
Ask HN: How do you manage your financials? - maith1
Hey, Im wondering how do people go about managing their financials, between paying off loans, saving money and investing. Do people feel like they are making the best decisions when it comes to money?
======
rgharris
Lots of reading (books, blogs, etc.) has been helpful for me the past few
years and it seems like I pickup new things all the time. A few things I
use/reference:

\- YNAB (You Need A Budget) - budgeting/tracking app, plus lots of great
content on how to use the software and generally manage your budget/expenses

\- /r/personalfinance subreddit - checkout their wiki [1] and flowchart [2] in
particular for a really helpful overview

\- For investments I use spreadsheets to track allocation, targets, etc.

\- Bogleheads wiki - investing, heavy on index funds, low fees, etc.

\- Whitecoat investor - a lot of good content, mostly aimed at high income
earners plus some content specific to medical doctors [3]

\- A variety of books - there are a lot of good ones out there

1\.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics)

2\.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics#w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics#wiki_graphical_version)

3\. [https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/new-to-the-blog-start-
here...](https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/new-to-the-blog-start-here/)

~~~
jcranmer
The /r/personalfinance flowchart is actually the best summary I've seen on the
priority on spending. Some comments I'd add:

* If you run out of money before getting to the employer retirement match, you are living beyond your means and you need to rectify that ASAP.

* Avoid credit card debt especially; the interest rates are not in your favor.

* If you're making tech sector salary, it's probably best to maximize Roth IRA early and hard--you're likely to hit the salary cap on Roth IRA before too long in your career ($120K is when the contribution is reduced; $137K is when it disappears entirely--although note that 401(k) contributions are excluded).

~~~
rgharris
All good points. Roth vs traditional can be complicated when you think about
the long term possibilities (change in tax rates, early withdrawal,
lower/higher income in the future, etc.) but definitely max out
Roth/Traditional/Backdoor Roth IRA if at all possible after getting max
employer 401k match. I like the idea of diversifying with pre and post tax
retirement options to an extent. Backdoor Roth IRA is useful for high earners
that don't qualify for a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA deduction.

------
clucas
I use beancount for text-based accounting
([http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/)), and fava for
budgeting and visualization
([https://beancount.github.io/fava/](https://beancount.github.io/fava/)).

But the tech just isn't that important, as far as I'm concerned... What
actually makes a difference for me is, every morning (except occasionally on
weekends), I enter the previous day's transactions, balance my books, and
commit the changes to a git repo. I think balancing daily is important:

1) Balancing accounts can be a massive pain, but when I do it every day, it
generally takes me about 5 minutes (so maybe 2 hours a month), while balancing
at the end of the month, even if it only takes the same 2 hours, is very
tedious and I have no motivation to do it, so it doesn't get done.

2) I've caught multiple instances of fraud and the occasional bank error or
paycheck error within 24 hours of their occurrence. Not strictly necessary,
but helpful to get it sorted right away.

3) One of the best ways to remember things is to review the next day. I find I
have a much better picture of my financial state, and how much I've been
spending recently, when I'm taking 5 minutes to look at yesterday's numbers,
every single day.

------
wtvanhest
Disclaimer, I work in corp finance:

My wife and I have what I believe is a novel approach. Our requirements were
low mental overhead, but effective.

99% of what you read says to make a budget and follow it. Well, that sucks and
is zero fun. It also doesn't apply to people who's income is significantly
higher than their expenses, or people who are paying off lots of student debt
or saving for a house etc since it just measures monthly dollars (income
statement) and doesn't focus enough on where you are and where you are going.

We use a balance sheet approach. Every quarter 12/31, 3/31, 6/30, 9/30 we go
through all our accounts, and calculate total assets (401k, cash, kid's 529
etc) and total liabilities (we have a car loan for example). After a few
quarters you can see how things are moving and you can talk about decisions in
terms of how it will impact future balance sheets.

One discussion we will have again this quarter is whether to pay the car loan
off or put the equivalent cash in the market, or CDs to some other choice.
TBH, we may not even do anything for a few quarters because we don't have to,
but the balance sheet approach means we will talk it through in March which
forces us to make an active decision, and not just leave the cash in a zero
interest account while simultaneously paying interest on a car loan.

We also take that quarterly time to review things like life insurance, trust
for our kids etc.

Side note, anyone have a good article on how to buy long-term disability
insurance for office workers?

~~~
bryanmgreen
I do the same, but bi-annually. Less micro-managey for me.

Personally, didn't feel there was enough fluctuation to justify 3 month
intervals.

~~~
wtvanhest
Yeah, that makes sense. When we started 5 years ago we were recovering from me
going without a salary for a year after I tried and failed at starting a
company. Then we got married, then we had a baby. We had a lot of rapid change
that happened very quickly so quarterly made sense.

After we buy a house, we will probably do it a year or so, then move to bi-
annual.

------
commandertso
Started using YNAB almost a month ago, and I love it. I had previously tried
Mint (terribly frustrating for all the promise it has, but it’s been left to
wither) and my own spreadsheets. YNAB solves several pain points I had -
budgeting for non-monthly recurring expenses was a big one.

Past that, I use a great credit union for liquid cash and mostly liquid
emergency fund. The later we have pegged at 6 months of burn. Investments are
across a couple institutions and consist of Roth IRAs and 401k stuff - that
all goes in index funds.

------
mech1234
I can mention that if you use mint.com and have anything that isn't quite
perfectly standard about your financial accounts it won't work well.

for example- My wife and I have a joint brokerage account at Fidelity, and my
wife also has a 401k at fidelity. She has a login associated with the
brokerage account, and one associated with the 401k. However, via each login,
all of her accounts are visible.

mint.com cannot understand that these accounts are duplicated. There are
manual overrides to disable certain accounts, but these overrides work on some
portions of the site (such as the overview page) and not other portions (such
as the net worth tracker over time chart).

