I don't know if it's 90%, but I'd say the initial "import" is indeed what takes the most work, especially if as you said you imported 10 years of financial data. Myself, when I got started, I just imported my main asset accounts going back 2 years, and only started categorizing transactions from the initial import onwards, because it's way too much work otherwise.
Your net worth should be positive assuming you have more assets than liabilities, I think. It's your income that should be negative. For "FIRE" (but not really), I use https://github.com/beancount/beanlabs/blob/master/beanlabs/compensation/net-worth-over-time.py, modified with my own targets. It extrapolates from past data and assumes linear growth, so it's not perfect, but it might scratch the itch. You can go further and use an actual FIRE calculator, or projectionlab, or write your own thing. I learned Fava mainly by using it, and every now and then when I had questions (e.g. time filtering), a Google Search sometimes gave me an answer, but sometimes it didn't. For example, I kind of forgot that the income sheet can give you year-over-year data, and instead I rely on fava-dashboards for it, when in fact fava can just do it natively. Most of the questions I want answered are either very simple (how much did I spend on X this year) or very complicated. For the things that seem simple, I look for a way to do it in fava. For the complicated questions, I don't bother and just write queries myself or look for a plugin. On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 8:46 AM Viren Bhanot < goo...@virenbhanot.fastmail.com> wrote: > Thank you very much to all of you for taking the time to reply. I guess my > first mistake was to think that 'creating the ledger' was 90% of the work > done. It appears that that is just the start! From your responses, it is > clear that I need to spend more time learning bean-query, and then thinking > through all of the answers that I want. > > @Chary, the Jupyter notebook might be a great addition as it 'keeps state' > aka I can go back up the notebook to see older plots. I'd be interested in > when you release it. I agree with you and Adrian that with df + csv I > probably would end up recreating beancount + fava anyway. > > @Red, thanks for the detailed reply. > *Year by Year:* Ahh! I'm stupid. It says in big letters "Time". Don't > know why my eyes skipped that. > *Text contrast: *My Fava instance in firefox doesn't match that. The grey > is much too light. Screenshot below. > *Net Worth: *I think I have some errors with how I created my ledger, > because the numbers it spits out seem three times too high. Perhaps it has > to do with how I handle transfer of money between my different accounts > with different currencies. At least I know where to head for this. My net > worth should appear as a negative number due to the accounting sign > conventions right? > *FIRE: *I accept. It is indeed a bunch of assumptions that I must sort > out. My idea was to get a simplified answer assuming the trinity study, 4% > SWR and current savings rate+expenses continuing indefinitely. > *Restaurants: *Yes! Thank you. Exactly what I was seeking. The Balances > (yearly) table + the plot are perfect. > > As a general aside, where did you guys learn how to use Fava? I have a > preference for linearly-written documentation vs discord ask-around or just > aimlessly clicking around playing with things to figure it out. The latter > options always make me think I'm not yet *getting* how the tool behaves. > > Thank you all! > On Monday, 18 August 2025 at 18:22:55 UTC+2 Red S wrote: > >> You’ve received a lot of excellent responses and perspectives already. To >> add to those, it seems to me like most of the issues you presented either >> are already solved and are trivial, and you might need just a bit of >> exploration of the Fava UI to get what you want; or are actually very deep >> questions requiring custom solutions that you might not realize as such. >> Specifically: >> >> If I load my ledger into fava, I see some poorly-designed plots not >> useful for analyses. I don’t get the fuss. >> The plot area is too small, the colours don’t contrast well, the tooltips >> often goes off-screen, or covers the plot so I cannot see where I am. >> >> These seem to be UI issues that I don’t have, and I get annoyed rather >> easily with such issues. Platform/OS/version info might help. Recording a >> screen video and showing what you’re seeing would help a lot. >> >> Also, from what I can see, there is no way to limit the plots to just >> 2023 or 2024 etc. >> >> Type in 2023 or 2024 or ‘2023 - 2024’ into the ‘Time Box’ on the top. >> It’s very versatile. See here >> <http://172.19.83.239:5000/am-accounts/help/filters>. >> >> The most useful view is the Treemap of Expenses, but even their the text >> contrast is poor and I can’t seem to generate it year-by-year. The >> documentation also seems non-existent. >> >> The text contrast is 100% fine for me. I imagine this is an OS or browser >> setting at >> your end. Does it match the screenshot here >> <https://beancount.github.io/fava/>? >> >> But now what? How can I answer questions like: - What is my net worth? >> >> Ease: trivial. >> >> That’s what the “Balance Sheet” tab already shows in its default view. >> Pick “Converted to USD”. Or use this link >> <http://172.19.83.239:5000/main-accounts/balance_sheet/?conversion=USD&time=year+-+day&interval=day> >> and >> bookmark it. Replace USD with your currency. Replace ‘main-accounts’ with >> your title in your ledger: >> option "title" "Main accounts" >> >> >> - What is my savings rate? >> >> Ease: trivial. >> >> Income Statements -> Net Profit (default). Use “Converted to “ and >> “Yearly”. >> >> >> - What is my FIRE date at the current savings rate? >> >> Ease: moderate - complex, but there are solutions that make this >> reasonably easy. >> >> This is a much deeper question than you might realize, involving dozens >> of assumptions in your mind that no good software can figure out for you. >> What do you consider your threshold for retirement? Will you earn at the >> same rate between now and then? What’s your expense profile between now, >> retirement, and at various milestones? Eg: are there loans/mortgages to be >> paid off? Major expenses? Unforeseen expenses and how you’ll mitigate for >> those? Withdrawal pattern in retirement and how it might be based on how >> well the market is doing? Will you downsize? How will your tax rate and >> profile change? Assumptions about the market in the next few decades. Etc. >> >> I personally use some scripts with Beancount to feed all my ledger data >> into a calculator like ficalc.app that includes things I said above >> >> >> - How much have I been spending on Expenses:Restaurants >> year-over-year? >> >> Ease: trivial. >> >> Income Statment -> Click on Restaurants in the treemap -> “Changes” -> >> Pick “Yearly” on the top right -> “Balances (Yearly)” >> >> This is really nice: it gives you stacked bars that instantly let you >> zero in on problem areas while also giving you an expandable tabular >> treemap. >> >> Must I generate bean-queries for everything? Because that rather defeats >> the purpose of a ledger file in my opinion. I could just as easily list my >> postings on CSV and write python queries to it. >> >> I’d imagine 85-95% of your needs would not need bean-queries or other >> advanced solutions when you’re starting out. That’s the problem Fava >> solves. As your needs get more sophisticated, you’ll find yourself solving >> those. Beancount makes it very easy to write these custom solutions as >> fundamentally, Beancount is a versatile python library into your >> double-entry ledger. >> >> See a sample article >> <https://reds-rants.netlify.app/personal-finance/computing-taxes-with-beancount/> >> for example, or Fava-Miler <https://github.com/redstreet/fava_miler>, >> which are among many things I use Beancount for. >> >> What’s more, I don’t see how it could be interactive and *fast*? In the >> absence of a quick feedback loop, what exactly is the tedium of writing out >> all of my postings going to get me? >> >> Generally, answers everyone wants to see like some that you asked above >> are trivial. Advanced queries require custom solutions. >> >> Hope that helps! Happy accounting! >> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/a9992310-c8fd-4981-9629-e0c55eec1ccfn%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/a9992310-c8fd-4981-9629-e0c55eec1ccfn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CADMOc8Xv3BuuHGmCibAYugwxc96Z4JB-XocMT4z5r%2BCbodMJ5w%40mail.gmail.com.
