As I mentioned in a previous post about being a financial miser I find some tools for managing my money to be very useful, despite them being probably on the more advanced side (or overly complicated depending on how you look at it). The following is a short post describing a few pieces of software I regularly use and why I think they’re so good you should consider them too.

Money Manager EX

If you’re serious about tracking your personal finances it makes sense to do it with some purpose-built software. I currently use Money Manager EX; it’s open source and free (though you can support them with a donation) and has some nice features that make it easy to track various financial metrics and keep on top of the various sources of income and outgoings.

A key feature for me is the ability to track net worth, considering bank current accounts, savings accounts, ISAs, student loan balances, Assets, credit card balances, and other cash accounts with occasional balances. There are lots of pre-built reports and visualisations too, and you can create more reports if you’re willing to write some code.

I also use it for investment tracking, though this can be fiddly and frustrating to set up and it’s one of my least favourite features, but it’s nice to have the option. I’ll update these balances by checking them against the various investment apps I use.

I used to use Microsoft Money before it stopped being supported, and Money Manager EX does a good job of replacing that application. It doesn’t require too much upkeep; I tend to balance the accounts each month and have a look at whether I’m still on track to meet my goals.

There’s also a way to set up budgets, though I don’t actually use this properly given that my apparent aversion to spending money that I wrote about in a recent post means I rarely fail to be under budget in any normal month.

R and Python – Shiny and Dash applications

When I want to visualise something that I’m tracking, such as net worth or my budget surplus each month, or the value of investment or savings accounts over time, I generally create a visualisation in a dashboard or app. You can do this in Money Manager to some extent, but an app allows more customisation and control of the data.

It’s possible to access the underlying database in the Money Manager EX (MMEX) software and write custom SQL code to extract it in any form needed. I use DB Browser for SQLite to help me search through the database structure and test my SQL queries before using them in R or Python code as part of an app.

For example, if you wanted to extract the monthly income and expenses from the MMEX database so it can be plotted on a chart you’d use some R code like this (N.B. this is a simple case and will need modifying if you have a more complex account structure to track):

library(RSQLite)

# Set up the SQLite database connection parameters
mydrv <- dbDriver("SQLite")
conn <- dbConnect(
      drv = mydrv, 
      "<location of your money manager ex file>.mmb"
)

# Create the SQL query
query_income_expenses <- paste0(
"select 
    ReportMonth,
    sum(Deposit) as Income,
    sum(Withdrawal) as Expenses
from (  
    select 
        strftime('%Y-%m', TRANSDATE) as ReportMonth,
        case
            when transcode = 'Deposit' then transamount
            else 0
        end as Deposit,
        case
          when transcode = 'Withdrawal' then -transamount
          else 0
        end as Withdrawal
    from checkingaccount_V1
    where status <>'V'
)
group by ReportMonth
order by ReportMonth asc"
)

# Run the query and save the results to a dataframe
SendQuery_income_expenses <- dbSendQuery(conn, query_income_expenses)
result_income_expenses <- dbFetch(SendQuery_income_expenses)
dbClearResult(SendQuery_income_expenses)

There’s plenty more that can be done with the database and SQL code. Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see more examples of the code or even examples of the app.

Excel spreadsheets

The bulk of my regular tracking is done with the software above, but for everything else Excel is unbeatable for doing quick projections and ad-hoc analyses, to see for example if I should purchase an investment or whether I’m likely to reach an investment goal, or any number of other financial questions that I want to consider.

Despite being a less than optimal choice of software in complex professional settings that require accuracy and reliability, it’s clearly a very useful tool that I can’t see going away any time soon, particularly in the personal finance space. I may share some of these random spreadsheet analyses in future posts, as I think the variety involved could be interesting and informative.

Conclusions

I tend to prefer doing my own thing when it comes to managing and tracking my finances, and given my background as an actuary it’s probably not surprising that I’m comfortable dealing with all the details involved.

I don’t use the various options that are provided by banks and investment companies to track expenses and budget, though they are getting better all the time. This is partly because I have accounts across multiple different providers, and I like to have full control over my data, so the easiest solution is if I track it all myself.

Whichever tools you choose I believe it’s best to find a simple method that you can update easily, that encompasses all your finances, and that you can rely on when you need an accurate picture of your net worth. Hopefully the slightly more custom options described above have provided some ideas of what else is available for this.

Let me know in the comments what tools you use to manage your finances, and if there’s a particular piece of software or an app that you like to use and why you’d recommend it. Thanks for reading.

References and further reading

1. Are you a financial miser?
2. Money Manager EX account management software
3. DB Browser for SQLite software for reading databases, in particular the Money Manager EX database