u/Far_Butterfly_9282

OpenAI launched chatGPT personal finance last week. Bank data via Plaid, dashboard, ask it questions about your spending. Same plumbing as Monarch, YNAB, Copilot. Just chat instead of a dashboard.

who this actually serves? i see here tons of people who left YNAB looking for something better.

Feels like a good fit if you already pay $200/mo for chatGPT Pro, live in the US, want a conversational interface, and don't mind your data sitting on OpenAI's servers. Less good if you want to keep your data when you cancel, hand it to an accountant, switch AI tomorrow, or run a freelance business.

Interesting thing to me is that chatGPT finance is the same architecture as everyone else. data on their servers, behind their interface. Just a different interface.

Tools like Tiller and Finsemble (co-founder disclosure on the second one) do something different. Bank data lands in a Google Sheet in your own Drive. You keep the file if you cancel. Point chatGPT or Claude at it if you want the chat layer.

Different crowd. Chat-first people want the smartest interface. Spreadsheet-first people want the data layer they own.

is the chatGPT launch making anyone here reconsider? or does it feel like the same thing in a new shape?

https://preview.redd.it/p62i3agcf52h1.png?width=1620&format=png&auto=webp&s=086360fb1e1c37c93b02145c925be0501b7cdd9e

Finsemble budget tab

i posted here a few weeks ago about a google sheets based alternative to YNAB and monarch. some of you signed up. now i'm at the point where i want feedback from people who think hard about budgeting before i lock in design decisions

three specific things i'm wrestling with:

1. zero-based budgeting anchor. i don't have an "Available to Budget" cell at the top of the budget tab the way Aspire and YNAB do. right now you set monthly amounts per category and the tab shows spent vs budget. coming from YNAB, does that feel like enough, or does the missing "every dollar has a job" mechanic break the methodology for you?
2. category slots. I have 14 standard expense categories (Food, Transportation, Shopping, Housing, Utilities, Entertainment, Healthcare, Subscriptions, Travel, Personal Care, Education, Gifts, Taxes, Other) plus 4 custom user-defined slots. is 4 custom enough? people i've talked to want 10+. anyone here actually use that many custom categories?
3. what am I missing entirely? If you switched to my tool tomorrow, what would you immediately go looking for and not find?

happy to share the template with anyone who wants to poke around. genuine feedback only, I'd rather hear "this won't work for me because x" than polite nice to haves...

I have tried most of the popular alternatives over the years. Always end up back in a spreadsheet because it is the only place I actually feel in control of the data.

The frustrating part was never the sheet itself. It was keeping it updated. I was spending a couple of hours every Sunday exporting CSVs from four different accounts, pasting them in, fixing categories, updating currency rates manually.

Eventually I just built the automation. Connected my accounts via Plaid, syncs everything into a Google Sheet in my own Drive automatically. Transactions, recurring charges, budget tracking, investment holdings, the whole thing.

The part I care about most: the sheet is mine. Lives in my Google Drive. If I walk away tomorrow it stays there forever. No company holding my financial history hostage.

Been testing it with a small group for a few weeks. Curious if this resonates with anyone here or if I am solving a problem that is just mine.

https://preview.redd.it/ctfvy0ps36zg1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a004d24922af97ae075e799f8fdeab3260a7f1c