Ever wondered where all your money goes?
This being the year of the "credit crunch" Karen and I have decided to take our finances a little more seriously and break the habit of just spending whatever we have. We've needed to do this for a while, really, but the "economic downturn" has made the need all the more prescient.
Phase 1 was to go on "spending lockdown" which we did in the last quarter of 2008. It's working well - not spending money. It's actually quite nice. Soul-cleansing in fact. We now think about purchases and only buy what we really need rather than just getting whatever we want.
Phase 2 is to analyse where the money we do spend is actually going. For a while now we've felt a bit like the amount coming in to the house does not equal the conceived amount going added to the feeling of remaining "wealth", negative or otherwise. We literally can't work out where it all goes.
Not that I am that naive. I know all too well that lots of seemingly small amounts soon add up to a big total. A hundred pounds here, a hundred pound there. It soon adds up to a thousand. Likewise, the thousands soon add up.
Anyway, what I want to show you is the tool we're going to use to analyse outgoings. You'll be pleased to hear I chose to record everything in a Notes database! I've set it up so that Karen has a bookmark on her browser to a webpage where she can easily input her expenditure each night. Surprisingly, she's "on board" and as keen as I am to make a go of it.
Here's the database we're using to record where every penny goes. That's just a dummy copy though. You can mess about with it as much as you like.
For now it's just a simple app that lets us enter the data. To come is the analysis - with pie charts, monthly drilldowns, etc etc.
Most of you will probably know what I used to build the app as soon as you see it. For the rest of you it's called Flex and I'll talk more about it in my next post. if anybody wants a copy of the DB to start recording their own outgoings let me know (all you need is to plonk it on your own secure server somewhere).
Update: you can download a copy here.
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Jake, it is not ok to save your money in these times because you are amplifying the economic downturn by doing this.
Thanks Jake - - Am also starting to SAVE $$ - Please send me a copy -
I just added a Zip of it Palmi - see link at bottom of original posting, above.
Jake,
Looks great, just 2 thought:
- how about putting the most recent addition on top, te make the chance of double bookings less
- how about spending loads of money, to help boost the economy ;-)
Arno
Love that you're experimenting with Flex, as more or less no other N/D bloggers have written about Flex/Domino. I look forward to more content like this!
(Found one bug. Sorting of Amount is a little funky.)
All you need now is a nice little app to report on all of that data!
@Mark, not sure if your remark is tongue in cheek but I disagree. We have a personal responsibility to manage our own finances according to our means.
As individuals we can't be responsible for the Macro economic effects of our own responsible behaviour.
The economy has to adjust to the kind of demand that we as individuals can comfortably sustain in the long term.
I can't continue to service the credit card companies, and banks need to lend money and charge interest. I don't plan to hoard money and I don't think Jake is talking about doing that either.
If you're really serious about this, then don't reinvent the wheel. Use Quicken instead.
My wife and I have used it since 1991 to track every dollar that has passed through our hands.
It's been especially useful when setting goals.
Hi Jake,
Glad to see you will be doing some blogging on flex. It seems to provide much the same capabilities one can implement using ajax/frameworks based on prototype and various others. My question is, does it have a shorter learning curve for building rich internet apps than the other alternatives out there?
Jake, you might try looking at mint.com for inspiration. They do a number of helpful things well. It could give you some ideas as to what you want to add to your own application.
I second Timothy on this. Get yourself a good money tracking software - look at what your banks suggest.
Here in Switzerland, I use a software called Swissmoney who calls our family bank account and imports all the positions. The software allows for filters to be built in which categorize these positions.
When I first made this analysis, there was a surprising discrepancy between what we perceived as being a luxury and what was really expensive. At the time, it showed that we really should look out for our phone costs, but we could buy ourselves silly with CDs. Also the car, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a big money guzzler.
Another tip is paying with cards, which leaves a trace on your bank account. I generally have no idea where I am spending half of my cash.
