RupeeManager: Assign work for your Money

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Ranjan

Managing Money is the second of the top two New Year resolutions. (Via Swaroop’s TrackEveryCoin) The top one is, of course, losing weight. The fact that we need those resolutions every New Year, makes it obvious that we don’t keep those resolutions for long!

The reason we are not good with managing our money is not hard to find. Fear of numbers, information overload in the media, financial jargons and the complexity of financial products adds to our inertia.

But the biggest reason, to my mind, why people do not manage their money is that they don’t know anything about their money. How it is coming, where it is going, whether it is lying idle, etc.

That brings me to the RupeeManager software that we are building.

The three guiding principles that have helped conceptualize the software are
1. Measure: (Know Yourself)
2. Manage: (Know how your money is doing)
3. Make Your Rupee Work: (And not just You working for Money!)

1. Measure: It is common knowledge that whenever you need to manage something, you need to measure it first. We have a vague idea about our money.

Like, have you figured out your risk profile/appetite?

The idea is that, if we had a way to measure income, expenses, portfolio, risk profile, etc, we could have a discussion on how to improve them. No records, no improvements.

The RupeeManager is primarily aimed at helping you measure your rupee. Once you are aware, other things follow.

2. Manage: Now that you have numbers ready, the improvements follow naturally. For example, you see that your percentage spend on “eating out” is 2-3 times the monthly grocery bill or it forms 25+% of your expenses.

Also, you will get an idea how to balance your portfolio according to your risk profile. You will match the portfolio with your risk appetite and see if you can take more risk or go more conservative. In other words, you get to decide your asset allocation strategy.

3. Make your Money Work: Other than tracking your earnings and your expenses, it is important to see if your money is working for your future.

We have a feature where you can allocate your income among fixed expenses, discretionary expenses, short term savings and long term investments. It’s like assigning goals for your money.

I have my fingers crossed on the response we’ll get on the software. Would you like to participate in the private beat of the software? Let me know. Thanks

Coming Soon! RupeeCamp "Financial Planning Workshop". "Join us"

Welcome back! Join me on this journey to improving our financial IQ and sharing what we know. Updates at RSS feed or Email. And spread the word please Thank You!

Share/Save

Three Principles of Personal Finance Management

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Ranjan

Talking about Personal Finance is a constant struggle for me. I don’t want to sound like a preachy expert. I don’t want to be appearing to impress by using jargons and numbers. And I wouldn’t like to spoon feed people.

But I do want to share what I know and hope that people take care of their own personal finances.

I do not know if I am failing or succeeding. And I don’t care. It’s the journey that interests me.

Along this journey of talking about personal finance, I have realized that it’s better to show rather than just tell. Also, more than any theory, there is a need for a tool in our hands that can help us manage our money.

That tool should be easy to use and give us necessary data/metrics so that we can improve our money management further.

That brings me to the three guiding principles that have helped me conceptualize the software. (Check out RupeeManager, being launched in September, 2009)

The three principles of money management are (I call it the Three M Principle…..mmm):

1. Measure: (Know Yourself)

2. Manage: (Know how your money is doing)

3. Make Your Rupee Work: (And not just You working for Money!)

1. Measure: It’s common knowledge that whenever you need to manage something, you need to measure it first. I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me she knew how to handle her money. (She was polite and didn’t tell me that she doesn’t need a blog to tell her how! And she’s right). She said, “just spend less than what you earn, and everything is fine”.

“Brilliant”, I said. But, to my questions about the numbers that proved that she was on track, she drew a blank. If she had numbers on what percentage of the earnings go into what categories of expenses, we might have had a discussion on how to improve upon that. If she had figured out her risk profile/appetite, we could had a discussion on whether her investments match that or not.

In other words, if we had a way to measure income, expenses, portfolio, risk profile, etc, we could have a discussion on how to improve them. No records, no improvements. Or perhaps, ignorance is bliss!

The RupeeManager is primarily aimed at helping you measure your rupee. Once you are aware, other things follow.

