I have been using a variety of ways to track my expenditures and income, starting from the basic notebook, moving onto using Sheets, then using Notion, and currently I am using Obsidian to track expenses. My reasonings for each of these “tools” that I used were sound at the time, but like most of the things in my life, I couldn’t really stick to anything. As of writing this, I am able to write out expenditures on Obsidian, but I really miss the versatility of using Google Sheets or Notion for such a purpose.
I have been on the lookout for a better solution than the one I am currently using, but they have to match at least SOME of my criteria before I go ahead and commit to it.
Since these are just my thoughts put out on a markdown file, lemme ramble on and describe why I used the different tools above.
Notebook
Sheets
To be honest, this ain’t a bad solution at all. Infact, it’s was made to be used for this purpose, to create tabularized data. That’s all a finance tracker should be, in reality. BUT, it doesn’t really look pretty.
Notion
Obsidian
By far, I think I regret using this tool to track finances. It is frankly amazing for jotting down thoughts, taking notes, doing all sorts of “writing” work (I am writing this doc on Obsidian right now). But it is pretty much shiet when it comes to tabular data. I require to use formulae, aggregations, validations, etc. which I simply cannot over here. Sure there are plugins and sort, but I don’t wanna learn a whole new system just to do something which is already done VERY well by other tools.
Next ??
So far I am heavily considering going back to Google Sheets since it has some amazing extensibility for this use. I have done some digging around and found Firefly which looks pretty darn exciting. I do like self-hosted tools a LOT. It’s either Firefly now, and I will stick with it for life, or I go back to Google Sheets. I cannot keep switching tools like this, I will get confused, and I am already irritated with Obsidian.
Update: 2024-03-25
I actually am using Google Sheets exlusively now for this year. Find it to be the best honestly coz of the flexibility it offers. If I need it to look pretty, i’ll find my own way, as I usually do.