Hledger: The Ultimate CLI Tool for Your Personal Finances

SUMMARY

Kaylee Beyene presents a tutorial on hledger, a free CLI tool for plain text accounting, demonstrating setup, double-entry transactions, and instant reports to achieve superior financial control without subscriptions.

STATEMENTS

• The speaker abandoned Mint and other paid apps three years ago, relying solely on a free plain text file for tracking finances, which provides more control, privacy, and longevity than any app.
• Hledger is a free, open-source command-line tool that installs easily on Mac, Windows, and Linux, enabling users to manage their entire financial life in a simple, human-readable text file.
• Placing the finance folder under Git version control creates automatic backups and historical snapshots, allowing users to "time travel" through their financial changes.
• Double-entry bookkeeping, the core mechanism of hledger, ensures every dollar movement is recorded in two accounts, preventing money from vanishing and mirroring systems used by banks and large corporations.
• Transactions in hledger use a hierarchical account structure with colons, such as "expenses:food:groceries," enabling flexible querying from broad categories to specifics.
• Running basic hledger commands instantly generates a balance sheet showing assets and liabilities, a register of expenses, or a professional income statement, all computed in real-time from the text file.
• To streamline usage, users can configure hledger to default to their journal file location via shell settings on Mac/Linux or environment variables on Windows.
• Bank CSV files can be imported directly into hledger with simple scripts, automating the entry of months of transactions without manual typing.

IDEAS

• A seemingly "ugly" plain text file can outperform sleek financial apps by offering unbreakable data ownership and resistance to vendor lock-in or service shutdowns.
• Versioning finances with Git transforms a simple text file into a robust, tamper-proof archive, revealing patterns or errors from any past date effortlessly.
• Double-entry bookkeeping demystified: it's just ensuring money flows visibly between accounts, eliminating the mystery of where funds disappear in single-entry systems like spreadsheets.
• Hierarchical account names with colons create an intuitive folder-like system for finances, allowing instant isolation of subsets like "just food expenses" without reorganizing data.
• Hledger auto-calculates the second side of every transaction to maintain balance, reducing errors and making entry as simple as specifying one amount.
• Real-time financial reports emerge from a text file in milliseconds, bypassing the delays, sync issues, and privacy invasions of cloud-based tools.
• No subscriptions or ads means no hidden costs or data mining, turning personal finance into a truly private domain controlled entirely by the user.
• Developers and accountants have quietly used plain text ledgers for decades, proving that simplicity scales better than feature-bloated software for long-term reliability.
• Importing bank CSVs via one command populates the journal with historical data, bridging the gap between legacy habits and a future-proof system instantly.
• Escaping subscription traps frees users from recurring fees while gaining tools that "outlive" apps, as text files remain readable across technologies for generations.

INSIGHTS

• Plain text accounting liberates users from corporate data silos, fostering true financial sovereignty in an era of volatile software ecosystems.
• Double-entry's balance imperative not only prevents errors but cultivates a deeper intuition for money's interconnected flows, akin to ecological balance in nature.
• Hierarchies in account naming mirror mental models of categorization, enabling scalable analysis that grows with complexity without overwhelming simplicity.
• Git integration for finances exemplifies how version control, borrowed from code, revolutionizes personal data management by providing forensic-like historical transparency.
• Instant, ad-free reporting from local files underscores privacy's premium: when you own the data, insights emerge without surveillance or monetization.
• Automation via CSV imports democratizes professional-grade bookkeeping, proving that CLI tools lower barriers for non-experts to achieve expert-level control.

QUOTES

• "This free plain text file gives me more control, more privacy, and more power than any app I've ever used. And it'll outlive every financial app on the market."
• "Every dollar that leaves one account must show up in another account. Money can't just vanish. It has to go somewhere."
• "See those colons? That's the magic. It's like folders for your money."
• "Every expense you've ever logged, chronological, just food expenses. That hierarchy we set up. This is why."
• "No ads, no subscription, no company tracking your spending habits to sell you credit cards. You own this completely."

HABITS

• Regularly commit changes to a Git repository after updating the journal file to maintain versioned backups of financial history.
• Use command-line interfaces daily for quick transaction entry and report generation to build familiarity with plain text accounting workflows.
• Configure shell environments once to set default paths, ensuring seamless access to the journal without repetitive commands.

