Self-Hosted Finance Management
Replaces: Mint, YNAB, bank-provided budgeting tools
Self-host Firefly III to track budgets, expenses, and investments without sending your financial data to third parties.
big-tech-surveillancedata-breach
Phase
First Self-Hosting — needs server/hardware, 2-4h
General
Self-hosted personal finance manager with automatic transaction import.
- Firefly III: PHP/Laravel app, Docker deployment. Tracks accounts, budgets, categories, rules engine for auto-categorization. Supports double-entry bookkeeping. Full API.
- SimpleFIN: Bridges bank accounts to Firefly III via OFX/CSV import. No bank credentials stored by third parties — you run the bridge yourself.
- Agent integration: Hermes finance-agent skill provides natural language queries ("How much did I spend on food last month?"), weekly summaries, and automated reconciliation via the Firefly III API.
- Trade-off: Requires a running server and initial bank feed configuration. Data stays on your infrastructure — no third-party sees your spending patterns.
- Note: Firefly III does not connect to banks directly. SimpleFIN or manual CSV/OFX import is required for automatic transaction sync.
- Firefly III: PHP/Laravel app, Docker deployment. Tracks accounts, budgets, categories, rules engine for auto-categorization. Supports double-entry bookkeeping. Full API.
- SimpleFIN: Bridges bank accounts to Firefly III via OFX/CSV import. No bank credentials stored by third parties — you run the bridge yourself.
- Agent integration: Hermes finance-agent skill provides natural language queries ("How much did I spend on food last month?"), weekly summaries, and automated reconciliation via the Firefly III API.
- Trade-off: Requires a running server and initial bank feed configuration. Data stays on your infrastructure — no third-party sees your spending patterns.
- Note: Firefly III does not connect to banks directly. SimpleFIN or manual CSV/OFX import is required for automatic transaction sync.
Deployment
Self-Hosted
Firefly III (self-hosted budgeting + expense tracking) + SimpleFIN (bank transaction import)
Prerequisites
file-sync, backup-strategy