2. Manage: Now that you have numbers ready, the improvements follow naturally. For example, you see that your percentage spend on “eating out” is 2-3 times the monthly grocery bill or it forms 25+% of your expenses.

It’s perfectly okay if “eating out” is high on your agenda. But if the figures scream at you, you would think twice before rushing out for another “eat out”.

3. Make your Money Work: Other than tracking your earnings and your expenses, it is important to see if your money is working for your future.

We are adding a feature where you can customize your spending plan between fixed expenses, discretionary expenses, short term savings and long term investments. It’s like assigning goals for your money. (Sehwag, go and batter them into pulp. Dravid, stick around till the end. Dhoni, Yuvraj, finish it off. Etc, etc. )

The software that we are building will be based on these three principles of money management. So that’s what “RupeeManager” will be all about.

Do you have any suggestions? We’re listening.

Share/Save

Telling v/s Showing

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Ranjan

The target audience for this post is me alone. This is to record my thoughts about being a better blogger. So it’s okay for you to skip this one.

I have come to understand the futility of “telling” something to readers. It sounds preachy. Good in theory, but ain’t practical.

Like the one I read on a billboard today: “Let us strive to make tomorrow better than today”.

Does it make an impact on you and me? Not really, because it’s “telling” me to do something rather than “showing” me what to do!

“Telling” is like saying: “Take my advice. I don’t use it anyway”.

I think there can be a better way. Instead of the preachy “do’s” & “don’ts” of personal finance, there could be a way to “show” the way to manage your money.

How? That’s a million dollar question that I have to struggle with.

Example: Instead of talking about the benefits of budgeting (theory and preachy part), I can show you the “Personal Finance Tracker”. See this screen shot below:

Personal Finance Tracker: Budget Chart

Hey, I told you this post is for me trying to show myself to write better. Now that you’ve come thus far, let me know if you think I’m on the right track.

Thanks! I promise I’ll get better and better

Btw, if you want to try out the tracker application, you can download it for free from Zoho Creator’s Marketplace. It’s featured right on the top!!

Share/Save

Personal Finance Tracker

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Ranjan

Technology excites me with the way it helps us to do something in a better way. Technology fascinates me when it solves problems, big or small.

So, perhaps, this fascination has helped me build the following tracker application. I do not have any technical qualifications and it’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. But as they say learning never stops and if you’re keyed on to something, you figure out how to handle it.

Zoho Creator has featured the application on their marketplace and that has given me the courage to write it on my own blog. And also the 400+ downloads along with encouraging comments about the clean and simple interface.

To manage anything, it is recommended that you measure it first. So when we talk about personal finance, the “Do’s” & “Don’ts” do not really register with most of us. The key is to “Get started” on managing your money.

So if you and I are serious about personal finance, there should be a way to track what is happening to this important resource.

Personal Finance Tracker is an easy and simple way to track your personal finance. You can measure and track your income and expenses, create your portfolio of your Investments, create alerts/reminders and go to your choicest financial calculators.

Personal Finance Tracker on Zoho Creator

You can also see pictorial representations of your budget, investments and expenses. You can filter them for what you need to analyse.

Expense Chart

You can further filter the chart on the basis of the category of expense, whom spent for, payment method, etc.

Similarly for the income chart, you can filter it out on the basis of various sources of income. You can see a pie chart for your budget categories as well as your expenses.

There’s calendar view of your alerts and reminders too.

Personal Finance Tracker: Calendar for Alerts

You can filter the calendar on the high, medium or low criticality of the alerts and the months of the alerts too.

And btw, if you think that only a techie/programmer can build all this, let me confirm that it’s been done by me alone. But it wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing Zoho Creator. It’s really friendly and intuitive and you can build a complete web application even when you are not a techie. Even techies can use the interface to build more complex applications, I’m sure.

Do try out the Free install of Personal Finance Tracker at Zoho’s Marketplace . Let me know what you think

Share/Save