FACTS

• Double-entry bookkeeping has been the standard for banks and Fortune 500 companies for centuries, ensuring mathematical accuracy in financial records.
• Hledger, as an open-source tool, supports all major operating systems and requires no internet connection for core operations once installed.
• Plain text formats remain readable indefinitely, unlike proprietary app data that can become obsolete if a company folds or changes formats.
• The plain text accounting community has sustained ledger-based systems for decades, predating modern personal finance apps.
• CSV import scripts can process months of bank statements in seconds, converting raw data into structured double-entry entries.

REFERENCES

• Official hledger documentation at hledger.org/doc.html for detailed guides on commands and features.
• Plain text accounting community resources at plaintextaccounting.org for broader tools and discussions.
• Installation guides for all OS at hledger.org/install.html, including Homebrew command for Mac users.
• GitHub repository at github.com/KayleeBeyene/hledger-setup-template with full hledger setup template and bank CSV import script.
• Separate video tutorial on CSV import and automation scripting, linked in the video description.

HOW TO APPLY

• Install hledger using platform-specific commands: on Mac with Homebrew, run "brew install hledger"; on Windows or Linux, follow the official installation guide to ensure it's added to your PATH, then verify with "hledger version."
• Create a dedicated finance folder and inside it, make a file named "main.journal" using any text editor; this file will store all transactions in plain text format.
• Initialize Git version control in the finance folder by running "git init," then make your first commit after creating the journal file to establish a baseline backup.
• Record a transaction in the journal file with the format: date description, then specify the first account like "expenses:food:groceries $50," followed by the second account like "assets:bank:checking" to auto-balance the entry.
• Generate reports by navigating to the finance folder in your terminal and running commands like "hledger balance" for a snapshot, "hledger register expenses:food" for expense history, or "hledger income" for an income statement, adjusting periods with flags like "-y this year."

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace hledger's plain text accounting to own your finances fully, escaping subscriptions for timeless control and privacy.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Switch immediately from spreadsheet or app-based tracking to hledger for unbreakable data portability and zero ongoing costs.
• Integrate Git from the start to safeguard your financial history against loss or errors with effortless versioning.
• Master double-entry basics through one simple transaction to unlock error-proof money tracking forever.
• Automate CSV imports from your bank to minimize manual entry and rapidly build a comprehensive ledger.
• Experiment with hierarchical accounts using colons to customize reports that reveal spending patterns intuitively.

MEMO

In a world dominated by glossy financial apps that demand subscriptions and harvest data, Kaylee Beyene offers a radical alternative: a humble text file powered by hledger, a command-line tool that puts users in total command of their money. Three years after ditching Mint and other services, Beyene swears by this "ugly" plain text ledger, which she says delivers unmatched control, privacy, and endurance. "It'll outlive every financial app on the market," she declares, showcasing instant balance sheets and income statements pulled from mere lines of text—no servers, no ads, no compromises.

At the heart of hledger lies double-entry bookkeeping, a time-tested method that ensures every dollar's journey is accounted for, much like the ledgers of ancient merchants or modern corporations. Beyene demystifies it effortlessly: money doesn't vanish; it shifts from one account to another, automatically balancing in the software. To start, users install hledger via simple commands—Homebrew for Macs, package managers for others—then craft a "main.journal" file in a folder they can even version-control with Git for historical snapshots. A grocery run becomes a quick entry: "expenses:food:groceries $50" offset by a bank withdrawal, with colons creating hierarchies for later slicing and dicing data.

The real magic unfolds in reports. One command yields a real-time balance sheet of assets and liabilities; another filters expenses to, say, just dining out this year. Beyene's screen fills with professional-grade outputs, all computed locally in milliseconds. For those daunted by manual input, she points to CSV imports from bank statements—scripts that bulk-load months of transactions, as detailed in her companion video. This isn't just thrift; it's empowerment, freeing finances from corporate whims and turning users into their own accountants.

Yet Beyene acknowledges the skepticism: Why trade user-friendly interfaces for terminal prompts? Her answer: Because ownership trumps convenience when stakes are high. Proprietary formats can trap data, terms shift overnight, and breaches expose habits. Hledger's plain text? Readable forever, editable anywhere, private by design. Developers and bean-counters have thrived on such systems for decades, she notes, and now anyone can join, armed with a tutorial that proves the CLI's quiet might.

As subscription fatigue mounts—Beyene herself canceled services without regret—the call to reclaim data rings louder. Hledger isn't flashy, but in its simplicity lies resilience: a tool that scales with life, unburdened by updates or outages. For power users tired of digital leashes, it's not just software; it's financial independence, one text file at a time.