@Jason: Mark is referring to what John Maynard Keynes named "the paradox of thrift". Actually, considerded macroeconomically, The US and the UK have had atrociously low savings rate, and it is a good idea to start saving for anybody in the UK.
I'm not sure if there is a similar service in the UK, but Quicken (makers of TurboTax) have released a free tool to do this online in the US. While not a very expansive tool as of yet, it offers some nice features for free.
http://quicken.intuit.com/
With that said, you can't be a developer without building one yourself ;-)
Re Quicken - if you wants to save some $$ and go the Open Source route, try Gnu Cash. It's a full up accounting app - you can manage as much or as little as you like. It uses double entry accounting so, if you're not an accountant, the learning curve is a tiny bit steep but one you 'get it' it's a nice app.
No crap-ware
No annual renewal fees
Not Quicken.
Thanks all!
I should have made it clear that I'm in the process of learning Flex. I always find the best way to learn anything is to dive in and build something. This seemed like a perfect case. I'm not really looking for a 3rd party app at this point.
Tommy. It's not widely discussed by Domino bloggers but a Google for "domino flex" brings up a few bits and bobs. Mainly just demos of how to read ?ReadViewEntries XML. I'm hoping to take it a bit further.
Niall. It's so much easier to develop with Flex than something like Ext! Adobe's Flex Builder (Eclipse-based) is such a breath of fresh air.
Brian. I might take a look. I saw mint.com listed in the Flex showcase, so I guess it's also based on it.
Jake
MS Money gets my vote here.
Downloads and reconciles my statements against what I've put in manually and it includes budgeting, saving, loan calculators too.
well worth it IMO.
(not to put down your efforts Jake - I like the database. but Money or Quicken really are indespensible)
Hi Jake,
I wish you a 2009 "without recession" ;)
- Please send me a copy -
Why are we getting sidetracked with which deadly dull books package people use? - I'm pretty sure it's not what Jake is trying to show us here.
I almost wet myself with excitement when I opened Jake's demo and saw the little loading mask. I had no idea it was something called flex....Excellent work Jake. This is what codestore's all about...Making domino websites look like they weren't built in domino.
Hi Jake
You may want to be able to consider, export functions so futher down the track, after you have entered loads of data you can export it to 3rd party apps for TAX purposes. Here in Australia you can import that csv or other formats into Quicken which can do your Tax return. Also the Aust Govt lets you submit your tax electronically.
Adam
You've hit the nail on the head there Nick. I'm just trying to tease you all in to a frenzy of excitement over what I'm about to start talking about - Flex.
Adam. There's actually an Export to Excel button on there. It's just hidden as I was having issues with learning how to layout components.
I'm serious about being well excited about this one Jake.
Any domino developer who isn't should immerse themselves in sharepoint drudgery for a while like I have to.
Wanted to do this kind of thing for ages, and tried lots of things that didn't really work.
I'll be visiting flex online with my credit card grasped in my sweaty palm, so keep the posts coming.
Jake FYI...seems to be a large gap from where the Codestore banner/header is and where the content for this article begins--seems to isolated to my very down level version of IE (6.x) as it works fine in Firefox.
Hi Matt. It's because of wide elements in the main area - such as images, but normall (and in this case) PRE/CODE tags.
IE 6 is the only one to suffer really - at low resolutions. It's not a problem in later browsers, so it's low on my to-do list. Sorry.
Good to see more of flex with Domino. Mark Barton introduced me to it and I wish I had more time and customer interest to play with it.
btw - Savings CTF = Capture The Flag? Never knew you were such a hard core gamer Jake! ;-)
Child Trust Funds Jerry.
Hey Jake, this great news!
If you are going to Lotusphere, Mark Ambler and I are hosting a BOF on Flex with Domino. Here is a link if you can make it:
https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/lotus/lsph2009.nsf/sessionabstract?openform&sessionid=BOF209
We are also starting a blog with some sample content that we are going to discuss during the BOF:
http://flexingdomino.blogspot.com/
Our internal customers have been very satisfied with the rich applications ( 2 so far ) that we have been able to deliver and it has created even greater awareness for Domino within our company.
