Tracking your investments in one place

Investing almost always starts small and in one place. Then a second account comes along because the fees are lower, a third because your employer offers something, and somewhere along the way an app with some crypto in it. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem is that your wealth then only exists as a total that nobody adds up.

You only notice when someone asks the question that really matters: how much do you have right now, and how much of it could you do without tomorrow. Without an overview you can only guess at the answer, and with wealth a guess is just as far off as it is with fixed costs. Usually too high, because your savings count twice in your head.

An overview is only useful if it answers a question. In practice there are three, and you rarely need more.

• What is it worth in total? One amount, every provider combined, including the money that is simply sitting in your account. This is the number you want to be able to give without thinking.
• How much did you put in yourself? The difference between those two is your result. Without that second number a rise means nothing: you don't know whether it is return or just last month's deposit.
• How does it compare with your cash? If everything is invested and nothing is free, the first broken washing machine puts you in a different position than the number suggests.

What you can consciously do without is a price that moves every second. Watching it daily changes nothing about what you own, and it tempts you to act on noise. An overview that is right once a day is enough.

In practice there are only three, and each of them has an honest downside.

• Checking app by app. Costs no work, but there is no total. You are comparing apples with oranges, and your savings drop out of the picture.
• A spreadsheet. Works very well and you own your numbers, but you copy prices over by hand. After two months you stop doing it, and a spreadsheet with old prices is worse than no spreadsheet, because it still looks reliable.
• An app that connects everything. Convenient, but you give a third party read access to your accounts and portfolios. That is exactly the kind of data collection such services make their money from, and it is usually the most expensive option too.

The fourth way sits in between: enter your positions once yourself, and have the prices fetched. You keep control over what is in your overview, but you no longer have to copy numbers over.

Less than people think, because a portfolio doesn't change every day. You enter a position at the moment you buy, and that takes half a minute: what you bought, how many units, at what price, and with which money. After that nothing happens until you buy more or sell.

That is a real difference from your day-to-day spending, where entering it yourself only works once you make a habit of it. With investments the upkeep is close to zero. The prices move, your entries don't.

Four things make a home-made overview stop adding up after a year. All four can be avoided once you know about them.

• Applying the exchange rate afterwards. If you buy something in dollars, the rate on the day of your purchase belongs with that purchase. If you later convert everything at today's rate, your purchase price moves with the dollar and you never know again what you really paid.
• Leaving out fees. Transaction fees are part of what a purchase cost you. Each one is small, and over ten years they aren't.
• Recording an extra purchase as a new line. Then the same fund is in your list twice and your average purchase price is no longer right. Buying more is a transaction within an existing position.
• Forgetting where the money came from. If you invest with money from your account, that isn't new wealth: it only moves. If you don't keep track of that, you watch your total grow while nothing has been added.

The Wealth page puts three things side by side: the money in your account, your savings and the market value of your positions. Together that is your wealth, and that number is calculated in one place, so it can't say anything different anywhere in the app.

You enter your positions yourself, no matter which provider they sit with. Add the ticker and the price is fetched when you refresh, and for a position in a foreign currency the exchange rate of the purchase date is locked in. If you want to use your own number, for example for something that isn't listed on an exchange, you switch the price to manual and your value stays put.

There is no connection to a broker, and there won't be one. It is the same choice as with your bank account: giving a third party read access to your portfolio buys convenience and costs privacy, and that trade hasn't been made here.

This guide is about keeping track of what you have. It deliberately says nothing about what you should buy, sell or hold: that is investment advice, and Budgetto doesn't give it.