I feel that mint has already reached peak revenue per user and is now trying
to glide through the rest of its lifecycle with minimal investment in the
site, so these problems might not work out ever.

~~~
nbrempel
I recently discovered PocketSmith which is a paid product. I found it sort of
follows the mint model but it works much better. I tried using double entry
accounting methods like YNAB but it just wasn't working for my personal
finances.

------
mcmullen
I use ledger [0] for all my personal finances. It's probably a little too
nerdy for some folks but works perfectly for me: the combination of plain text
[1] and the command line keeps me interested.

I highly recommend ledger for any (easily bored) programmer who wants to track
their finances (and learn some basic accounting). Note other flavours exist
too [2].

[0] [https://www.ledger-cli.org](https://www.ledger-cli.org) [1]
[https://plaintextaccounting.org](https://plaintextaccounting.org) [2]
[https://hledger.org](https://hledger.org)

------
sbuttgereit
We tend to keep it pretty simple.

1) We don't do debt. Certainly not for consumption purposes; we avoid it for
capital purposes. We have a mortgage, but we saved and paid cash for the last
car we bought; we might take a loan for a car... but even then we know the
return we expect to get on the car would far out-weight the cost of the loan
for the kind of car we'd entertain buying. A loan for education? Not unless a
conservative expected rate of return justifies the debt: and I don't mean over
a lifetime... but more like a decade.

2) A follow on to 1... We will avoid savings/investing (except for a very
liquid, minimal emergency fund) if there is debt we can pay off early.
Retirement savings are an exception because of tax law considerations. Our
mortgage is low interest, and we might do better investing that money... but
we might not and I know how much we save if we kill the mortgage early.

3) Don't spend what you don't have. Do your damnedest to not spend what you do
have. Much of this goes back to 1. Many people create a budget as a means to
give themself permission for otherwise unregulated spending on consumption
goods... they'll budget a bit for savings and a bit for necessities... you
know what's fair and "rational". But everything else is fair game and their
budget, if they keep it, removes the guilt of what to me would look like over-
spending. The default should be don't spend and justify each purchase. Yes,
sometimes leisure is a worthwhile investment into yourself/family: but think
through those decisions and alternatives that achieve the goal of leisure, but
not at the cost.

Aside from that we use off the shelf software for tracking; but tools really
are a minor consideration compared to having a healthy attitude to money and
spending. We don't produce budgets because our default thinking is healthy. We
do plan, but chiefly we just don't spend so that when crap does crop up we
have the resources... or don't have the threats (debt)... as a default
position rather than let-lose-spending with a minimum planned savings.

Note that none of this is investment advice. We're terrible at that side of
the equation so I wouldn't offer it: but the first step is don't spend first
what you might invest.... then you can worry what to do with your capital.

Finally... none of this comes from an philosophical anti-materialism or
anything of the sort. It's all just being responsible for ourselves and our
financial health.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
Yup, i completely agree, especially on the budgeting.

The question should not be: do I have enough budget to make this pruchase. the
question is: do I really need this thing I'm going to buy.

Budgets should be for estimating future spending or learning about your past
spending behaviors. It's a tool for assessment, not a license to spend more.

------
tvanantwerp
I don't track things too closely, and I'm thankful I don't have to. I
automatically max out my 401k and IRA, and a good portion left after that goes
into taxable brokerage accounts. The vast majority of investments are in no-
load index funds; I set aside a bit as "play money" that I'm comfortable
losing, and which I mostly invest in tech stocks.

My wife and I tend to spend about the same amount each month and there are
rarely surprises. I check the statements before paying just to make sure no
fraud went unnoticed, but I get emails for any charge over $50 so I usually
catch things before that. My wife and I both allocate some of our own earnings
for buying whatever we like without having to consult the other--I'm not
paying for her clothes shopping, and she's not paying for my Steam library.

I think this works because we're both naturally frugal people. Saving isn't
effortful for us, but rather is the default. Just this past weekend, I had to
remind my wife that it probably wasn't worth the Herculean effort she was
putting into repairing a piece of jewelry she got on AliExpress for $2. I am
sure proper budgeting and other tools could help us eke out a bit more net
worth, but only a bit. The marginal return of that activity would be low for
us compared to those who tend more toward spending than saving.

------
cosmojg
I like to keep things as simple (and profitable) as possible! I have a Roth
IRA[1] and a taxable account[2] invested in leveraged risk parity strategies
through M1 Finance[3]. I also have checking and savings accounts with Alliant
Credit Union[4], both of which earn a pretty good amount of interest.

If you're looking for advice, I recommend reading through the wiki[5] over at
/r/personalfinance and deciding what's best for your situation.

[1]
[https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=288192](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=288192)

[2]
[https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=302218](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=302218)

[3] [https://m1.finance/r3lww4aeQ](https://m1.finance/r3lww4aeQ)

[4] [https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/](https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/)

[5]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics?u...](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=personalfinance&utm_content=t5_2qstm)

~~~
edwardkh
I'm also running 55 UPRO/45 TMF in my Roth IRA, but I'd like to add a
disclaimer here to note that leveraged risk parity strategies generally get
their bonus from decreasing interest rates on the bond side and better risk
adjusted returns from the diversification and rebalancing.

Whoever is implementing these strategies should also understand how daily
rebalanced leveraged funds like UPRO and TMF work, rebalancing, and their tax
implications in taxable vs non-taxable accounts.

These strategies generally perform well in up trending or downtrending markets
vs. 100% stocks, but would not perform well in long term sideways markets(we
haven't seen this in our history, but it could happen).

In periods of stagnant interest rates, the strategy experiences downside from
from fees. NTSX will not be impacted by this as much as the fee for that ETF
is 0.02%, but UPRO/TMF will lose 2% a year in these regimes.

In rising interest rate regimes, these strategies are even more impacted as
rising interest rates will decrease the value on the bond side. If the federal
interest rates are increasing during a period of stagflation, you will see
very significant downside. What this strategy is doing is betting that the US
won't run into a period of stagflation where both bond and stocks will drop at
the same time. We are currently seeing a period of stagflation in Germany
right now and if that were to happen here in the US, this investment strategy
would perform poorly.

What I've posted is for informational purposes only, you should not construe
any such information as investment, financial, or other advice.

------
adjkant
I couldn't recommend a yearly budget higher. I have a "Banking" spreadsheet
and a "Budgeting" spreadsheet that work together.

"Banking" tracks current assets/loans/etc as a current picture as well as
predicting saving/interest/tax/return rates and giving an estimated assets at
age X.

