shinglyu

I am usually quite proud of my personal finance setup, quarterly balance sheets and monthly income statements in Excel with nice visuals. Until I found missing information and wrong calculations every tax season...

Then I switched to hledger — a plain text accounting tool — and started using AI to help set it up. Now my budgeting and tax reporting basically run themselves.

My new post covers 3 practical examples:

Mar 19 at 11:00amBuffer
Show threadshinglyuMar 19
📊 Basic transactions & balance sheets — your full financial picture in a text file you actually own and version controlled
📈 Investment tracking with live market prices — query your portfolio value at any point in time
🇳🇱 Dutch Box 3 tax reporting — including foreign currency accounts (yes, even that TWD savings account)
The key insight that changed how I think about AI + finance: don't ask AI for the answer — ask it to write the hledger commands, then run them yourself.
Show threadshinglyuMar 19

You get automation without blindly trusting a model with your numbers. Write the import rules once, and everything stays deterministic and auditable after that.

If you want more control over their financial data without paying for yet another SaaS tool, this might be the workflow you've been looking for.

Full post: https://shinglyu.com/blog/2026/03/18/hledger-and-ai.html

#PersonalFinance #hledger #PlainTextAccounting #Expat #AI

hledger and AI: Managing Your Finances in Plain Text | Shing's Blog

Shing Lyu's blog