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Quick Start

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brookie edited this page Nov 6, 2026 · 4 revisions

Quick Start

From nothing to your own plan in about half an hour.

Using the Mac app? Its first launch creates the plan folder for you: skip to step 2, then use the menu-bar icon's Show Plan Folder to find the data folder. Otherwise, install first (Installation) and start at step 1.

Contents

1. Create a plan folder

Keep it somewhere private, outside the financial_planner code folder:

cd financial_planner
pixi run financial_plan init ~/MyFinancialPlan

This creates config/ (starter settings with comments) and an empty data/ folder. See Plan Folder.

2. Export your transactions

From each bank and credit-card website, download about 12 months of transactions as CSV and save the files in ~/MyFinancialPlan/data/. Any layout works; you'll describe it in step 5.

Tips:

  • Export every account that pays for household spending (checking, each card).
  • Re-export later and drop the new files in data/. If a source's file pattern matches them (e.g. data/visa*.csv), they're picked up automatically.

3. Open the app

pixi run financial_plan start ~/MyFinancialPlan

Your browser opens at http://127.0.0.1:8765. With no data yet, a banner points you to Settings. Click the gear (Settings) at the top right.

4. Add your household

Settings › Household

Settings › Household

  • Add partner for each adult: age, take-home pay per month, Social Security estimate at 67, any pensions and retirement accounts. Use generic names (Partner A).
  • Add child for each child: age and 529 balance and monthly contribution.

Settings › Savings & income: monthly savings transfers, brokerage/stock accounts, other income.

Settings › Assumptions: the retirement age to start from, health insurance after retiring, the retirement tax rate. The defaults are fine to begin with.

Details: Settings Editor.

5. Connect your CSVs

Settings › Data sources

Settings › Data sources › + Add data source, once per kind of export:

  1. Name it (e.g. "Visa card").
  2. Pick the file (or upload it).
  3. Click Read columns from the file. The app guesses the date, description and amount columns.
  4. Check the guesses; pick whether amounts are in one signed column or separate money-out / money-in columns.
  5. Click Preview: purchases should say "money out", refunds and deposits "money in".
  6. Save.

Details: Data Sources.

6. Categorize

The rule dialog

Settings › Categorize lists every transaction and how it was categorized.

  1. Filter Matched by: No rule (default) to see what nothing caught.
  2. Click a transaction, pick a category, and choose how widely to apply it: just this one, every description containing some text, etc. The dialog shows how many transactions the rule matches.
  3. Mark transfers, card payments and paychecks as an ignore category so they don't count as spending.

Repeat until the uncategorized list is short. Details: Categorizing and Rules and Categories.

7. Explore

Click Back to the budget. Start with the strip at the top (income, spending, savings, taxes, left over), then try changing a number in the Monthly Planner. See Tour of the App.

What next

🏠 Home

Getting started

Using the app

Setting up your plan

Reference

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