Re:A Python-Powered Budget Spreadsheet
by breckinloggins on Thursday October 24, 2013 @02:11PM
(#6606855)
I've discussed this at length elsewhere, so here's my abridged opinion.
The main issue is that a "mainstream" personal finance app must have the following two features:
- Automatic download of financial transactions
- Intelligent categorization from "STBCKS3134" to "Starbucks [Dining]"
Any tool that doesn't have those two features is doomed to be "niche"... used only by people who actually enjoy and/or are disciplined enough to enter their own data regularly.
In short, we need a "Twilio for personal finance" so that people can build creative solutions and not have to reinvent the wheel. There are startups out there that are trying to solve this.
The main issue is that a "mainstream" personal finance app must have the following two features:
- Automatic download of financial transactions
- Intelligent categorization from "STBCKS3134" to "Starbucks [Dining]"
Any tool that doesn't have those two features is doomed to be "niche"... used only by people who actually enjoy and/or are disciplined enough to enter their own data regularly.
In short, we need a "Twilio for personal finance" so that people can build creative solutions and not have to reinvent the wheel. There are startups out there that are trying to solve this.