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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • No one is mentioning gnucash and I think that’s beautiful.

    My partner and I used a spreadsheet from Google docs “budget template” or something. Moved on to gnucash after we wanted more features. I love it now, but it was a struggle to learn. Also a clunky interface. Also way more complex than we need. But I did once track down a tiny error in one of our bills, saving us a fraction of a dollar after hours of cross-checking!!

    (I do love it though; the tradeoff is that we don’t have to do repetitive manual entry and duplication of info. Instead, we have extensive notes on how to accomplish what we want!)









  • A change that was truly freeing for our family was to decide on just a few repeating standard meals. We did one night for tacos, one for some kind of fish, and one for some frozen food. Depending on how quickly you get bored, you can make the same or different things within those general outlines, but it helped narrow the decision tree at least for those nights.

    After some time, we expanded to an even more thoroughly planned schedule, but that’s not where I would try to start. Just a loose schedule for some go-to meals that aren’t too repetitive but also don’t require too much energy to plan, prep, and make. Then you have more energy for deciding on other nights, or some basis for planning the other nights if that’s what you want.