"Budgeting" tracks how much money is earned/spent in various categories and if
it's on track for the years estimates. It also keeps track of expected yearly
savings/spending and I sometimes adjust based on my habits/needs/desires.

I at some point every Sunday (either when I wake up or go to sleep usually)
spend an hour a week updating all my accounts/spending. It's a great habit
I've built over about 5 years now and it's really empowering. It's not about
tracking every last dollar but more about knowing generally where your
spending is going and if you're okay with those choices. It doesn't have to be
set in stone either, but it means that increased spending is a deliberate
choice you have to consider and weigh the value of.

It's a bit manual but I find rolling your own is really the only way to get
everything you want. No software will cut it for sufficiently complex
categorization (for example, I know exactly how much I spend on toilet paper
because I break it out separately in a household paper category with paper
towels and tissues), and building it yourself in code is probably a waste of
time. Sheets/Excel really shine here.

For reference, I have about 15 or so accounts I check between credit cards,
banks, investment accounts, Venmo, etc.

------
D13Fd
I collected data and figured out my family's average costs per week absent
fixed expenses.

I have a spreadsheet that has a row for each week. I have it set up so that
whenever my wife or I get paid, it adds that to the balance. Whenever a fixed
expense is due, it subtracts it. It also subtracts the average costs per week
for each week, and accounts for yearly projected bonuses etc.

The spreadsheet also shows any loans/loan payments.

Every few weeks I pay off my credit cards, go and look at my bank account
balances, and compare that to the expected values in the spreadsheet. If they
don't match, I figure out why and note that on the spreadsheet (i.e.,
unexpected surgery on dog, unexpected car repair, etc.).

The spreadsheet has conditional formatting that shows green if my bank
balances are above my reserve amount for each week (including in the future),
yellow if close, and red if under. I can see what my bank balances should be
out through 3037 or so, when all my kids should be in college.

With that kind of a spreadsheet, you can instantly see when any loans you have
will be paid off, and whether you can afford any purchase you're thinking of.

------
xupybd
I use Ynab now. I used to use Hledger. Both are good but Ynab is easier for my
wife to use. But the key idea is that you try to allocate your money before
its spent. That way you know how much to spend.

------
MrMember
I don't pay too close of attention to it, I'm fortunate enough that I don't
have to watch my finances closely.

I try to keep as little in my checking account as possible. I have enough in a
high yield savings account to probably last me a year. I max out my 401k. I
have some money in six month treasury bills that gets reinvested whenever they
mature. I have a recurring monthly transfer into a brokerage account that I
put in a high dividend index fund. The only debt I carry is a mortgage that I
overpay on. Anything leftover at the end of the month I throw into a
Betterment account.

------
ecoled_ame
i’m 28, i make 36k per year, i have a masters degree and two bachelors
degrees, all in hard science. i pay $800/month for rent, i ride public
transportation, i try to cook at home, i don’t socialize. i can save about $5k
per year. i’m comfortable and could live for a lifetime on less than $40k per
year.

~~~
uptown
> i don’t socialize

I'm curious why you've made this choice.

~~~
bluGill
I hope OP means something like I don't go to bars. Alcohol in a place that
encourages you to stay around for a while is what passes for socialize to a
large number of people.

There are plenty of other social things you can do in life, but I've noticed
that there is a crowd where none of them count. Either you sit in your
favorite bar and talk, or you don't socialize. My time spent camping with
friends is interesting, but it doesn't count even though we spent plenty of
time around the campfire (just to name one activity I do)

~~~
ecoled_ame
no i simply don’t speak to people casually outside of work. i just skateboard
alone or explore or read or other solo stuff. i just don’t like being around
people in a friendly manner.

------
Ocerge
It's all in my brain. It's not a good idea and I know I should be keeping a
budget, but every time I try, I end up ending reaching the conclusion that I
should just focus on making more money instead. I have reasonable rent, no
debt outside of a small car note and state-school student loans, and have good
credit. I live a simple life, and I max out my 401k match + a personal IRA.
There's not a large amount left over that matters all that much, and fiddling
with Excel won't change that.

------
rocketpastsix
I use YNAB to manage my day to day money.

I use Personal Capital to manage my long term planning.

I invest via Robinhood, Betterment and Vanguard.

I use Ally's High Yield Savings as my long term savings such as a 6 month
emergency fund.

I still use my credit union I had in Atlanta even though I am in Nashville. I
prefer them because I've been a member there for almost 10 years, so I have a
rapport with them. I rarely have cash, and when I do I just spend it. I go to
Atlanta a few times a year so if I need anything, I can just pop in one of the
branches.

That's really it.

------
jldugger
Two tools: an annual budget spreadsheet and GNUCash.

The annual budget spreadsheet has a tab for every year, and every December I
duplicate the tab and adjust for the coming year. It focuses on cash inflows
(salary, equity grants, dividends) and outflows (expenses, taxes,
investments). This is what I use to verify I can afford to max out 401ks and
similar, as well as gifts/charity and maybe the occasional major purchase.

The other half of this equation is GNUCash. If the spreadsheet is a strategic
plan, this is the tool I use to tactically manage cash flows and track assets
on the ground. There are accounts for the typical double entry categories:
income, expense, asset, liability, equity. It tracks in multiple currencies,
including ticker symbols and custom currencies, and tracks conversion rates
between symbols and my default currency. I have a variety of recurring
transactions programmed in and created 90 days in advance, which is useful
when paired with the 'minimum future balance' column -- if transferring money
now would result in a future balance going negative (perhaps between a
paycheck and rent being due or a CC being paid off), I can adjust.

What I don't yet have is a portfolio management layer. I have a few ideas in
that space, but it gets complicated quickly with taxes.

------
qrush
I can't express enough how YNAB has changed my habits and make me realize
_how_ to plan, forecast, and save money. They have lots of video tutorials and
it's been worth every penny. Here's my referral link, happy to answer
questions on how I use it too!

[https://ynab.com/referral/?ref=ASH303nViLPCKyr-&utm_source=c...](https://ynab.com/referral/?ref=ASH303nViLPCKyr-&utm_source=customer_referral)

------
raphinou
I record my expenses with HelloExpense[1] on Android, and I wrote a small app
to analyse the csv export (using Python with Dash[2]). The code of the
analysis app is available on Gitlab[3] and a demo is deployed on heroku at
[https://expenses-analysis.herokuapp.com/](https://expenses-
analysis.herokuapp.com/) (note that all work is done server side, so if you
use it with your own CSV file, it will be uploaded to the server, so it's
definitely better to run it locally)

It suits my needs perfectly, and I find it very useful, but from what I know
I'm the only user of my analysis app :-D

Understanding where your money goes is a first good step in managing your
finances.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpen...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpense&hl=en)
[2] [https://plot.ly/dash/](https://plot.ly/dash/) [3]
[https://gitlab.com/rbauduin/dash-expenses-
analysis](https://gitlab.com/rbauduin/dash-expenses-analysis)

------
tempsy
I don't keep a strict budget, I am just generally frugal and don't spend a lot
of money outside of food, groceries, coffee, and rent/utilities. I also only
rarely drink for special occasions, which cuts a lot of expenses as well.

As far as travel expenses go I've been casually churning credit cards for a
couple years now. A few new sign up bonuses on travel credit cards pays for
most of my personal travel needs every year.

------
MLNerd
Every Friday I have a two hour window blocked on my calendar to work on
financials. I review and categorize all transactions for the week, review how
I am doing on my budget, check my credit score, pay bills, and check in on my
goals (paying off debt, savings, etc.). I use Mint as my primary bookkeeping
software, I also use Trello as a checklist to make sure I do everything each
week and can also manage one time tasks.

------
thorwasdfasdf
There's two kinds of spending: 1) Assets - these make money and make you
richer 2) Liabilities - these cost money and make you poorer

I spent at least 60% or more on Assets. And keep liability spening to an
absolute minimum:

\- almost never ever buy new clothes

\- xmas gifts - we don't play this game. we spend time with each other and
make our own gifts, or buy them super cheap at yard library book sales, etc.

\- always buy used cars, at least 5 years old and keep them for at least 10 or
15 years.

\- absolutely no subscriptions (monthly payments) except utilities (just
electricity, water, internet, cell phone, HOA, insurance). if you have more
subs than fingers then you've got problems.

\- minimize car maintenance (there's these big myths that doing lots of extra
maintenance will make your car last longer, not necessarily true)

\- no frivolous spending - I never buy stuff, unless I absolutely need it.

\- rarely eat out, here in CA. eating out is way too expensive around here.
and you never know what they put in it.

\- never buy stuff you can get for free. why buy tea, when there's a lavendar
plant in the yard? Rosemary bush yields are enormous. if you know a neighbor
that has one, they'll glad you give you all the rosemary you want. etc...

