Investing


This page shows how the application SeeTheDollars can help you deal with your personal finances.

For example, you have some money to invest but you don’t know where to invest and how to keep track of your investment.

So, you make an appointment with your financial advisor to discuss the matter. Imagine yourself sitting across from her in the office. Normally, she would describe to you different options and the pros and cons for each. The thing is, I am not so sure how much you would be able to absorb and understand so you can feel comfortable to make a decision. But there is another way, the SeeTheDollars way.

She uses SeeTheDollars to create on her computer screen a generic investment diagram like the one on this page. Money is coming out from your bank account on the left and gets invested into the square called Investment. Then, the future value of your money is represented by your bank account on the right as money you would get if you decided to cash out. Because of market fluctuations, the value of your money on the left is not equal to the value of your money on the right, so I used yellow to not let you forget that. Yellow represents invested dollars, whose value changes. You may argue that the real value of green dollars also changes because of inflation, but I haven’t figured out yet a way to show that.

There is a lot of power behind the simple looking square called Investment. Your financial advisor could have on her computer links off that square to all sorts of software that among other things calculate risk, access databases and create all kinds of reports. She uses those links to demonstrate and discuss with you different options. You can see and understand for yourself the pros and cons of every investment scenario. This is all done in real time, mind you. And I can imagine how lively the discussion may become.

Parenthetically, and addressing software developers, I would like to mention that people could make a living by writing software that link to the square called Investment.

I was actually contemplating on doing just that myself in the early days of SeeTheDollars. I was considering writing an application to put in software the advice Suze Orman gives to women in her book Women & Money. Technically speaking the whole book is a series of “if this happens then do that” statements which can be easily programmed. The “if this happens” is data from the Stock Market. If I made this application, it would link perfectly to the investment square.

At the end of the discussion, after you have jointly decided on a course of action, she uses SeeTheDollars to create a webpage for you that contains all the links that describe the investment strategy you chose. You leave the office with a webpage in your pocket!

You can interrogate your account at 2 o’clock in the morning and get updates almost instantly by opening the webpage your financial advisor gave you. SeeTheDollars will recalculate all the numbers based on the links. You do not need to be exposed to the complexity behind the Investment square. All you want to know is how the amount of money on the left compares to the amount of money on the right. And SeeTheDollars obliges. Compare that to the statement you get once a month from your financial advisor. No comments.

And when you change your mind, just take that webpage back to her and update it with new choices.

A financial advisor in Chicago told me a long time ago that she attributes her success to the skill she has “to explain things well to customers.” I believe she would have liked SeeTheDollars because it explains things well.