Using GnuCash as a simple net worth tracker

At Messcat, we use hledger for accounting. It works well for us because most of the team is comfortable with technical tools, and plain-text accounting makes it easy to automate reports and keep everything simple.

I wanted something similar for my personal finances.

For years, I had been using spreadsheets to track things like credit card bills, income, assets and net worth. It worked, but I never really had a system I liked.

I tried hledger for myself too, but at the time I was not very comfortable working in the terminal. This was before AI agents made that kind of setup much easier for me.

So I started looking for something similar with a normal interface and found GnuCash.

GnuCash is free and open source, and for now I use it in a very simple way. I am not importing every bank transaction or trying to track every expense.

I mostly use it as a net worth tracker.

I add my assets, credit card bills, EMIs, taxes I still need to pay, and anything else I owe. Once that is updated, I get one number that tells me roughly what my net worth is at that point.

That turned out to be much more useful for me than trying to track every small expense.

I used to spend a lot more time thinking about how to reduce spending. I found that quite tiring, and it often felt like I was stopping myself from doing things just to make the spreadsheet look better.

Now I mostly look at the bigger number instead: are my assets growing?

That makes the whole thing much easier to manage. I only need to update a few numbers once in a while, and I still get a clear picture of where I stand.

At some point, I might move back to hledger and automate more of this, especially now that AI agents make the setup easier. For now, GnuCash does exactly what I need without making personal finance feel like another job.