beancount-budget 0.20.0

CLI envelope budget powered by Beancount

Beancount Budget

A command-line envelope budgeter.

• No custom transaction types needed: your budget lives in CSV files, and balances are computed from Beancount data.
• Set goals using quotas: budget for regular expenses, future large purchases, and more.

Getting started

Requirements

Executables:

• Python 3.11+
• column(1), from util-linux
• fzf

Libraries:

• beancount
• click
• python-dateutil

Installation

pip install beancount-budget

Configuration

budget needs to know some things:

• regexes for classifying your Beancount accounts; and
• the paths to your Beancount, budget, and quota files.

Running budget configure will write a configuration file to the current directory, or the directory you specify in budget -c /path/to/dir configure.

Untested use cases

If you

• handle more than one currency in your daily finances,
• have ever had to substantially refactor your Beancount accounts,
• have a stance on investments other than "once the money's in the brokerage, it's left my budget", or
• are anything other than a U.S. W-2 laborer,

you are encouraged to try this software and email your experiences to the author.

Example

First, I need some example Beancount data and a configuration for the budget:

$ bean-example --seed 0 --date-birth 2022-01-01 --date-end 2024-01-01 > main.beancount
$ budget configure
Example configuration written to `.bcbudget.toml`.
Use your preferred editor to finish configuration.
$ vi .bcbudget.toml

This is what the config file looks like after editing:

currencies = ["USD", "VACHR"]

[regexes]
cash = "^Assets:US:(BofA:Checking|Hoogle:Vacation)"
deductions = "^Expenses:(Taxes:|Health:.*:Insurance$)"
expenses = "^Expenses:"
income = "^Income:"
transfers = "^$"
liabilities = "^Liabilities:"
invest = "^(Assets|Income):US:ETrade:"
open = "^Equity:Opening-Balances$"

[paths]
beancount = "main.beancount"
budgets = "budgets"
quotas = "quotas"

And here is an empty budget.

$ budget show 2022-01
Category                   Budgeted  Expenses  Balances  Deviations
Expenses:Financial:Fees                  4.00     -4.00       -4.00
Expenses:Food:Groceries                219.35   -219.35     -219.35
Expenses:Food:Restaurant               329.62   -329.62     -329.62
Expenses:Home:Electricity               65.00    -65.00     -130.00
Expenses:Home:Internet                  80.14    -80.14     -160.14
Expenses:Home:Phone                     68.36    -68.36      -68.36
Expenses:Home:Rent                    2400.00  -2400.00    -2400.00
Expenses:Transport:Tram                120.00   -120.00     -240.00
Total                                 3286.47  -3286.47    -3551.47
Available                                       6649.63
Net income                                      6649.63

In this example, all budget commands that require a month will use 2022-01. In daily usage you will likely use commands like budget show unqualified.

Figuring income

The example data's first month contains an opening balance for a checking account ($3948.43), and two paychecks whose net balances are almost evenly split between the checking account and a 401k account ($1350.60 and $1200.00 respectively).

The budgeter's focus is on everyday spending, so 401k postings aren't counted as income. That leaves 3948.43 + (1350.60 * 2) = 6649.63.

Filling the budget

budget fill allocates money to categories until each has enough balance for the month's expenses and quotas. It tries to eliminate negative deviations.

$ budget fill 2022-01 > /dev/null
$ xsv select 'category,"2022-01"' budgets/USD.csv
category,2022-01
Expenses:Financial:Fees,4.00
Expenses:Food:Groceries,219.35
Expenses:Food:Restaurant,329.62
Expenses:Home:Electricity,65.00
Expenses:Home:Internet,80.14
Expenses:Home:Phone,68.36
Expenses:Home:Rent,2400.00
Expenses:Transport:Tram,120.00
$ budget show 2022-01
Category                   Budgeted  Expenses  Balances  Deviations
Expenses:Financial:Fees        4.00      4.00
Expenses:Food:Groceries      219.35    219.35
Expenses:Food:Restaurant     329.62    329.62
Expenses:Home:Electricity     65.00     65.00
Expenses:Home:Internet        80.14     80.14
Expenses:Home:Phone           68.36     68.36
Expenses:Home:Rent          2400.00   2400.00
Expenses:Transport:Tram      120.00    120.00
Total                       3286.47   3286.47
Available                                       3363.16
Net income                                      6649.63

budget trim does the opposite: it removes money from overbudgeted categories, in order to eliminate positive deviations.

$ budget add Expenses:Transport:Tram 100 2022-01
Expenses:Transport:Tram  (Balance now)    100.00
                         (Balance added)  100.00
                         [Available]      100.00
$ budget trim 2022-01
[Available]  (Balance now)            3363.16
             (Balance added)           100.00
             Expenses:Transport:Tram   100.00

Adding quotas

For more on the concept, see "Quotas" below.