~~~
tvanantwerp
I feel like some of this begins to cross the line from frugal to cheap.
Hunting down a neighbor with a rosemary bush (aside from not actually
providing the prepared leaves of camellia sinensis) instead of spending a few
bucks on a box of tea seems absurd--it assumes your time and effort have no
value at all.

By all means, don't waste money. But before even that, don't waste your time.
You can always earn more money, but you'll never earn back time.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
every dollar you earn is time wasted. paying for that 5$ rosemary at the store
will cost will cost you 10 minutes of work time, if you earn 30$/hr after
taxes ~ 90K/year.

And, I think 10 minutes spent getting to know the neighbors or hanging out
with family to pick their rosemary bush is a much better use of time than yet
another 10m working.

------
emef
I track account balances once a month into a spreadsheet to keep a high-level
overview. It's a manual process that takes ~15 minutes and has a large payoff
to have a birds-eye view of all the finances and allocations.

Investments are all automatic: max 401k, max hsa, auto deposit to vanguard
into a few indexes. If cash balance gets too high, I'll do a manual deposit.

My wife and I aren't big spenders so I have never found much value in micro-
managing individual purchases or categorization (YNAB or mint). I do skim the
transactions a couple times a month to make sure there aren't any surprises.

wrt paying off loans vs investing: lots of approaches here, the emotionless
take is to just allocate based on interest rate. If your loans are low
interest, then just pay the minimums and invest the rest. If they're higher
interest than you expect your returns from investing to be, then just pay them
off aggressively and don't invest at all until they're paid off (the exception
here might be tax-advantaged accounts like 401k or IRA if you qualify).

------
jonbarker
I draw a big rectangle with a line down the middle. On the left is Assets. On
the top right is Liabilities (aka debt, the remaining lease payments for
housing, etc). On the bottom right is Equity. This is the number that must
compound at an acceptable rate no matter what happens to the market, my
income, etc (I'll leave it up to you to decide what rate you want to commit to
in the near term). I have found that drawing and redrawing this on paper beats
most software approaches. If someone asks, "what if my equity number is
negative?" I say take steps to get it to positive. If you get it to 1 dollar,
great, your first year ROE is going to be 1000% if you happen to save 10 bucks
that year. [https://awwapp.com/b/uybcpyttt/](https://awwapp.com/b/uybcpyttt/)

------
notJim
I have my budget in a spreadsheet. Top line is income, then the rest are
expenses. The spreadsheet is really just for projecting what fixed costs and
savings I can afford, I don't follow it strictly.

The key thing is the way all my accounts are set up. All money flows into the
checking account, and then automatic deductions take the savings into
different accounts for short term and long term. Money does not sit in the
checking account for long (except for a small-ish cushion.) All spending is
done on credit cards, which I pay off in full with automatic payments from the
checking account. This way, I know when I'm over-spending, because I have to
transfer money back into the checking account. This is key, because it means
as long it's planned (for a vacation, for example), it's fine. But if it's
unplanned, I know I need to be more careful.

------
pmiller2
My 401k is maxed out and all in on FSKAX. Taxable brokerage is all in on VT
and VTI. I have a Roth that I max out and invest more aggressively in due to
the favorable tax treatment. 6 month emergency fund I’m thinking about bumping
up to 9.

I don’t have any debt at a rate that makes me feel like I’m in any hurry to
pay it off.

------
tunesmith
I've recorded the date and amount of every contribution to my retirement
savings. From that I'm able to calculate my all-time APY, and inflation-
adjusted APY.

I used Banktivity for personal finances. I make sure everything is
categorized.

Finally, I have a spreadsheet that calculates our monthly expenses (which I
get from Banktivity) and knows the amount of retirement savings.

