Actual Money

I set up Actual Budget as a self-hosted finance tracking system to maintain full control over my financial data. Instead of relying on third-party services, this setup ensures that all transactions and budgeting data remain within my own infrastructure.

The service runs as a standalone Docker container and stores its data on a mounted NAS path. It is exposed internally and routed externally through Caddy and Cloudflare Tunnel.

version: "3.8"
services:
actual_server:
image: actualbudget/actual-server:latest
container_name: actual_server
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "5006:5006"
volumes:
- /mnt/nas/actual/data:/data
env_file:
- .env
networks:
- caddy_net
networks:
caddy_net:
external: true

Explanation

• image: Uses the official Actual Budget server image
• container_name: Explicit naming for easier reference across services
• ports: Exposes the app internally; external access is handled via reverse proxy
• volumes: Maps persistent storage to NAS to ensure durability and backups later
• env_file: Keeps configuration and secrets separate from compose
• networks: Connects to shared caddy_net so Caddy can route traffic

Notes

• Financial data is stored on NAS, making it independent of container lifecycle
• Reverse proxy + Cloudflare tunnel removes need for direct exposure
• Backup strategy is important here and should be added