This is a suite of Python modules containing functionality for analysing personal finances.
This README is very high level currently. It will be updated...
- Nada. Zip. Nil.
- Income model [TODO]
- Accomodation and bills cost model [TODO]
- Vehicle cost model [TODO]
- Debt management [TODO]
- Bank statement chomper [TODO]
- Speculative budgets [TODO]
- "Live" budget [TODO]
Of what..?
I'm creating this primarily because I'm looking at jobs; it started out as a tool for looking at the feasibility of relocation, commuting, and general "is this salary right for me". In practice, I found most of this to be actually developing a speculative budget and useful in a more general sense.
Everyone manages personal finances in different ways, but usually when push comes to shove it involves sitting down with a calculator (or spreadsheet) to make some sort of budget, or assess a decision/option which has some kind of significant impact. This is fine but it's error prone and therefore repetitive and laborious when taking an appropriate amount of care. Looking at things properly can be as involved as you want to make it and some advice out there on budgeting is actually pretty decent in this respect. On the other hand, even decent budget templates suffer from broad categories and (justifiably) simple models (e.g. "Petrol cost per annum.") which still leaves you doing (unnecessary) and often repetitive, inaccurate sums. You better hope you got it right if you want to rely on it..!
A final caveat. I don't care too much about money and I'm content to just tick along within my means. I'm not bad at this but I find myself in a situation where this is pretty risky, which is why I'm writing this.
This is intended to
- Provide a mechanism for creating an accurate budget from little information.
- Structure and present information for analysis "at a glance".
- Model more complex aspects of personal finances in a sensible way (e.g. "How much will it cost me to commute to this job, with X pretax salary?").
It is not intended to replace the user as the architect and decision maker. It is also not intended to provide
Not in strict order.
- Base framework for modelling budget items and transactions.
- (Python) user-friendly budget creation mechanism.
- Mechanism for comparing budgets to real spending (e.g. from bank statements/transaction sheets).
- Models for multi-variable elements (e.g. fuel cost) with room for extension.
- A mechanism for presenting aggregated information to the user with an appropriate degree of transparency.
- Visualisation (graphs, charts).
- Some sort of UI (this is very much least-concern at this point)