From those - our all-time APY, our savings, and our expenses - I am able to
project what happens to our savings if we retire today, or what date we can
retire if we want to always keep our savings above zero. It has an accurate
social security model that assumes the trust fund runs out and we get paid at
80% benefits.

It's been a great exercise. The numbers are different (and more conservative)
than most articles and web calculators counsel. Keep saving, don't rely on
good investment performance.

~~~
supenguin
I'm surprised to not see more Banktivity users. It's like Quicken with the
option to do envelope budgeting. Unlike Quicken there is not a required yearly
subscription fee, unless you want it to directly download your transactions
from your bank. I prefer not to do that.

It does so much and the customizable reports and amount of info it gives you
at a glance includes some things I don't see in other apps. Examples are
savings rate (not present in any other app I've seen) and a calendar view of
your finances (which is in a few apps, but not many)

~~~
supenguin
I've ended up applying YNAB's 4 rules and way of managing money to Banktivity
and it's working out fantastic for me.

------
ReDeiPirati
Like others in this discussion, I created a spreadsheet as well to keep track
of my financial activity. I have 4 columns, one for me, one for my wife, one
for my dogs, and one for the family. In the same table, I have a budget that
is computed as the average cost of the last 3-6 months (which can be
considered a good baseline) to make us informed about how we are deviating
from it.

Common sense/ things that I'm applying:

\- Never spend more than what you earn

\- Save at least 20-30% to create an emergency fund & personal savings fund.

You may also be interested to read a recent & related HN post / course on this
topic (CS 007: Personal Finance for Engineers – Stanford University 2017-20)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21631834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21631834)

------
johnminter
IMHO the optimum financial plan depends upon your age and life situation. All
require your family to work together and each member to grow in self-
discipline. Here are tactics that worked well for my my family.

1\. Learn to live below your means. This lets you build savings. The best tool
here is a budget. Our family typically cooked at home, brought lunches to
school or work, and bought staples on sale. Our kids had to choose activities
that fit the budget. If it wasn't in the budget, we thought long and hard
about buying it. If you need help, Dave Ramsey's books are good place to
start.

2\. Your next priority should be pay off high interest debt as fast as you
can. If you have long term student loans, pay them down as best you can and
start to accumulate (by saving) a six month emergency fund in an FDIC insured
bank. The large percentage of families in the US where a $500 unexpected bill
is a major problem is way too high. The emergency fund gives you breathing
room.

3\. Once you have an emergency fund, you should make sure to start saving for
retirement and college for skill upgrades or for children. Someone once wrote
that compound interest was the 8th "Wonder of the World". It is wonderful if
we are talking about savings but is quite a taskmaster if we are talking about
debt.

4\. Become a self-directed learner. Invest time and focus in keeping your
skills updated. Training budgets and travel to conferences were early
casualties when my employer had major budget woes - that landed the company in
bankruptcy. I paid my own way for critical training I could not get on-line.
Some coworkers criticized me for this. I did what needed to be done. Those who
didn't stagnated...

I wish you well. This will not be fun at the beginning and there will be times
in your life you have to put up with things you don't like but can't afford to
fix now. We had 2 kids in college, and our kitchen cabinets starting to fall
apart. My wife hated them. That was the first thing we fixed after the kids
graduated (same day, 1000 miles apart - we each attended one...)

------
gen220
I'm a big supporter for gnu ledger: [https://www.ledger-
cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)

If the itch you're trying to scratch is two parts "control" and one part
"understanding", it's a scratcher like no other.

Since everything is text-based, you can slowly automate all the boring parts,
as soon as they become boring.

At this stage, I have a scraper that downloads plaintext bank statements,
payslips, and 401k transactions, a transformer script (mostly `awk`) that
converts those csvs into ledger's format, a makefile that coordinates it all,
and a git repository that all this crap lives in (raw data, processed data,
ledgers, and code).

I use this to track investments, settle debts among friends and roommates,
keep track of tax deductions, and maintain a birds-eye statistical view of my
accounts. I check in about once every 3 weeks, I'd guess. I spend maybe 1 hour
updating the ledgers and balance-checking, and another hour iterating on some
module or another.

It's more work to maintain, but it's a labor of love, and I've learned a lot
about accounting and programming along the way. It's like a meditation
practice at this point.

Plus, if in the future I ever want to start a business, I'm very confident
that I'd be able to keep track of my own finances without needing to hire
someone or pay for accounting software, at least for the first couple years.

TLDR; vim + ledger + puppeteer + gnu utilities.

------
aeyes
Have been using YNAB for about 7 years but the secret sauce is this:
[https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-four-
rules/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-four-rules/)

------
shireboy
Mint and/or Personal Capital to monitor transactions and balances. Capital One
Money Market for Emergency Fund and Capital One Checking for checking. M1
Finance for taxable and tax-advantaged market accounts. Amazon Prime Credit
Card (through Chase).

My approach started with Dave Ramsey, but has evolved a little based on "I
will teach you to be rich" and some others. In general, I see my finances as a
funnel - income comes in and flows to fixed expenses, then to retirement
savings and kids education, then to short term savings.

* Tell incoming money where to go, don't live paycheck to paycheck. Doing this better is probably an area I could improve.

* Ensure a 1000 emergency fund in a savings account if you have none already. This is "lost my job" money.

* Ensure income > expenses. So much could be said about this, but it's simple math in the end. You won't get ahead if expenses > income. If this is not the case, focus first on income (ask for raise, look for second or better job, do side gigs), then on expenses (cut spending, get out of vehicle/credit card debt).

* Periodically review spending and see how you can spend less or increase income. I do much of my own car work (~3k this year) and work on some side gigs.

* Don't go into debt except for house. Pay credit card off each cycle. It is there ONLY to get the 1-10% reduction in spending via cash-back rewards. I don't personally feel chasing reward cards is worth it, just pick one that does cash back with minimal fuss. For us this was Amazon Prime's chase card.

* Ensure 3-6 months expenses in an emergency fund (Capital One Money Market). Example, if you average spending 3000/mo, you need 9000-18000. Now you have that long to look for a new job or float a huge emergency, etc.

