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You touch another important issue here. >>> Do I want to tag individual expenditures? How do I want to categorize them? Friction. There are a lot of apps th

by gedrap 11y ago

You touch another important issue here. >>> Do I want to tag individual expenditures? How do I want to categorize them? Friction. There are a lot of apps that might be useful but the friction is so high (a lot of manual entry, etc) that it might overwhelm the value provided. Ideally, you want the app to 'just work' and that's the hard part.

vinceguidry 11y ago
> There are a lot of apps that might be useful but the friction is so high (a lot of manual entry, etc) that it might overwhelm the value provided. It was an act of faith for me to structure the app around manual entry of transactions. I thought for sure that I'd wind up abandoning it after a few months. Didn't happen, I'm still using it, but I remember for a few weeks struggling to eliminate the friction, and I still haven't gotten rid of all of it. That would require implementing some kind of custom keyboard, as well as the aforementioned interface to put in common transactions that have the same amount each time. There needs to be a streamlined interface for adding these common transactions, because I might have to do it a few times a month. I'm repeating this entire process for a to-do manager, as Reminders just doesn't eliminate enough friction for all use cases. Now I need to figure out how to get transactions to live on the same page as my agenda. When I'm finally done with this three years from now, I'll need to write a book and do a bunch of YouTube videos to teach people how to use it productively, either that or I'll need to spend just as much time making the interface discoverable. What other people will need out of a dashboard is bound to be completely different than what I need out of it. I have a list of transactions for this week, broken down by day, someone else might need the whole month, broken down by category. I don't have automatic recurring transactions show up, someone else might want those. Each of these requires significant design work. I have tried at various points to interest someone else in helping me develop it. Ha. Ha. Ha. Nobody cares.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  You could look at the ecosystem around the Ledger command line accounting program for ideas about simplifying transaction creation. People often bring up Ledger because it uses a text file as input, I don't mean to point at that, I mean to point at all the various heuristics people use to extract meaning from their history of transactions.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I'll take a look at it, thanks.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  The canonical budgeting advice is to simply track when you pull cash out, and count any cash you withdraw as already "spent".
  - djrogers 11y ago
    That's hardly 'canonical', and goes directly against many budgeting/tracking philosophies. It definitely doesn't solve the 'where'd it all go' problem, and teaches you nothing about your spending habits and patterns. Of course if you don't have any money problems, and don't need to break bad spending habits, then go ahead and do it that way - I often do as well.
    - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
      Of course it teaches you stuff about your spending habits and patterns. Cash withdrawals are either earmarked as you withdraw them (for example, hitting an ATM up before visiting a strip club or bar), or they're withdrawn for facilitating impulsive purchases. You know the category of things they go to, because you record it when you withdraw it - you just don't know exactly what you did with it or when.
  - jimbokun 11y ago
    I think this only works if you follow a "zero based budgeting" philosophy. https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/zero-based-budget-what-why https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/zero-based-budget-what-why
- bitserf 11y ago
  Good on you for persisting with it. I developed a mobile manual entry personal finance tracking application as well, stuck with it for two years, but I'm back to manual entry using Ledger because of the pain in the ass it is to enter data on mobile, whereas I can use automation to import my various bank accounts data (e.g. https://github.com/cantino/reckon https://github.com/cantino/reckon) with Ledger. The reporting on the data is the gold, for me, the mobile app didn't really add that much value, so I just gave up.
tdkl 11y ago
If people would have the patience of building a habit using such apps, there wouldn't be a friction problem. Time spent on FaceInstaSnapCrush is also manual labour, but so much more fun. /s
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  If they had the patience to use an app, they would have already built workflows to do it without apps. My grandfather uses ledger books, pen and paper. I used to think there was a large enough market of people in between the already organized, like my grandfather, and those who can't organize, period, like my sister. People who, if they just had the right app and could be convinced to put in some minimal amount of effort, could get organized. Now I realize that software is the wrong tool for the job.
  - tdkl 11y ago
    > they would have already built workflows to do it without apps I'd argue that the effort and workflow used without apps is larger then with them. So if someone can't be bothered to even use the apps, it most certainly isn't doing it "oldschool". > My grandfather uses ledger books, pen and paper. Well he had to do it manually before the age of the smartphone (and when people had more patience).Your grandfather would also probably find carrying a point and shoot camera and a map around to make sense.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - RightWingRabble 11y ago
    > Now I realize that software is the wrong tool for the job. tl;dr: most productivity apps are marketed to disorganized people. I say target the already organized and make their lives easier by automating all the things. For getting lazy or disorganized people organized, yes, that's going to take more than software. But, there may still be a market for taking the result of the manual process (like the one your grandfather uses with ledger books) and digitizing it. For example, "whitelines link" are notebooks that make it easier to digitize written data cleanly by taking a picture of it. Evernote (or any competent OCR program) could then turn that clean digitized version into text. From there, all the data could be organized, broken down by category, etc. You could automatically generate any number of reports based on that information and, most importantly, it's all backed up in case something unfortunate happens to the physical ledger.
bpyne 11y ago
And it's not just mobile apps that suffer the problem of friction. Last night my wife sat down to put a holiday card together on Shutterfly. When she had it to her satisfaction she started the ordering process. A message displayed on the site telling her that she needed to login. She dug out the user name/password and logged in. Her card was lost. I tried for 15 minutes without success to get it back. At 11:15pm, after a full day of work and family activities, she had to start over. Her comment to me was, "Why the hell does software have to be so hard to use?" Excellent question. (Note, we've had issues with Apple's service as well, so I'm not trying to make a point about Shutterfly's service being better/worse than competitors' services. I'm just using Shutterfly as an example of a mature service creating friction for users.)

