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content/posts/2024-03-30---my-personal-finance-journey.md

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+---
+template: post
+title: My personal finance journey
+slug: my-personal-finance-journey
+socialImage: /media/my-personal-finance-journey.png
+draft: true
+date: 2024-03-30T03:20:43.096Z
+description: Managing finances is a hard job. You need to know how you are
+  spending and investing money. I have used several methods since the beginning
+  of my career such as the Walnut app, spreadsheets and databases, and metabase.
+  I migrated to a different solution each time I found disadvantages in the
+  existing solution.
+category: personal finance
+tags:
+  - finance
+---
+Managing finance is a hard job. If you are working at a company or self-employed, you need to be aware of the inflows and outflows of your money. Because you have done a lot of hard work at the job and earned that money, I will be discussing my personal finance journey.
+
+### Walnut App
+
+I started my career in 2015. I used to get a small cheque every month. I kept some money myself and sent some to the home. My uncle had suggested investing in local chit funds in my hometown, so I used to invest in it. I used [Walnut app](https://axio.co.in/walnut/) (now Axio) to track the expenses. It auto-tracks the transactions and gives me nice analytics too. It was not tracking the income at that time, so I used to have a dilemma as to whether to mark investments as expenses or not.
+
+Walnut wasn't answering all the questions I had. It only displays the transactions and a bar chart. If I want to create a custom view or dashboard, it doesn't support it. Also, I moved from Android to iPhone. Walnut doesn't support auto-tracking transactions as the iPhone doesn't allow reading messages. So, I need to look for another solution.
+
+### Spreadsheets
+
+I created a [spreadsheet template](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/107jTWsyzDal5dUOaaP8rXidnaolxMn0WzVgKuCIYzME/edit#gid=1090004693) to track the expenses. It solved the problems that I had with walnut. I can create a pivot table to view the summary and create charts for the analytics. But, then I faced one problem. Editing experience in mobile apps is not great. I found [appsheet.com](https://about.appsheet.com/home/) which gives us the UX layer on top of Google Sheets. It has a mobile app too.[](https://about.appsheet.com/home/)
+
+After a few months, something irked me a lot. I felt the editing experience on the web was also not that great. Also, the querying capabilities are not great. I want[](https://about.appsheet.com/home/) to query my data with multiple filters but we can't do that easily unless using functions. But, I am not an expert in Excel. Also, Google Sheets cannot handle bulk data. I imported all my bank transactions of thousand rows; the navigation and filtering were very slow.
+
+### Databases
+
+As Google Sheets is not working well, I thought of using a database itself. They solve the problems with sheets. I can write complex queries to visualize the data. Editing would be as easy as writing SQL queries or we can use database UI tools. And, databases can handle bulk data.
+
+So, the question was where to host this database. Should I host on my personal computer or the cloud? well, I want it to be in the cloud because I need mobile access. So, I bought a 4GB RAM, 2 vCPU machine through [hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com) — they provide cloud machines at 50% lower prices than others like Digitalocean, vultr, etc... — It cost me Rs. 600 per month.
+
+I installed Postgresql in it and opened port 5432 to the public. Voila! I can connect to the database. I imported my custom spreadsheet and all my bank transactions as well.
+
+Then, I installed [metabase](https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/configuring-metabase/setting-up-metabase) in it — as they said in their GitHub README, it just took only 5 minutes to set up — I quickly created some dashboards in it. Woohoo! 🥳 this is what I wanted. I have created dashboards for all the questions I wanted answers to. If I started with database and metabase at the beginning, it would have been an overkill. Since I tried other options and came here, never thought I was complicating it. It solved my problem.
+
+Then, I wanted a UI layer on top of my database so that I could add the transactions on the go. I found some no-code tools like [appsmith](https://www.appsmith.com?ref=lokesh1729.com), [retool](https://retool.com?ref=lokesh1729.com), etc... I went ahead with Appsmith and set up my database. It has presets of default data tables and forms. I just had to make some customizations like adding dropdown values via SQL queries.
+
+## Creating a personal finance system
+
+Well, After setting up the database, I have created a table for tracking the transactions manually. The schema of the table would look like this.
+
+\`\``sql
+
+CREATE TABLE public.transactions (
+
+	txn_date date NOT NULL,
+
+	account public."account_type" NOT NULL,
+
+	txn_type public."txn_enum_type" NOT NULL,
+
+	txn_amount float8 NOT NULL,
+
+	category public."txn_category_type" NOT NULL,
+
+	tags text DEFAULT ''::text NOT NULL,
+
+	notes text DEFAULT ''::text NOT NULL,
+
+	created_at timestamptz DEFAULT now() NOT NULL,
+
+	updated_at timestamptz NULL,
+
+	id serial4 NOT NULL,
+
+	CONSTRAINT transactions_pk PRIMARY KEY (id),
+
+	CONSTRAINT transactions_unique UNIQUE (txn_date, account, txn_type, txn_amount, category, tags, notes)
+
+);
+
+\`\``
+
+Then, I went to my bank's net banking, exported the data into CSV, and imported it into the database. Similarly, I did this for credit cards. There's a caveat. Not all credit cards give the data in CSV, only HDFC Bank via mobile app gives it. For others, converting from PDF to CSV is a challenge. So, I found this software called [tabula](https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula). When you run this, it will open a UI at port 8080. We need to upload the PDF, select the table we want to capture manually, select stream or lattice in the extraction method, and export it to CSV.
+
+Then, I went to investments. Downloaded mutual funds transaction data from [CAMS](https://www.camsonline.com/Investors/Statements/Transaction-Details-Statement) and [Kfintech](https://mfs.kfintech.com/investor/General/AccountStatement). There's a caveat. The CSV format is not uniform for both. So, I have written a [Python script](https://gist.github.com/lokesh1729/675468e1ae98e6e4dde3d9119573c67a) for converting Kfintech data to CAMS. Similarly, I downloaded and imported the capital gains data from [CAMS](https://www.camsonline.com/Investors/Statements/Capital-Gain&Capital-Loss-statement) and [Kfintech](https://mfs.kfintech.com/investor/General/CapitalGainsLossAccountStatement). Also, I downloaded my stock transaction data, and dividends data from Zerodha and imported them into my database.
+
+The next question is, how often do I update this data? well, I do a quick review of my finances every 2-3 months by downloading my primary bank statements, and credit card statements. I enter the important transactions, and expenses into my \`transactions\` table by category and tags. Then, I import the data into the database. I import my investment data every 6 months or so.
+
+ Here are some of the screenshots from my metabase.
+
+![Image showing line chart of credit card transactions](/media/metabase-credit-cards.png "HDFC and SBI credit card spend trend by month")
+
+![An image showing pivot table in metabase](/media/metabase-pivot-table.png "Pivot table on my transactions data that I track manually")
+
+![An image showing fastag transactions](/media/metabase-fastag.png "I even imported the fastag transaction data 😂")
+
+Unfortunately, I cannot disclose more information than this. Of course, I have so many dashboards.
+
+That's all folks! hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please comment on how you manage your finances. Thanks for reading!