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Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

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Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#11

Post by personjerry »

w4 wrote: post #8

This is absolutely fantastic. I'd pay for something that hooks into my bank account and spits out a daily number for me, no problem (especially since it doesn't suffer from the mess of housekeeping and categorizing that something like Mint does, which is my biggest complaint about that kind of software). If you don't build it, I'll probably wind up hacking it together for myself. :)

I think you're either going to use Mint or Yodlee for the API as they have partnerships with the major banks, while the banks themselves don't provide the APIs, I believe.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#12

Post by vinceguidry »

I have a personal Rails site that does something like this. There's an Expense model and a Expenditure model. Also a PayEvent model that's kinda the opposite of Expense, could probably roll them into one model. The Expenses are averaged out by month. An expense can be 'tracked', that means when I'm adding an individual expenditure, I can list it as that expense. My dashboard tells me at a glance how much I've spent on those expenses. If it's not tracked, it is factored in automatically.

It is multi-user, though I'm the only user at the moment. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, shoot me an email which you can find in my profile.

My philosophy is to avoid the banking APIs by putting in expenditures manually. I would love to integrate with OFX, but I don't have the time to maintain it.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#13

Post by rco8786 »

bwang29 wrote: post #10

Also a fan of Civ5 and all turned based games. Another extra thought: In Civ you will know that building such Monument will take X turns or making some other technology progress will consume Y science points. I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to track when and how long someone will be able to afford something. It would be extra cool if this could factor in stock options you received in a company or any…

Ynab does this! I'm a huge fan but I'm really liking OP's approach too. A hybrid model would actually be really interesting.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#14

Post by badloginagain »

Great work, awesome how finding a system for you can really get your finances under control.

Now you just have to determine how long it will take you to hurry "wonders"... ie. buying a house, retirement, etc.

Also, have you looked into your financial institution to see if there's an API for automatically pulling your purchases? The only problem with your system now is it require constant vigilance to keep adding purchases.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#15

Post by Retric »

neogodless wrote: post #5

I definitely like it. Because I like Civilization, and because I like when you think about the direction and velocity of your (net worth, savings, call it what you want) rather than "what rules should I put in place and follow?" I've been tracking my spending (cash not withstanding) since 2003, and my favorite part is looking at net worth changes per month, and how they change over time. For example, if I look at 7 y…

Unless your dealing with leveraged investments, day to day swings mean very little. Occasionally the market has a huge drop, but right after a big drop tends to be the best times to invest in the stock market. However, mentally people feel the need to double down when it's up and take money out when it's down which can quickly destroy decades of growth.

PS: If you can see a 60% drop and think, yay! great time to invest then feel free. Otherwise, checking once a year is probably fine.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#16

Post by nickpsecurity »

This has been a fun read given that we came up with similar methods but from different directions. Mine wasn't Civilization inspired although I played a lot of Meier's Alpha Centauri back in the day. :) I thought more along easily tracking daily transactions on the goal like cashiers or accounts do with a ledger. No online integration, forecasting, etc. Fairly simple addition, subtraction, arbitrary values if needed, and daily/monthly reports.

I also divided my expenses by the day but also the week: paid weekly. Had to make sure I never went passed the minimum I needed for bills. Also, made sure I had enough in the account for my largest, non-rent bill as splitting it by day didn't guarantee the amount would be there. Far as ledger, I went with MoneyWise app for Android. Just loaded it, typed in description/amount, hit save, and done. Can set to an arbitrary balance which gave me starting point (or occasional reset). Then, remove amount for day at the beginning or at least once I woke up haha. Then, just continue tracking expenses.

Might try your method at some point as it's interesting.

Note: Originally posted in Disqus on the page. Reposted here for anyone else's benefit.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#17

Post by ryandrake »

I like the idea as a way to track daily averages, and I'm going to definitely try it for myself. But it doesn't help me with what causes my nose to be buried in Quicken every Sunday: bills don't get paid little by little daily. They come at fixed times in the month (or year). This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many close calls where my paycheck is every two weeks but bills are monthly, and 2x2 weeks ≠ 1 month.

I think I'd like a service that let me get paid 1/14th of a paycheck every day and also pay [1/28 | 1/29 | 1/30 | 1/31] of my bills every day. Then, your day-to-day finances are literally an exercise of making sure there's always a small balance and that the pay-bill spread always remains positive.

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#18

Post by thaumasiotes »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

I like the idea as a way to track daily averages, and I'm going to definitely try it for myself. But it doesn't help me with what causes my nose to be buried in Quicken every Sunday: bills don't get paid little by little daily. They come at fixed times in the month (or year). This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many clos…

> This system doesn't help with the tactics of making sure there's the right amount in your checking account at the right time. Ive had many close calls where my paycheck is every two weeks but bills are monthly, and 2x2 weeks ≠ 1 month.

A paycheck every two weeks can never give you less than two paychecks a month. It'll give you three paychecks in two out of twelve months. So the issue you describe could never cause you to be unexpectedly short of cash? How could you have a "close call"? (I'm assuming here that a paycheck gives you money, and bills take it away.)

Re: Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

#20

Post by Amorymeltzer »

Retric wrote: post #15
neogodless wrote: post #5

I definitely like it. Because I like Civilization, and because I like when you think about the direction and velocity of your (net worth, savings, call it what you want) rather than "what rules should I put in place and follow?" I've been tracking my spending (cash not withstanding) since 2003, and my favorite part is looking at net worth changes per month, and how they change over time. For example, if I look at 7 y…

Unless your dealing with leveraged investments, day to day swings mean very little. Occasionally the market has a huge drop, but right after a big drop tends to be the best times to invest in the stock market. However, mentally people feel the need to double down when it's up and take money out when it's down which can quickly destroy decades of growth. PS: If you can see a 60% drop and think, yay! great time to inve…

I was initially an overly conservative investor, really couldn't accept any risk or loss (I'm young), but tracking day to day swings helped me quite a bit. Something about seeing changes every day, many of them negative, really hit home the meaningless of those changes given timescale I was operating on. I am now a much healthier investor.
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