Financial

A long time ago I wrote about my method of book-keeping using Ledger CLI. Nearly 10 years later, I’m still using it track my finances down to the penny. It’s an amazing tool, and has helped me identify problematic spending habits. But it does have one achilles heel, it’s not very friendly to non-technical people. I share my finances with my family because I want to teach financial literacy and help them feel like they are a part of any decision-making activities related to money. Given that Ledger is text-based, it means they don’t need to install any programs. But because it is text-based, it means they need to learn to use a text editor and the terminal (I could import it into things like Gnu Cash, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole). To improve this accessibility problem, I devised an automated notification scheme whereby once I finish updating the ledger, a summary is emailed to everyone. Here’s how I did it. ...

One of the things that I like to do in my personal life and in my corporation is control the books. Since I am responsible if the corporation fails, and if mismanaged money is the surest way to failure, then I better control where that money comes and goes. To this, I make myself the bookkeeper (with my wife, who verifies the work). As for accounting, I outsource that stuff to an accountant because it is much too complicated for me to spend so much time on it. That, and he saves me more than what he charges, so it’s a good deal. ...