watch-my-money

Analyze transactions, categorize spending, track budgets, flag overspending.

Workflow

1. Get Transactions

Ask user for bank/card CSV export OR pasted text.

Common sources: - Download CSV from your bank's online portal - Export from budgeting apps - Copy/paste transactions from statements

Supported formats: - Any CSV with date, description, amount columns - Pasted text: "2026-01-03 Starbucks -5.40 CHF"

2. Parse & Normalize

Read input, normalize to standard format: - Auto-detect delimiter (comma, semicolon, tab) - Parse dates (YYYY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY) - Normalize amounts (expenses negative, income positive) - Extract merchant from description - Detect recurring transactions (subscriptions)

3. Categorize Transactions

For each transaction, assign category:

Categories: - rent, utilities, subscriptions, groceries, eating_out - transport, travel, shopping, health - income, transfers, other

Categorization order: 1. Check saved merchant overrides 2. Apply deterministic keyword rules (see common-merchants.md) 3. Pattern matching (subscriptions, utilities) 4. Heuristic fallback

For ambiguous merchants (batch of 5-10), ask user to confirm. Save overrides for future runs.

4. Check Budgets

Compare spending against user-defined budgets.

Alert thresholds: - 80% - approaching limit (yellow) - 100% - at limit (red) - 120% - over budget (red, urgent)

See budget-templates.md for suggested budgets.

5. Detect Anomalies

Flag unusual spending: - Category spike: spend > 1.5x baseline AND delta > 50 - Subscription growth: subscriptions up > 20% - New expensive merchant: first appearance AND spend > 30 - Potential subscriptions: recurring same-amount charges

Baseline = previous 3 months average (or current month if no history).

6. Generate HTML Report

Create local HTML file with: - Month summary (income, expenses, net) - Category breakdown with budget status - Top merchants - Alerts section - Recurring transactions detected - Privacy toggle (blur amounts/merchants)

Copy template.html and inject data.

7. Save State

Persist to ~/.watch_my_money/: - state.json - budgets, merchant overrides, history - reports/YYYY-MM.json - machine-readable monthly data - reports/YYYY-MM.html - interactive report

CLI Commands

# Analyze CSV
python -m watch_my_money analyze --csv path/to/file.csv --month 2026-01

# Analyze from stdin
cat transactions.txt | python -m watch_my_money analyze --stdin --month 2026-01 --default-currency CHF

# Compare months
python -m watch_my_money compare --months 2026-01 2025-12

# Set budget
python -m watch_my_money set-budget --category groceries --amount 500 --currency CHF

# View budgets
python -m watch_my_money budgets

# Export month data
python -m watch_my_money export --month 2026-01 --out summary.json

# Reset all state
python -m watch_my_money reset-state

Output Structure

Console shows: - Month summary with income/expenses/net - Category table with spend vs budget - Recurring transactions detected - Top 5 merchants - Alerts as bullet points

Files written: - ~/.watch_my_money/state.json - ~/.watch_my_money/reports/2026-01.json - ~/.watch_my_money/reports/2026-01.html

HTML Report Features

• Collapsible category sections
• Budget progress bars
• Recurring transaction list
• Month-over-month comparison
• Privacy toggle (blur sensitive data)
• Dark mode (respects system preference)
• Floating action button
• Screenshot-friendly layout
• Auto-hide empty sections

Privacy

All data stays local. No network calls. No external APIs. Transaction data is analyzed locally and stored only in ~/.watch_my_money/.