Envelope budgeting: planning ahead for known expenses by regularly putting money into pre-determined categories, or envelopes. This week I show how I’m doing that in plain text accounting, specifically, Beancount.
Medium (includes blog link) https://medium.com/@miscellaneplans/ptpl-206-plain-text-accounting-envelope-budgeting-in-beancount-8a5b49b3281b
Blog https://ellanew.com/2026/05/04/ptpl-206-beancount-envelope-budgeting
#plainTextAccounting #budgeting #plainText
G'day all. I'm pleased to announce hledger 2.0 preview release 2, with many refinements to lot tracking, based on user testing.
(And also hledger 1.52.1, which adds hledger 2-compatible G and U account types to hledger 1.)
- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/tag/1.99.2
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-04-28-hledger-1992
- https://hledger.org/install
Release contributors: Simon Michael, Joshua Chapman.
I also have a Beancount repository that has every penny I've made for writing since the beginning. And almost every expense so I know exactly how much in the red I am for my relatively inexpensive hobby. :D
G'day all. A poll:
Should hledger 2 always infer market prices from @/@@ transacted prices, like Ledger ? (and drop the --infer-market-prices flag)
- Yes, having this always on would be harmless and more useful
- No, having it always on, or changing it, would be harmful
- Other, see my reply
Or vote in the matrix poll: https://matrix.to/#/!6BCfAOV-btRKuqChph9Z_ppkIj8KttMoIL_rB4eU0Os/$JveSoLuLOWS_Mg10JDUJKnu33RAclZML03JQ4Lp46qY?via=asgard.chat&via=matrix.org&via=tchncs.de
Glad it has helped you! A few things that might help:
- other rust projects linked at plaintextaccounting.org
- https://hledger.org/SPEC-journal.html
- https://hledger.org/hledger.html#amounts (manual is a kind of spec)
- amountp and friends in Hledger.Read.Common
And, hledger 2.0 preview 1 (AKA 1.99.1), which adds
automated lot tracking and capital gains calculation,
improvements to `print`'s beancount output,
and a new policy for AI-assisted development.
This is the first hledger release to explore AI-assisted development, so please do check out the evolving AI policy/FAQ: https://hledger.org/AI.html
- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.99.1
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-28-hledger-1991
I'm pleased to announce a #hledger double release! First, hledger 1.52, with
more robust paging,
faster valuation,
commodity tags,
and cost basis annotations which are preserved and can be exported (examples provided).
- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.52
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-20-hledger-152
- https://hledger.org/install
Ellane
Baptiste BCA
Simon Michael
D. Moonfire
John-Paul Flintoff