January 2, 2026
Beans, budgets, and beef
One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household
DIY money tracker sparks a feud: bean counters vs budget app loyalists vs spreadsheet minimalists
TLDR: An engineer built a plain‑text system with Beancount to track a multi‑currency household and get a single net‑worth number he trusts. Comments split into camps: YNAB loyalists praising convenience, spreadsheet minimalists dismissing the granularity, and skeptics asking if double‑entry is just a fancy checksum.
Two people, 18 accounts, 3 currencies, and 20 minutes a week for one number you trust — that’s the promise behind a DIY plain‑text money tracker powered by Beancount. But the comments turned it into a budget brawl. Skeptics asked if double‑entry bookkeeping is just a “checksum,” while the author swears it’s what keeps transfers, reimbursements, and multi‑currency sane.
Subscription loyalists stormed in: YNAB (You Need a Budget) fans insisted the app’s auto‑import is worth every penny, with one calling it the last subscription they’d ever drop. Spreadsheet minimalists clapped back, bragging that a single monthly Excel tally is “good enough,” typos and all. Developers were torn — inspired by the build, but nervously asking if the time investment beats off‑the‑shelf software.
Then came the PDF Dungeon. The post claims importing from statements is surprisingly reliable, yet commenters groaned that downloading them across banks and cards is a nightmare with no batch button. Meanwhile, the DIY crowd cheered privacy and control, especially for matching IOUs and handling money “in limbo” during transfers.
Strongest vibes: control vs convenience, nerd pride vs practical sanity. Jokes flew about “trusting your beans,” “checksum for your life,” and exorcising PDF gremlins with scripts. For real.
Key Points
- •The author manages two people, 18 accounts, and three currencies with ~20 minutes of weekly upkeep, aiming for one trustworthy net worth figure.
- •An initial custom scripting/database approach failed due to debugging complexity, missing transactions, and balance mismatches.
- •The system was rebuilt using double-entry bookkeeping, plain‑text accounting, and the Beancount Python library.
- •Transactions are primarily imported from PDF statements (found more reliable than CSV), then categorized via a web UI, with scripts regenerating reports.
- •The article demonstrates why double-entry solves common single‑entry issues (in‑transit transfers and reimbursements) and outlines required effort and skills.