I've tried budget-tracking apps and spreadsheets but none of em lasted more than a couple weeks. VisiData is the only tool that got me to stick to expense-tracking and it's been over a year now. Outside of meal-prep and programming, expense-tracking has been the most impactful skill/habit I picked up in adulthood. So ty VisiData!

What I like most about it is that nothing besides the income/expenses are "saved," so things like sums have to be re-derived each time I open my expense tracker. That probably sounds inconvenient but the info I need is usually just a few key-strokes away.

To get the sum of a column I just hover over the column and press +, the word "sum", then Enter. If I hit Shift-w on the pay-period column (each record in my expense-tracker "belongs" to a 2-week pay-period), I get that sum grouped by pay-period. Finding out how much I spent per period on each item category is just hitting ! on pay-period, then Shift-w on the category column.

None of these summaries get saved (though I think you could), so I don't have to worry about where or how to store this information. With spreadsheets I had to find appropriate locations for this sort of info, or think about if they should be stored on separate sheets. Clicking between 5+ spreadsheet sheets, potentially with different layouts has unfortunately become too cumbersome for me.