Top all-time · #20127
Sagar Behere
Personal blog · sagar.se/blogprogrammingsystems
Sagar Behere's personal blog at sagar.se covers programming and systems. Since 2022, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “Where Is the Money”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this post on building a personal task-management system: first define the workflows and task attributes you need, then pick an app. One commenter cites it as the reference they used.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I’m Sagar Behere, an engineer working on the safety and architecture of autonomous systems. For over fifteen years this site has collected whatever held my attention. Some of it technical, much of it not. The long pieces are essays, explanations and the occasional procedure; the short ones are built
Most-linked posts?
- Where Is the Money2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-04-13
- /blog/a-task-management-model/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-25
- DIY Multi-WAN Linux Router2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-10
What Hacker News says?
I use a home-grown system[1] that does not require sharing credentials with a third party, has partial/fully automated (depending on financial institution) fetching of transactions, auto-categorization learned from your previously categorized transactions, and the possibility to create pretty dashboards that can be shared with others. It's surprisingly simple (just a few lines of code) for personal use. [1]: https:/…
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Actual is going open-source”Submitted Hugo is awesome, its documentation is not as a story · 258 points
HN discussionhttps://sagar.se I really wanted to use something static, lightweight, and simple, without sacrificing UI features offered by 3-column Wordpress themes. Managed to do that with Hugo. There is also a so-called Digital Garden generated with custom scripts from the Dendron note taking software. Notes from the setup process are here: https://sagar.se/notes/hugo/
Comment linking /notes/hugo/
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Why Seafile is unique among file sync solutions as a story · 26 points
HN discussionI have created a personal finance tool that Works-For-Me and requires no sharing of login credentials with third parties. Something that scrapes financial transactions from bank and credit-card accounts in a fully automated way where possible, and semi-automated way where necessary, dumps those transactions into a database, automatically categorizes them, and creates dashboards for commonly used views and analyses.…
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?”Submitted How do you optimally learn a new programming language? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe data entry problem can be solved in some cases by fetching transaction data automatically using OFX from supporting institutions. Python’s OfxTools [1] works quite well for this. Quite a few large institutions in the USA support this (e.g. Amex, Chase) while some don’t (Bank of America). For the latter, transaction data can nevertheless be downloaded in ofx/qfx or csv format from the web interface, which can the…
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager”Submitted DIY Multi-WAN Linux Router as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe thing that really made task management stick for me was the creation of a personalized task management meta-model: What workflows do I wish to follow and which task attributes and views are needed to enable those workflows? After thinking through that, it became easy to find and configure a task management app in a way that it got consistently used. Here is the reference I used for creating my own task managemen…
Comment linking /blog/a-task-management-model/
on “A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done”Submitted Self-hosting from an IPv6-only VPS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt depends on your use cases. For example, - I have a scanner that saves scans to a network share. Having a linux-based SMB server on the local network is convenient and privacy-friendly, especially when the disks are encrypted. Doubt you can get privacy like that with a cloud service to which your printer can connect. - If you follow the 3-2-1 style of backups, having a fileserver at home is convenient for a solid…
Comment linking /blog/diy-multi-wan-linux-router/diy-multi-wan-linux-router-part-2/
on “Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?”Submitted We are all prompt engineers now as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI use a bunch of Python scripts to publish interlinked notes written with Obsidian[1] and, more recently, SiYuan[2] with Hugo. For me, this presents the best of both worlds. Obsidian and SiYuan are very nice to write and review notes. Hugo is good for publishing to the web. Having script automation to bridge the two means you can use the strengths of each tool without having to bend it for a use case it wasn’t desig…
Comment linking /notes/computers/hugo/digital-garden/publishing-siyuan-notes-with-hugo/
on “Repurposing Hugo as a wiki”Submitted Where Is the Money as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI use a home grown set of scripts to automatically pull transactions from banks/credit cards where possible, auto categorize them, and create shareable dashboards. All without sharing credentials with any third party. The method is described in this blog post: https://sagar.se/blog/where-is-the-money/
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Ask HN: How do you record your personal finances?”I think it helps if personal finance managers explicitly describe at least the following: 1. What automation, if any, exists for entering transactions? This is the most laborious/cumbersome part of personal finance. Some tools use financial data aggregators (plaid, yodlee etc.) that involves sharing login credentials with a third party, sometimes disabling 2FA, or other steps that are anti-security or anti-privacy.…
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager”The insight that worked for me is that it isn’t about the tools. Rather, it’s about having a solid plan, or methodology, that works for you, which can be implemented using whichever tools are convenient. Many folks, including me at one point, hop from one tool to another, looking for one that “feels right” and which will magically fix and organize your life.. or make you want to do that. Ain’t no such thing. But onc…
Comment linking /blog/a-task-management-model/
on “Ask HN: How do you organize your life?”I rolled my own solution[1] out of existing stuff that is mostly automated, does auto-categorization of transactions, has dashboards and sharing, and does not require sharing login credentials with third parties. However, financial institutions in the USA are making it harder to pull transactions via an API without involving third parties. So I’ll soon need to resort to scraping via selenium to automatically fetch t…
Comment linking /blog/where-is-the-money/
on “Ask HN: How do you manage your personal finances?”