Automated Ledger Summaries By Email
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. ...