Visual Personal Finance

Team
Initiator : Fabien

Goal

use a system to connect accounts visually

manage your finance in a unified way as one single system
- making visually very clear that you have to earn more or spend less or both and adjust your proportions

You have to make strategical choice and every single buying/saving action is a decision that will have consequences for the rest (hence the notion of visual flow) : everything is an investment; even buying roses for your fiance.

(:pmgraphviz -- digraph { incomeA [label="incomeA " style=filled fillcolor=green]; incomeB [label="incomeB" style=filled fillcolor=green]; incomes [label="incomes" style=filled shape="invtrapezium" fillcolor=green]; nutrition [label="nutrition" style=filled fillcolor=white]; housing [label="housing" style=filled fillcolor=white]; savings [label="savings" style=filled fillcolor=green]; meat [label="meat" style=filled fillcolor=white]; rest [label="rest" style=filled fillcolor=white]; valve1 [shape="octagon"]; valve11 [shape="octagon"]; valve12 [shape="octagon"]; valve2 [shape="octagon"]; valve3 [shape="octagon"]; incomeA -> incomes; incomeB -> incomes; incomes -> valve1 -> nutrition; nutrition -> valve11 -> meat; nutrition -> valve12 -> rest; incomes -> valve2 -> housing; incomes -> valve3; valve3 -> savings [label="deduced from the rest" style=dotted]; } :)

Example diagram of the flow system

Abstraction of the problematic

flow is aggregated from your sources of income
flow is managed proportionally to key decision actuators (turning a wheel/valves)
- buying items accordingly
  - products
    - websites with API or online baskets
      - http://www.supermarche-saint-maur.simplymarket.fr/
  - services (including saving in a bank)
  - each valve provide a history of its position
    - showing how you make it change over time
- default templates provided (as actuators value) regarding the current and expected situation based on
  - age
  - family status
  - risk aversion
  - investment desire (expected return on investment)
  - health considerations (ethics, culture, ...)

In situ example

you wire your payment system to your bank account
your bank account to your local Wallmart
you turn a wheel to say you want to
1. spend 5% on food
2. save 80%
3. spend the rest on clothes
look at the result
1. asking yourself "Am I making increasingly better investments according to my expected lifestyle?"

All visually and keeping statistics of it

after each month detecting patterns to show if it's healthy, risky, etc...

The system would provide default templates based on your lifestyle

for example if you are a young woman spend more on clothes

Get details on a specific valve, you would see the history of the values

10% on clothes, 10% on food, 70% on house, 10% on saving in January
20% on clothes, 10% on food, 70% on house, 0% on saving in February
...

Inspired by

updating the PaymentSystems page with more and more micro-payments services
using visual "pipes" system likes Yahoo! Pipes or DERI Pipes
using my bank online website
discussions with Sylvain regarding real estate as a key investment

Proposed solutions

gather and organize components to connect to
- resellers APIs
  - Amazon shop
  - local supermarket with online catalogs
- PaymentSystems
- FinancialTools
WireIt open-source javascript library to create web wirable interfaces for dataflow applications, visual programming languages, graphical modeling, or graph editors.
- BPMN

Remarks

Why not use a classical pie chart which is perfect for repartition?
- doesn't involve a notion of flow and that you are part of system
  - no notion of continuity and future investment that a pipe system would give
How do you plan to handle inflation/interest/... rates?
- the objective is not to provide a fully fledge long-term investment platform but to provide a simple visual and coherent way to organize personal finance
How do you handle debt?
- no debt, the goal is precisely to avoid financially unhealthy practices!
- more seriously, it can be considered just another source income but with a visual difference (more likely red and scary)

References

The Evolving Online Finance Ecosystem by Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb January 2010
Mint.com started in 2007
- Free Personal Finance Software, Budget Software, Online Money Management and Budget Planner