* As long as that is maxed out, put as much as possible each month in tax-advantaged accounts. Max out IRAs/401ks/education savings/health savings/etc. Max out matched retirement accounts (401k, etc) first. Lest I sound rich, I'm not where I can do this every month yet.

* For IRA, use M1 because it's fee-free. Research a simple blend of ETFs in proportions relative to your risk profile. If you have a while before retirement, something like %90 Stock (VT,VTI), 10% Bonds (BND)

* Save any remaining in taxable stock account at M1 for short term savings (car/vacation/large projects/etc). Research a simple blend of ETFs in a lower-risk config. (ie 10% stocks, 90% bonds)

~~~
stranger___
What is an M1?

~~~
shireboy
[https://www.m1finance.com/](https://www.m1finance.com/)

------
xur17
I created a spreadsheet to keep track of my expenses, income, assets, etc. On
the last day of every month I record the current balance in each of my major
financial accounts (takes ~1 hour), giving me a nice view of my inflows and
outflows, and net assets.

In terms of where I store money, I:

* keep an emergency fund in a checking account with 6x my monthly spending

* keep the rest in broad market index funds, currently 10% bonds, 35% international funds, 65% us funds. I put the maximum amount allowed into tax advantaged accounts (401k and roth ira), and the rest into a taxable account

------
zitterbewegung
I used to use Mint but it got too annoying so I am consolidating / closing
bank and credit card accounts into one account.

I had some credit card debt that I just was able to put a huge dent due to my
new job.

I manage my finances mainly through estimation of costs . So like for the
first month of my new job I saw how much I used for personal expenses and
calibrated to that.

I did splurge on some Apple stuff at the end of the year on credit .

My biggest problem is that I have been rolling over multiple 401ks over the
years so I’m unsure of my return.

------
saddestcatever
This is the exact problem that my company is trying to answer. There's no
shortage of budgeting apps, but the real problem is addressing how people
think about money, and how they learn and balance different goals they might
achieve. So many educational resources, guides, and "suggestions" come from
companies that offer (and profit off providing) the financial services they
recommend.

If anyone is interested, I'd love to get feedback, hit us up on LearnLux.com

------
the_gastropod
I have a book recommendation: Your Money or Your Life. It was recently
updated, mostly to bring the investment advice a bit more up-to-date. But
either version will be amazing. It's not an overstatement to say that book
changed my life. It gives you some tasks, like tracking your spending (down to
the penny), and ultimately strives to make the point that: you trade your
finite time on this planet for money, so you should value it and use it
wisely.

------
roland35
I use mint and a google docs sheet. Mint has some issues with investment
accounts (as others have noted) but it is great at tracking expenses over
time. Mint really works better if you use credit cards however.

I then take a look at my family's annual spending in mint from the previous
year to help out together a new budget. It can be hard to predict some big
things like home repairs, but overall I find using actual expenses keeps me
honest about our spending.

------
pcglue
I use Quicken, but not happy with it since they moved to annual subscription
model. But with more than 20 years of data in it, I'm locked in. Looking to
migrate to beancount, but the data migration is hard. I'm contemplating
starting anew with beancount and forgoing my historical data. I could easily
do without the data, but something psychological is at play, and I can't get
over it yet.

~~~
jotakami
Yeah I bailed on Quicken about 5 years ago and never looked back. Using
GnuCash now, and it’s awesome because I can store the data in a local Postgres
database and do whatever I want with it.

~~~
nicolaslem
I love GnuCash!

The learning curve is a bit steep if like me you have to learn both the
software and the concepts of double entry accounting. It took me a few
iterations to get it right but now that it's rolling I couldn't be happier.

Since my girlfriend and I share some of our common expenses I developed a web
app à la Splitwise/Tricount that can export transactions to GnuCash. It works
very well but I never polished the thing, I wonder if it could be useful to
other GnuCash users.

~~~
jotakami
Oh man, my current project is to automate accounting for my cryptocurrency
trades in GnuCash. I trade very high volume, futures and options, so being
able to run a cron job to automatically pull the data from APIs, calculate
gains, and load it into the GnuCash schema will literally save me hundreds of
hours per year in accounting overhead. Once it’s done I bet I could easily
sell it for $100s to other crypto traders.

------
nunez
I'm not a frugal person, but I don't like debt. I use a Google Sheet that I
wrote many years ago that tracks my income and recurring spend. All of my
receipts go through Expensify. I also have another sheet that tracks my spend
(from Expensify) against my income to make sure lifestyle inflation stays in
check. For investing, I have a 401k and a IRA that I contribute way less to
than I should

------
keehun
I want to support LunchMoney.app. I've been using them for a few months, and
Jen (the creator) has been really easy to reach for questions. It's the only
online budgeting/finance web app that I've not felt was a chore, and I've
tried almost all of the main ones like Mint and YNAB. LunchMoney "just works"
and works really well. I highly recommend it.

------
thomasconner
I have tried using YNAB and Mint for managing my finances/budgeting but have
come away disappointed. Currently I use a spreadsheet to budget the current
year.

I have been thinking about writing an app to do the things like YNAB/Mint but
better.

Would you like to see something like this? Would you pay for an app like this?
What are some of the things you would like the app to do?

------
Reventlov
I use beancount to track every expense I have. It's really a powerful tool,
check it out: [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/) .

I started using the various tools the country I live in has for personal
finance (it's France): Assurance Vie, PEA, Livret A, …

------
siavosh
I use one of the robo-advisor apps (starts with W), and link all my accounts
to it, and constantly play with it's retirement forecast calculator--it's the
most sophisticated I've seen so far. Would love to use a second and even third
one to see how much their forecasts differ.

------
monksy
Mint and spreadsheets to do forecasting.

The forecasting strategies mostly came from "I will teach you to be rich"

