Tag Archives: wallet

June 29, 2025: Weekly Note 2025/02

  • For the last couple of weeks, Ookie has been going to a day-care for a few hours. She gets to play with other kids there. “Playing with other kids” has been the reason for sending her there. After a few days of fuss, she now seems to be enjoying her time there. My very friendly neighbors think that she is too young to go to day-care!
  • Somehow I managed to run 400 km so far! My pace has been slowest. I still need to complete 600 km in the second half of the year.
    • I’ve started paying for RUNALYZE. It is nice that more and more services are offering purchase-parity plan for subscription for Indian users. I’ve been using jonasoreland/runnerup: A open source run tracker for a long time to sync my runs with Runalyze/Strava. One dollar=Rs 100, but it is roughly Rs 30 in purchase parity, so you have to reduce the pricing by third for Indian users! If you are doing this, I’d be happy to work for you for a purchase parity adjusted salary😛.
  • I added another small tool that generates QR codes with a logo. You can find it here https://tools.maxflow.in/tool/qrcodes.
  • I had a minor meltdown at work 😭. Not proud of it. It’s hard to keep cool when many co-workers write almost empty email without a subject/body to report bugs. I’ve been trying to get them to use GitLab issues for a few months now. Either, I need to disengage from work a little at this workplace, or find a place where co-workers are adults and not only they come to work but also know how to structure and plan it.
  • I read Programming as theory building : Naur.pdf and found it illuminating. I am pretty sure I’d have yawned reading it some 10 years ago. This article — written a year before I was born — put “programmers” at the center of software development. I don’t think I can reduce this article to soundbites. Do read. I learnt about this article from HN.

naur-prog-as-theory-building.png -- Naur - Programming as theory building
– I wrote another small utility to remind me that a LWN article has finally become open. I am not able to pay for LWN subscription due to HDFC Bank related issues and I forget to revisit the link when it is open. Perhaps I can rent a VPS in this money and read the article two weeks later?! LWN is a great resource and I feel bad for not paying for it though!
– My Wallet from Budgetbakers is no longer syncing with HDFC Bank. Their support is working on the issue. HDFC seem to have changed their login flow again! My another bank, DBS Bank, doesn’t have saving account API🤣. I opened account here thinking that they are “tech-savvy”!
– I’ve been thinking about hiring a lot these days. At my current company which is an early stage startup, they have been struggling to hire a dev for the last 5 months! I was part of a few interviews — some went well and most were meh, but not able to hire for 5 months feels a bit extreme!
– Both mango trees in my street has mangoes this year! Here is my daughter Ookie playing with her friend. Fortunately, like many streets in Bengaluru, this street is a dead end and have no traffic.

signal-2025-06-28-192959_002.jpeg -- Ookie trying to convince her co-worker to use Rust while Kalu the fifth doing her stuff

Personal Accounting and Budgeting Apps

I was looking for an easy solution for budgeting and accounting. I did a Reddit search, and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaInvestments/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaInvestments/">r/IndiaInvest</a> was quite helpful.

I shortlisted two apps from the search: Wallet from Budgetbakers and FinArt. Both of them are pretty new in the market. Both are feature rich. I did a feature comparison. I finally chose Wallet over FinArt.

Wallet from Budgetbakers FinArt
Does it have a web app? ✔️But advance features are in mobile all. Still very decent. ❌👎🏾
Android App ✔️ ✔️
How do I import data? It sync with bank. Supports many bank. Also allows uploading XLS/CSV and of-course manual entries🙄. Reads SMS and create sheets from them. It is a both bug and feature. Doesn’t require syncing with bank. Much easier to get started.
Data Backup You can export data from Wallet in CSV/XLS format. No automatic export as of now. 💯 Sync with Google Drive as a simple CSV File.
Privacy GDPR compliant. Based in Europe. Reads your SMS! Even when syncing with their database is opted-out, they send merchant information to their server👎🏾. Hope they change it in paid version and also play fairly.
Price $28, Rs. 2250, for lifetime. Yearly plan available too. Rs. 800 per year.
Advance features Automatic rules to label transactions. Didn’t use long enough to explore all the features.
Family support You can add multiple accounts and have one dashboard for family. Bank must be able to sync. Connect to the same WiFi and it can read SMS from another device.

I hope Wallet from Budgetbakers implements periodic Export to Gdrive or Export to Nextcloud soon.

What I am looking forWallet from BudgetbakersFinArt
Does it have a web app?✔️But advance features are in mobile all. Still very decent.❌👎🏾
Android App✔️✔️
How do I import data?It sync with bank. Supports many bank. Also allows uploading XLS/CSV and of-course manual entries🙄.Reads SMS and create sheets from them. It is a both bug and feature. Doesn’t require syncing with bank. Much easier to get started.
Data BackupYou can export data from Wallet in CSV/XLS format. No automatic export as of now.💯 Sync with Google Drive as a simple CSV File.
PrivacyGDPR compliant. Based in Europe.Reads your SMS! Even when syncing with their database is opted-out, they send merchant information to their server👎🏾. Hope they change it in paid version and also play fairly.
Price$28, Rs. 2250, for lifetime. Yearly plan available too.Rs. 800 per year.
Advance featuresAutomatic rules to label transactions.Didn’t use long enough to explore all the features.
Family supportYou can add multiple accounts and have one dashboard for family. Bank must be able to sync.Connect to the same WiFi and it can read SMS from another device.

FinArt has a good UI, and I would have preferred it if none of my banks synced with Wallet from Budgetbakers. I was alarmed that someone was reading all of my messages, though. But I think this app has a lot of potential especially in our country where most banks won’t provides API to sync transactions. Rs 800 per year is not a bad price as long as they deliver a first-rate product. It is roughly $35 per year (in purchasing power parity terms).

I am enjoying Wallet from Budgetbakers and have been promoting it in my circle. So much so that I’ve changed my salary account back to HDFC bank from DBS Bank. I was disappointed in DBS bank that it didn’t sync (only current accounts can be synced). Also, the CSV export from DBS bank was terrible with many unreadable characters 🤕. As a bank that prides itself on being tech-savvy, this was a very embarrassing situation since I was singing their praises in my circle.