by gedrap 11y ago

vinceguidry 11y ago

> There are a lot of apps that might be useful but the friction is so high (a lot of manual entry, etc) that it might overwhelm the value provided. It was an act of faith for me to structure the app around manual entry of transactions. I thought for sure that I'd wind up abandoning it after a few months. Didn't happen, I'm still using it, but I remember for a few weeks struggling to eliminate the friction, and I still haven't gotten rid of all of it. That would require implementing some kind of custom keyboard, as well as the aforementioned interface to put in common transactions that have the same amount each time. There needs to be a streamlined interface for adding these common transactions, because I might have to do it a few times a month. I'm repeating this entire process for a to-do manager, as Reminders just doesn't eliminate enough friction for all use cases. Now I need to figure out how to get transactions to live on the same page as my agenda. When I'm finally done with this three years from now, I'll need to write a book and do a bunch of YouTube videos to teach people how to use it productively, either that or I'll need to spend just as much time making the interface discoverable. What other people will need out of a dashboard is bound to be completely different than what I need out of it. I have a list of transactions for this week, broken down by day, someone else might need the whole month, broken down by category. I don't have automatic recurring transactions show up, someone else might want those. Each of these requires significant design work. I have tried at various points to interest someone else in helping me develop it. Ha. Ha. Ha. Nobody cares.

maxerickson 11y ago
You could look at the ecosystem around the Ledger command line accounting program for ideas about simplifying transaction creation. People often bring up Ledger because it uses a text file as input, I don't mean to point at that, I mean to point at all the various heuristics people use to extract meaning from their history of transactions.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I'll take a look at it, thanks.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
The canonical budgeting advice is to simply track when you pull cash out, and count any cash you withdraw as already "spent".
- djrogers 11y ago
  That's hardly 'canonical', and goes directly against many budgeting/tracking philosophies. It definitely doesn't solve the 'where'd it all go' problem, and teaches you nothing about your spending habits and patterns. Of course if you don't have any money problems, and don't need to break bad spending habits, then go ahead and do it that way - I often do as well.
  - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
    Of course it teaches you stuff about your spending habits and patterns. Cash withdrawals are either earmarked as you withdraw them (for example, hitting an ATM up before visiting a strip club or bar), or they're withdrawn for facilitating impulsive purchases. You know the category of things they go to, because you record it when you withdraw it - you just don't know exactly what you did with it or when.
- jimbokun 11y ago
  I think this only works if you follow a "zero based budgeting" philosophy. https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/zero-based-budget-what-why https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/zero-based-budget-what-why
bitserf 11y ago
Good on you for persisting with it. I developed a mobile manual entry personal finance tracking application as well, stuck with it for two years, but I'm back to manual entry using Ledger because of the pain in the ass it is to enter data on mobile, whereas I can use automation to import my various bank accounts data (e.g. https://github.com/cantino/reckon https://github.com/cantino/reckon) with Ledger. The reporting on the data is the gold, for me, the mobile app didn't really add that much value, so I just gave up.

tdkl 11y ago

If people would have the patience of building a habit using such apps, there wouldn't be a friction problem. Time spent on FaceInstaSnapCrush is also manual labour, but so much more fun. /s

vinceguidry 11y ago
If they had the patience to use an app, they would have already built workflows to do it without apps. My grandfather uses ledger books, pen and paper. I used to think there was a large enough market of people in between the already organized, like my grandfather, and those who can't organize, period, like my sister. People who, if they just had the right app and could be convinced to put in some minimal amount of effort, could get organized. Now I realize that software is the wrong tool for the job.
- tdkl 11y ago
  > they would have already built workflows to do it without apps I'd argue that the effort and workflow used without apps is larger then with them. So if someone can't be bothered to even use the apps, it most certainly isn't doing it "oldschool". > My grandfather uses ledger books, pen and paper. Well he had to do it manually before the age of the smartphone (and when people had more patience).Your grandfather would also probably find carrying a point and shoot camera and a map around to make sense.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- RightWingRabble 11y ago
  > Now I realize that software is the wrong tool for the job. tl;dr: most productivity apps are marketed to disorganized people. I say target the already organized and make their lives easier by automating all the things. For getting lazy or disorganized people organized, yes, that's going to take more than software. But, there may still be a market for taking the result of the manual process (like the one your grandfather uses with ledger books) and digitizing it. For example, "whitelines link" are notebooks that make it easier to digitize written data cleanly by taking a picture of it. Evernote (or any competent OCR program) could then turn that clean digitized version into text. From there, all the data could be organized, broken down by category, etc. You could automatically generate any number of reports based on that information and, most importantly, it's all backed up in case something unfortunate happens to the physical ledger.

bpyne 11y ago

And it's not just mobile apps that suffer the problem of friction. Last night my wife sat down to put a holiday card together on Shutterfly. When she had it to her satisfaction she started the ordering process. A message displayed on the site telling her that she needed to login. She dug out the user name/password and logged in. Her card was lost. I tried for 15 minutes without success to get it back. At 11:15pm, after a full day of work and family activities, she had to start over. Her comment to me was, "Why the hell does software have to be so hard to use?" Excellent question. (Note, we've had issues with Apple's service as well, so I'm not trying to make a point about Shutterfly's service being better/worse than competitors' services. I'm just using Shutterfly as an example of a mature service creating friction for users.)