Some of these categories cost a fixed amount per month, so it makes sense to start planning for them. To start, create quotas/$YOUR_CURRENCY.toml. (Unlike budgets, quotas are entirely manually set up.)

["Expenses:Home:Electricity".this]
type = "monthly"
amount = 65

["Expenses:Home:Internet".self]
type = "monthly"
amount = 80

["Expenses:Transport:Tram".wow]
type = "monthly"
amount = 120

The names were chosen to reflect their arbitrary nature. I use this in whole-category quotas.

$ budget fill 2022-01
Expenses:Home:Electricity  (Balance now)     65.00
                           (Balance added)   65.00
                           [Available]       65.00

Expenses:Home:Internet     (Balance now)     80.00
                           (Balance added)   80.00
                           [Available]       80.00

Expenses:Transport:Tram    (Balance now)    120.00
                           (Balance added)  120.00
                           [Available]      120.00
$ budget show 2022-01
Category                   Budgeted  Expenses  Balances  Deviations
Expenses:Financial:Fees        4.00      4.00
Expenses:Food:Groceries      219.35    219.35
Expenses:Food:Restaurant     329.62    329.62
Expenses:Home:Electricity    130.00     65.00     65.00
Expenses:Home:Internet       160.14     80.14     80.00
Expenses:Home:Phone           68.36     68.36
Expenses:Home:Rent          2400.00   2400.00
Expenses:Transport:Tram      240.00    120.00    120.00
Total                       3551.47   3286.47    265.00
Available                                       3098.16
Net income                                      6649.63

Quotas

Quotas are amounts you intend to budget each month. For example, in United States dollars:

• A goal quota: "I want to save $1200 for a vacation six months from now."
• Another goal quota: "I've already saved $10000 for a car, but I'm still looking for the right one."
• A monthly quota: "My groceries cost $200 per month, give or take."
• Another monthly quota: "I started going to a gym last week, and it'll cost $70 per month."
• A group of monthly quotas: "I give to several NPOs monthly, in these amounts: $20, $10, another $10."
• A fixed quota: "I will budget at least $3600 per month for candles, regardless of spending."
• A yearly quota: "My PO box costs $24 per month; I pay $288 each June."

The numbers are strictly illustrative and I will brook no complaints about them.

Each of these quotas are assigned to a Beancount account, such as Expenses:Gifts:NPO. Multiple quotas may be assigned to the same account. If none are assigned to an account, that account has a default quota of zero (which conceptually reduces to "no overspending").

A goal or yearly quota expects the balance to be fulfilled during the month before the stated end date. For example:

• If on January you begin a $1200 goal with July as the target month, the $200 you budget in June will fulfill the quota.
• If you have a $288 yearly quota payable each June, the $24 you budget in May will fulfill the quota.

Schema

Each quota is assigned a category and a name (both strings), and consists of the following fields, with TOML types in parentheses:

• type (string): One of monthly, yearly, goal, or fixed.
• amount (float): The amount to save.
• start (string, optional): The month to begin saving, in YYYY-MM format.
• by (string, goal quotas only): The month by which to save the required balance, in YYYY-MM format.
• month (integer, yearly quotas only): The month by which to save the required balance.
• hold (boolean, goal quotas only): Whether to protect the saved balance from budget trim.

Examples

This is how the aforementioned quotas would look in quotas/USD.toml:

["Expenses:Vacation"."Los Angeles"]
type = "goal"
start = "2019-01"
by = "2019-07"
amount = 1200  # from January to June, you'll budget $200/m

["Expenses:Basics:Groceries".this]  # "this" is arbitrarily chosen
type = "monthly"                    # to represent whole-account quotas
amount = 200

["Expenses:Basics:Candles".this]
type = "fixed"
amount = 3600

["Expenses:Basics:Health".gym]
type = "monthly"
amount = 70
start = "2019-01"

["Expenses:Gifts:NPO"."Department of Redundancy Department"]
type = "monthly"
amount = 20

["Expenses:Gifts:NPO"."Benevolent and Proactive Order of Llamas"]
type = "monthly"
amount = 10

["Expenses:Gifts:NPO"."Feed the Childrens"]
type = "monthly"
amount = 10

["Expenses:Goals:Car".this]
type = "goal"
start = "2018-01"
by = "2019-01"
amount = 10000
hold = true

["Expenses:Subs:USPS".this]
type = "yearly"
month = 6
amount = 288  # = $24/m

Further reading

• YNAB's four rules