~~~
voisin
Can you elaborate on which strategies you use for forecasting from IWTYTBR?

~~~
monksy
Laddering, advice from the investments, etc. It's a good book, get it.

------
tw600040
I wish I learnt a few things earlier. like benefits of Roth IRA, why
contributing to 401K is better even though the money is locked in until 60
etc.. felt incredibly stupid not starting them both in 20s. wonder what other
no-brainer things like these are there. if any, please do share

------
wizardforhire
Gnu cash

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash)

[https://www.gnucash.org/](https://www.gnucash.org/)

------
daneel_w
Everything in excess of £1000 from my monthly salary I move to a separate
plain savings account without any bells or whistles, and the £1000 is what I
spend on a month's living; rent, bills, food, pleasures. The end.

------
sebastianconcpt
Saving 50% of what is earned. That half used for paying survival and whatever
quality life you can extract from it. The rest goes to form portfolio: buying
good stocks, rent, and currencies. Over and over.

------
moveax
Well, we have weekly budgets for living costs, monthly budgets for savings
ect. We keep track with an app and avoid card payments if possible.

This works good for us. Pretty manual, but works out well.

------
choward
I used Firefly III. It uses double entry bookkeeping. If you don't mind self
hosting I recommended checking it out. The docker image is very easy to get
going with.

------
j88439h84
beancount: Double-Entry Accounting from Text Files

[http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/)

------
jgalvez
[https://galvez.github.io/plainbudget/](https://galvez.github.io/plainbudget/)

------
cuchoi
[https://copilot.money/](https://copilot.money/)

------
ChuckMcM
We used to use "Managing your Money" and now we use Quicken for the most part.
(that becomes more and more egregious given their changes).

We also live within our means which means managing future costs to the extent
that we can/could. We paid off student loans, cars, and credit card debt. Then
saved for a down payment and bought a house. We track 100% of the money coming
in and the money going out and categorize it in as many ways as possible. This
sounded pretty anal retentive to some friends of mine but they had to admit I
knew exactly how much money I spent on food, mortgage, utilities,
entertainment, etc each month. And that knowledge was usually enough to keep
things from getting out of hand.

We targeted saving 10% of our income every year. Early on that was a more
aspirational target, but by keeping our burn rate as constant as possible,
with raises the target became achievable. We typically reserved 50% of any
"bonus" or unexpected money for spending foolishly (well on things that aren't
normally budgeted) and saved the other half. Once our savings reached a point
where we had enough for emergencies we bifurcated into savings for us and
savings for the kids college.

Then we started getting stock options or employee purchasable stock from our
companies and used that to start a brokerage account (today I'd probably just
put it in e-trade or something and go long on the S&P 500.) We were fortunate
(really, its all about luck) to have chosen some good companies where the
stock had some value. We diversified stock to fund the college fund.

We were always "behind" our peers in terms of new cars, or fancy vacations
because we chose not to go into debt on such things once we could save up for
them.

Looking back at it though it didn't really matter what program we used, what
mattered were three things:

1) Keeping the discipline to track every dollar. This avoids "burn creep"
where you start spending more and more and don't know it.

2) Always minimizing variability in costs (going from renting which was
variable to a mortgage which was fixed, going from credit cards as cash flow
(having a burn rate that is not always met by your cash flow means the
occasional finance charge) to credit cards as payment device (once you have a
reservoir of cash for overages you can always pay 100% of the balance every
month)

3) Re-evaluating and adjusting costs every couple of years (new phone plan,
swap out cable for satellite, sattelite for over the air, swap out ISP
providers, magazine subscriptions, Insurance, etc. Any recurring cost from
vendors in a competitive market has opportunities on about a 24 month
schedule)

The only other thing is that we started pretty explicitly associating lifetime
costs with bits of gear. (accounts call it depreciation) Basically saving $25
a month for "phone instrument" means that in 24 months you have a $600 to buy
a new phone) Once you are keeping track of costs long enough and go through a
replacement cycle or two you can get a pretty good feel for what things should
cost)

------
turc1656
I have used Personal Capital to pull in all the transactions and classify them
into expenditure groups (entertainment, meals, utilities, etc.). Once you do
it for a month or two, it pretty much knows what everything is (and knows a
lot by default already). Then you can see where all your money is going and
determine if you are spending too much in any one area like meals or something
else that's discretionary and make changes. If you have your bank accounts
hooked up along with your credit and retirement accounts you can also see your
monthly cash flow as well as your net worth. You can also add your mortgage
data to pull automatically like any other account. Also can log anything else
that doesn't have an account which it can connect to and you can update
manually to get the full picture.

For investments I'm restricted at work for compliance/legal reasons so I'm
limited to ETFs and similar products (no individual securities). I've heard
great things about Robinhood and would probably just use them or another no-
commission broker (there are a bunch now). The easiest way to get good returns
is just use index fund products. They have low fees usually and aren't that
risky. You don't way outperform the market unless you really just get lucky,
but it's very simple and easy to do. Full disclosure - I work in this area of
financial services, but it really is a far cheaper option than just about
anything else. Unless you have a stellar financial adviser (top 15%), they
aren't usually going to be able to justify their fees over the long haul.

I pay my credit card multiple times a week so that I never pay interest and
never get tempted to do anything foolish. Every day on the way to work I log
on and pay whatever has posted that morning. My card has 2% cash back on
everything, no limits (Citi DoubleCash), so it's very simple and
straightforward.

I contribute enough to max out the legal 401k contributions allowed by law. If
you can afford that, you should definitely do it. At the very least, get the
employer match if you have one.

I have free accounts with Credit.com and Credit Karma. Log in periodically
when they update to see where it has moved and why. They give recommendations
- sometimes they are silly or not-realistic. But at least you can see what's
going on and monitor for free.

Your credit card also probably has an identity protection tool - highly
recommend this as it is part of good personal finance. Register all your known
accounts, IDs, etc. so that you can get alerts if that data is being traded on
the black market.

As far as additional savings, it's a roller coaster because every time I up
the checking account over a series of months some large expenditure is needed
(home repair/improvement, car, medical, something). But I try to mentally have
a bottom in my head that I don't want to see the account go under and if it
does, I try to cut back on extraneous things until it goes up by a fair
amount. Over time, I raise that bottom. That allows for some growth in
additional savings without having to be micromanaging a budget.

I always buy used, cheap cars. Neither my wife or I are car people. We don't
care. Just an A to B type of thing. Highly recommend that. Pay X up front out
of pocket every 5-10 years and then only around $1,200 a year in maintenance.
Far cheaper in the long run.

------
734129837261
I use Google Sheets and my banking app to keep track of expenses.

I'm in my mid 30s, from the Netherlands, and work remote as a software
engineer for a company in the USA. My net income is about 4500 a month, rent
in Amsterdam (NL) costs me about 1400 a month, then another 1000 a month for
all other costs (insurances, food, electricity, car maintenance, parking,
water, phone, etc.)

That sounds like I should save about 1600 Euros a month. In reality I also
purchase things that aren't part of my fixed expenses. A brand new PC set me
back 2000 Euros, a new floor in my home office set me back 600, finally
getting a kick ass new wifi router will set me back 400, and I'd like Apple
Car Play in my car that will set me back 400 as well.

My car is my own, though. No payments on those except the depreciation in
value every second it gets older and every kilometer I drive it.

My biggest issue is my apartment. It's 100 square meters (1076 square foot), 2
bedrooms, an absolutely amazing view, and when I started living here 8 years
ago I could rent it with a far lower income because of a financial crisis.

Now, the housing prices have caught up. I'm living in an apartment that I
couldn't even rent anymore these days (they exact my net income to be 5x the
rent). The value on the buyer's market would be around 500,000 Euros.

So, to get something in the same league of quality and comfort, I'd need to be
able to purchase a house at around the 500k mark. I can't afford that and I
don't really want to take a big step down when it comes to location, view,
comfort, luxury, etc.

I don't buy new cars ever. My own car is a VW Golf from 2017 so the biggest
blow of losing its value (e.g. driving it off the lot the first time) has been
taken by the first buyer.

When I want something new I wait a minimum of 2 weeks before I decide. I've
been wanting a VR Headset for a few weeks now, and just decided that, while I
can afford it, I'd rather not.

I've been traveling a LOT in the past year and that ate up about 20k of my
savings. Worth every cent. But I'm only left with about 20k in savings now.
And I'm not sure what to do with it at all.

Of course I'd love to go into stock trading. I'd buy Apple, Microsoft, Amazon,
Tesla, and just... I don't know, then what? They rise and... I sell? They
lower in value and I buy? Is that it?

There's so much terminology going about in that industry. What's a "short"
exactly? Yeah I can Google it but honestly, I don't understand it. Should I
instead simply give my money to an Index Fund trading company? Sounds safe(r)
at least.

Should I buy a house at half my max in a more rural area and live even cheaper
for the next few years and save up about 200k?

Should I instead spend it all on traveling and experiencing life?

Honestly, I've known people in their prime who got the news: "You have cancer,
you'll die in a year". Sucks to be rich then, doesn't it? (Note: Health care
is fully taken care of here, you don't need money.)

Or what if I get hit by a car tomorrow? I've been in one major accident
already that nearly killed me. I don't feel like planning ahead that much. I'm
young and strong now and I might not be alive next year. Or in ten years. Or
in 30 years.

I'll just apply sensibility in the sense that I don't want to waste all my
money. I need a solid savings account. And if it doesn't make life boring, I
should spend money working towards a more lucrative future.

But I have no clue as to how.

