I have been using Excel for years to track investments, stock and retirement accounts. It has worked well but I feel like I am not doing as good of tracking this task over time. I think Tinderbox can help here. Perhaps, using Tinderbox in addition to my spreadsheet to get a better perspective of changes over time with my thoughts and feelings over time. Might help, using Tinderbox. Perhaps using the timeline, although, to be honest I have rarely used it up to now.
This is just the beginning of exploring Tinderbox in this new way… I was curious, is anyone else used Tinderbox in this way? Lessons learned?
I have nothing more than an idea and some interest to share, started this thread because I did not see this topic brought in in the past. Just curious to see what others have done or started a project like this in tinderbox.
“Investment tracking” is a broad topic with many approaches. Without discussing personal info, could you explain what you have been tracking and why a change might be good for you?
Just to throw it out there – the dashboards concept which has been discussed here many times over the years might be a good approach, especially that we now have posters that can be set up to display data from external sources, maybe even feeds from your brokerage account. The dashboard in Tinderbox can provide a lot of graphical information in a more attractive way than Excel.
And, your Excel data, say a summary exported as .csv, can also feed Tinderbox of course.
I would start simply by setting up a dashboard to track account ROI vs. market trends. One important value of a dashboard can be its display of trends over a long horizon, which might scratch your itch. Gaudi view could also help if you want to visualize relative balances between equity, debt, and cash balances in various accounts.
Thanks Paul. I did not think about Gaudi, but you are right. Nice.
My wife and I track very high level snapshops of our investments on a very sporadic and periodic basis, no real schedule, mainly for tax and retirement purposes. We tend to do this monthly: initial investment, current, change since last review, change since initial, % of Portfolio, dividends …
I think I could use timeline and as Paul mentioned above dashboards with the textual analysis Tinderbox brings to add a ton more sophistacation than my current approach.
Sounds like a great Meetup topic. I’m sure those of us who have any kind of investment portfolios are either using Excel or a dedicated investment app or the website of their subscription-based investment services already, but Tbx lookup, dashboards, posters, agents, etc could put some horsepower behind investment choices and deliver good customized reports on demand.
I am just kicking the tires right now and unfortunately have done no work on it yet. I am planning to explore this topic deeper in 2025. I will certainly share what I learn.
I think a similar topic is what analysis could you do with a text file in Tinderbox
No problem, Tom. If you come up with some rough ideas that spark your interest, please share.
We have a lot more eyeballs here than attend the “meetups”, so for those of us who cannot or will not attend online events, the old-school method of forum dialog and showing off experiments is really tried and true for decades.
If I could get a bit up to speed on lookups I could cudgel together a starter file in the next couple weeks, which we can collaboratively develop at an upcoming meetup. I have a few thoughts.
Do either @satikusala or @mwra have 30 min in the coming week to chat offline and set me on tracks?
Just got back on red-eye from West Coast so a bit bleary but I see (above) my weekly call with @satikusala is free. So, if not doing Thanksgiving, I could give you some time then? What time zone are you in ATM?
Hey Art, sounds like a great meetup topic, I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I’d love to work with you, @TomD, and @satikusala on this. Reply here or DM me and let’s start a thread.
I just finished Michael’s TBX 101 course, 6 Week Tinderbox 101 Course (9 Lecture Hours): Kickoff Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, which was great and I learned a lot. I’d encourage anyone to take it - finally feel like I have a path forward with how to manage the big soup of files and knowledge that I’ve created and accumulated over the years. Now I can see how to break it up into pieces, link to it, leverage it, and repurpose it in future work.