I hope that we can all learn from each others experiences.
Cheers,
Angel
Look forward to reading what you've learnt Angel. Didn't I meet you at Lotusphere in 2003? I remember your name anyway. Won't be at this year's though. Good luck
Yes, that was me. The name is fairly common in S. Florida with all the hispanic population but I know in other parts of the world it's not so common.
Anyways, hope to read some great post from you this year! Cheers!
Jake, really looking forward to seeing you delve into the Flex side of things. I've moved from Notes dev to mostly Flex and Java, but still have Notes bits and pieces.
I've used Notes and as metadata store for Flex, but will be interested to see where you go with it.
Ben
We have just finalized a project with Domino and Flex. It is a RIA application that uses grid-functionality and we started building it with Dojo but due to low performance we had to change to something else (the application is spreadsheet-like and dojo's grid was so slow). We selected Flex and like it alot.
"You've hit the nail on the head there Nick. I'm just trying to tease you all in to a frenzy of excitement over what I'm about to start talking about - Flex."
This is going to come across as cynical, but your post gave us the impression that you were going to be serious about controlling your finances. Instead it appears that you are using your finances as a reason to learn a new technology.
Learning how to combine Domino and Flex will be a great investment of your time - when it comes to developing your skill set, but it's going to be hugely inefficient when it comes to managing your finances.
If in a year, your app does much more than scratch the surface of the capabilities of Quicken or Money, then my hat off to you.
If this becomes a vital tool in your home that you are using ten years from now, then my hat off to you.
But the answer for most people to each question will be "No".
As someone who hasn't carried a checkbook since 1991 and used Quicken to pay off college loans equal to over 50% of household income in just four years while buying a house in the process, I urge to rethink this. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, "Think of the children!".
OMG!!! You put WAY more thought in this then what is necessary!
So you misunderstood the question in the title, big deal! Who cares? Jake's personal finances are his business and how he wants to title an article is his business as well.
Personally Jake, I think its awesome that you are starting to discuss Flex and as nearly everyone else has commented I look forward to seeing what you can do with it.
Yeah, some people need to take a deep breath and count to ten before posting methinks. Twenty, even.
Thanks for the download Jake, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of Flex.
Hey Jake,
I'm thrilled to see you have found Flex. I have been developing with Flex for the last year. I've been a die hard Notes Domino developer / admin since R2.x on OS/2. But now using Flex especially the builder, written in Eclipse. OMG I can't bear to go back to the Designer client.
Over the last year I have built ( in Flex ) a brand new front end on an Enerprise Information System I built in Notes / Domino over the last 10 years. I"m using a very cool framework called Cairngorm. It is a superb MVC architecture for Flex.
Using Domino as my back end is a bit of a pain, but having all my worflow, messaging etc. can't be beat. I use web services written in Java to fetch the data. I have found a number of interesting bugs in the web services side of Domino.
How are you accessing your data? If you ever get stuck using web services give me a shout. I've been through it all over the last year. The real bummer I have with web services and flex is performance when the data gets large. I notice a bit of a slow down after 500 records. At 1000 records its very slow, after that it's not even usable. I"m just starting to look at building a generic paging web service.
Anyhow, glad to see your using Flex good luck with it. Let me know if I can help ever.
Steven Rieger
Looks great... question though... it seems that I have to exit the browser (shut down) and re-open for the data grid to reload with my entry. I am assuming there is a call that can be made to reload the data grid after new entry... or is it there and just not working for my ie. version 6?
Hi Troy,
The new addition should be added to the grid without needing to refresh. So far I've only worked out how to add it to the bottom of the grid though. If not then a refresh should work. A browser close shouldn't be needed.
Jake