~~~
bluGill
I have known people who died at 30 and their savings are wasted. However I
also know people who are old and their body is failing - and they have nothing
to live on.

~~~
734129837261
In this region of the world we have a guaranteed minimum income, plus the
pension that I built up during life. It should be a comfortable retirement
even without savings.

But I get your point. In the case of an older failing body I'd probably just
go for the euthanasia route. Why suffer when I've already seen and done it
all?

------
allovernow
I live well enough within my means that I don't have to bother with any kind
of accounting. On a typical tech salary living in a relatively cheap COL area,
I bought a house about half of the price I could afford. I exclusively
purchase used vehicles (partly because I am am enthusiast and enjoy working on
them, but even a 10 year old low mileage modern vehicle is pretty reliable and
cheap to maintain), and I don't shop for the fun of shopping.

The result is a guaranteed growing savings which I periodically invest in
various assets while trivially maintaining a buffer for emergencies.

The trick is to live modestly even if you have money. Also, stocks are
basically equivalent to savings, since with modern tech liquidating funds and
transferring them to your bank in an emergency can take as little as minutes.

There's so much uncertainty in money management that you're probably IMO
wasting your time micromanaging. Pick a couple decent assets, or even an index
fund, diversify with a little bit of gold or alternative market hedges, and
leave the funds alone. There's no reason to overthink money management if you
plan everything with a healthy buffer - but that requires self control. Less
stress this way though.

~~~
jmeyer2k
Investing in an index fund consistently gives returns of about 5-10% a year.
This turns out to be a LOT of money in the long run (1.1 ^ 30 = 20x).

Trying to time the market is a bad idea. Picking individual stocks is a bad
idea.

This is assuming your main goal is returns on your investment. Picking
individual stocks or even 30 stocks is basically gambling.

Really recommend reading "A Random Walk Down Wall Street":
[https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-
Street/dp/03933...](https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-
Street/dp/0393358380)

~~~
hackbinary
It depends on which index. The Dow Jones is an exceeding poor index and a good
actively managed fund will out perform it easily.

The Dow does not take into account market cap or float, and when a security
comes off of it at $5 a share and a new one goes in at $105 per share, then
the index jumps $100 in value.

The S&P is better, but managed funds are usually better.

~~~
solarkraft
Interesting that you claim that, since I usually only hear the contrary
(actively managed funds don't perform better and the fees are too high).

Does anyone have specific data on this? Does anyone

~~~
turc1656
I work in this industry. We have detailed reports on damn near everything,
including private hedge funds and how they perform. 80-85% of any active
management or financial advisory services have not beat low cost index
investing over the long haul. The top 15% or so can and do, but the vast
majority of the active investments players (that 80% or so) don't make enough
to beat passive investment once their fees are taken into account and an
appropriate passive benchmark is used. Meaning, if they are actively investing
for their client using only US securities and products, we use a major US
benchmark to compare against. If they are global, Asia-Pac, Dev/emg, etc. we
use one of those to compare against so we are looking at apples to apples. A
lot of times they will simply invest in a high growth emerging market and tell
their clients that they are beating the S&P 500. Yeah, of course you are. But
you aren't beating the relevant emerging markets growth products.

~~~
tunesmith
What are those top 15%? Is it the same 15% each year? :) Does it include big
players that anyone can sign up for like Fisher or Fidelity?

