.01 assets:cash:petty:hand:budgeted 2019-01-25 ! Bookkeeping assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:discretionary -£1.01 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:float The money in pending will be transferred to the appropriate account at some point. This could be done in one transaction, but I think it’s clearer with two. If I’m using cash I was gifted, the expense comes from hand:unbudgeted and there’s no transaction updating the float. Foreign currency cash transactions require picking an appropriate exchange rate when removing the money from the budget category: 2018-05-08 * FamilyMart expenses:food 548 JPY assets:cash:petty:hand:budgeted 2018-05-08 ! Bookkeeping assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food -£4.60 ; -548 JPY assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:float The exchange rate is kind of arbitrary, as it’s only being used for budgeting purposes here. An @@ posting isn’t used, because the bank operates entirely in GBP. ### Credit cards When I pay for something on my credit card I add a transaction from liabilities to track the debt, and also remove the money from the budget category: 2019-08-04 * Morrisons expenses:food £4.65 expenses:tea £11.70 liabilities:creditcard:amex -£16.35 2019-08-04 ! Bookkeeping assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food -£4.65 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea -£11.70 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:amex I pay off my credit card in full every month automatically via direct debit: 2019-08-05 * American Express liabilities:creditcard:amex £378.34 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:amex Every year, I get cashback. As the cashback goes to the balance on the card, rather than being paid into my bank account, I treat it as an pair of an income transaction and an allocation-style transaction: 2019-08-14 * American Express | cashback liabilities:creditcard:amex £181.41 income:amex 2019-08-14 ! Allocation | cashback assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:goal:move £100.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea £80.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:amex ## Special transactions There are three sorts of “special” transactions which show up in my journal. 1. One transaction at the start of the year to initialise all the accounts. 2. One transaction at the end of the year to discard any small amounts of money owed between friends. 3. Possibly multiple transactions during the year to correct balance errors. These all come out of equity, because I’m not really sure where else they should go, specifically: 1. equity:opening/closing 2. equity:writeoff 3. equity:adjustment I don’t really care about the balance of equity, so having these special transactions use that is fine. ## Forecasting I do some basic forecasting in my ledger, but be wary! Predicting the future can be the downfall of an otherwise-sound financial plan! I am always pessimistic in my forecasting00The only income I forecast is from my job (though I do assume I won’t lose my job), and I forecast spending my entire budget every month. , and I never make spending decisions based on a forecast, it’s purely to get an estimate of what my account balances will become based on my current income allocation and to see how sensible my savings goals are. Firstly, I forecast my monthly expenses: ~ monthly Expenses (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food) -£200.00 (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:household) -£50.00 (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea) -£25.00 ; (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:graze) -£15.16 ; graze (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:phone) -£13.92 ; ee (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:rent) -£122.17 ; three rivers DC (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:rent) -£1200.00 ; hamptons (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities) -£40.00 ; affinity water (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities) -£52.00 ; virgin media (assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities) -£72.00 ; eon energy (assets:cash:starling:patreon) -£8.00 ; patreon (assets:cash:starling:roll20) -£5.00 ; roll20 (assets:cash:starling:web) -£7.00 ; aws (assets:cash:starling:web) -£20.00 ; ovh (assets:cash:starling:web) -£35.00 ; hetzner Each of those numbers is based on experience and some of them are rounded up where prices aren’t exact, or are in a foreign currency (so the exchange rate may vary). Secondly, I have some regular account transfers: ~ monthly Transfers assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:cavendish -£200.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:patreon -£8.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:protonmail -£5.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:roll20 -£5.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:web -£55.00 assets:cash:starling:patreon £8.00 assets:cash:starling:protonmail £5.00 assets:cash:starling:roll20 £5.00 assets:cash:starling:web £55.00 assets:investments:cavendish £200.00 I know the exact amounts of these as they’re set up as standing orders. Thirdly, I have an allocation of my income: ~ monthly Cabinet Office assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:unallocated assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:cavendish £200.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:patreon £8.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:protonmail £5.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:roll20 £5.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:web £55.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:discretionary £0.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food £200.00 ;= £1000.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:gift £0.00 ;= £150.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:graze £15.16 ;= £50.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:health £0.00 ;= £50.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:household £50.00 ;= £300.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:phone £13.92 ;= £100.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:rent £2000.00 ;= £4000.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:social £0.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:tea £25.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:travel £200.00 ;= £750.00 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities £364.00 ;= £1000.00 expenses:tax:income £910.60 expenses:tax:ni £427.02 liabilities:loan:slc £328.00 expenses:pension £387.22 income:job -£5268.25 expenses:pension £1469.84 income:job -£1469.84 I tweak this over time depending on what my savings targets are, and my actual income transactions don’t include that unallocated account: that’s just so I don’t have to forecast every penny up front. Finally, I may sometimes know a particular expense is coming up, and so note it down ahead of time: ~ 2018-03-08 Dentist expenses:health £18.80 assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:health ## Maintenance In addition to simply recording transactions, there is some bookkeeping I do occasionally, to keep my records easy to process. ### Weekly Once a week (or more) I check my financial statements and reconcile transactions in the journal: 1. For every transaction in the statement, find the corresponding journal transaction and mark it. • If there are transactions missing from the journal, add and mark them. • If there are transactions missing from the statement, the institution is being slow; reconcile as they come in over the next few days. • If all transactions have cleared but the balance is not what is expected, figure out what happened and fix it. 2. Check the balance in my wallet and mark all hand transactions. If any of the account balances are incorrect, and I can’t find the mistake, give up and fix it with a transaction to/from equity. For example: 2020-12-04 ! Adjustment liabilities:creditcard:amex -£76.15 = -£220.26 equity:adjustment ### Annually 1. Reconcile transactions. 2. Write off any small amounts owed between friends with a transaction to equity. 3. Rename the current journal file from current.journal to $YEAR.journal.
4. Create a new current.journal.
5. Initialise all accounts on the first of January by transferring from equity.
6. Identify financial goals for the upcoming year.

Here’s an example of a (2) transaction:

2020-12-31 ! Write-off
liabilities:owed:jake                                                 £10.94 = £0.00
equity:writeoff

Here’s an example of a (5) transaction:

2021-01-01 ! Opening balances
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:amex                        £598.01
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:cavendish                   £200.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:patreon              £8.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:protonmail           £5.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:roll20               £5.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:pending:starling:web                 £55.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:food                          £200.57
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:graze                          £50.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:health                        £500.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:household                     £300.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:phone                         £100.00
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:rent                         £2475.54
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:travel                        £523.69
assets:cash:nationwide:flexdirect:saved:utilities                     £800.00
;
assets:cash:petty:hand:budgeted                                        £19.05
assets:cash:petty:hand:unbudgeted                                       £2.00
assets:cash:petty:home                                               3.35 EUR
assets:cash:petty:home                                            1853.00 JPY
;
assets:cash:starling:patreon                                           £21.79
assets:cash:starling:protonmail                                        £42.43
assets:cash:starling:roll20                                            £37.33
assets:cash:starling:web                                              £283.38
;
assets:investments:cavendish                                      19.66 VANEA
assets:investments:cavendish                                           £36.08
assets:investments:coinbase                                         10.00 EUR
assets:investments:fundingcircle                                       £21.29
equity:opening/closing