Terabyte Labs

Money Management

Knowing how much we spend on what is a problem everybody faces and people have come up with many different solutions based on their needs. Personally, I’ve found I’m too lazy to maintain an Excel spreadsheet and I don’t trust myself with having no system at all.

I first started looking at money management software when I first heard of mint.com. It looks like a great service but unfortunately doesn’t support UK banks yet. Next I looked into desktop software that might offer a similar set of features. There are plenty out there such as MS Money, Moneydance, Quicken, GNU Cash etc. Unfortunately all of these lacked some essential feature (such as auto-categorisation), were too difficult to use or too expensive.

So I started looking into writing my own application with the features I wanted. This would have a line chart showing my overall balance over time, a pie chart showing the breakdown of my expenses into categorisation. And of course transactions would be loaded and automatically cateogrised with the minimum level of fuss. On this point I wrote an application that automatically logs into my online bank account and downloads my statement in csv format. While I eventually got this working (not a trivial task) I realised it was too clunky and fragile as it’s likely that my bank will change their online interface at some point in the future.

Next I looked into downloading transactions from my bank via the OFX protocol. This is the protocol that lots of banks use to allow software the ability to download transaction information and also potentially execute transfers. It was not easy to find the information I needed to connect to my bank (Nationwide) via OFX as the bank’s details are not officially published. Microsoft use these details when connecting to Nationwide with MS Money. I had to do quite a bit of digging until I found a link on a newsgroup to a file hosted by Microsoft containing the necessary details for connecting to Nationwide’s OFX server. Armed with this I posted the details to a thread on the Moneydance forums. That was 7 months ago and Moneydance have still done nothing about using my information to add support for Nationwide despite a lot of requests from other forum users.

I moved on from the downloading transactions part of my application to the application itself. I figured it would still be useful even if I had to occasionally download transactions manually. Here’s what I came up with:

I even came up with a decent categoriser dialog:

With the application itself shaping up I went back to the transaction download problem. This time I found a nice snippet of Python code for connecting to a server via OFX. I translated this to a Java application that could download a list of my accounts from Nationwide, then download a list of transactions within a certain date period from a given account. This program is available for download here.

Now that I had the ability to download OFX statements from my bank, I looked into the other management services I initially dismissed because I could only import data via OFX. Wesabe was one of these so I tried creating a new account but lo and behold, they now suddenly support Nationwide for automatic uploads. This means they do the whole OFX download themselves automatically. This was great as now I don’t need any manual process at all to see my transactions nicely split into categories. The funny thing was, support was added the same day that I finished making the OFX downloader and this was thanks to my initial investigative work into the Nationwide OFX server details. Someone had picked up on my post in the Moneydance thread, given the details to Wesabe, who within just 9 days integrated support for Nationwide into their application. So great work guys, you well exceeded my expectations and I’m glad I could help other fellow Nationwide users.

Now that little saga is over, onto the real issue of the software itself. The great thing about Wesabe is that I can view and manage my transactions from anywhere. This means I can log on while at work and enter what I spent in cash for lunch. The bad thing about Wesabe is that it doesn’t give a breakdown your expenses as a pie chart and it doesn’t present your overall balance as a line chart.

To rectify this I’ve chosen to abandon my Money Monitor program and try to go in a slightly different direction. I’ve always wanted to learn .NET programming so my next project will be to create a ASP.NET application that connects to Wesabe via the Wesabe API. Downloads transaction data and displays it all in nice pretty graphs. Stay tuned for updates!

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I’ve recently finished reading a book called The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. The book attempts to uncover the hidden truths of every day economic systems (though in fact it is more of a global economics 101) and is a very interesting read. It seems that a great many of the world’s situations can be explained by very basic economic principles such as scarcity or the principle of asymmetric information. For example Harford explains why it is impossible to find a good second hand car because the customer has no idea whether the car dealer is being honest about his claims of the quality of the cars he is selling. The fact that both parties don’t have all the information detriments both of them because the customer can’t tell which cars are good or bad and the dealer can’t convince his customer which cars are genuinely good value. In economic theory, markets work most efficiently when everyone knows everything there is to know about the entire market.

This got me thinking to an area where information is very thin on the ground: salaries. Why don’t people tell each other how much they earn? Why is it such a taboo subject? According to the theory if everyone knew how much their colleagues earned they’d be in a much better position to know what kind of salary they should be getting. Employers wouldn’t be able to offer unreasonably low salaries to people just because they don’t know how much they should be getting. Salaries should work on a system of supply and demand like every other market. If C# developers were paid twice as much as Java developers then people would train to fit the job that best suited their abilities and desired salary. At the same time the competition for jobs would drive down over-inflated salaries. Eventually the outcome - as with all free markets - would be that everyone was paid just enough to to be happy but not too much that someone else would offer to do the same job at a lower price.

Without knowing how much your colleagues are earning it is impossible to know how valuable the work you are doing is to the company. If a company wants people to work at their best they could offer benefits such as a performance related bonus. A lot of companies seem to have implemented bonus schemes without realising that unless employees know how much bonus they are getting or how much of the bonus is based on performance the bonus has no real effect at all. Also unless we know how large a bonus our colleagues are getting we have no method of relating performance to renumeration. The same reasoning explains why communism doesn’t work. If extra effort can only be seen as a benefit to others, no one will have a reason to try to perform any better than anyone else.

Perhaps a completely transparent salary might then encourage too much competition. People would threaten leave if they felt they were treated unfairly. In a work place it’s very difficult for anyone to have an objective opinion of their own or other people’s value as an employee. Perhaps a completely free market of workers would reduce the overall quality of work due to poor workers demanding the same salary as their coworkers or good workers continually switching from one company to another. Either way, all I know is that I’m not getting enough…

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I thought I’d make a list of some projects and tasks that I’d like to complete sometime in the future. It seems that right now I don’t have much more free time than I need to shop, cook, eat and sleep but if I write something down here hopefully it will give me a better idea of how to organise my time.

Website

• Create a new front page of the site and move the blog to the sub page. done
• Add more projects and content to the site. done
• Integrate my photo gallery to the site and upload all my digital photos. in progress
• Add a personal section including a CV.

Projects

• Finish Shyguy’s Cave of Death. done
• Finish the Word Dissociation Game.
• Start on a new Slick based project (maybe a multi-player rpg of some kind).
• Learn C++ by creating a Project Euler solution compendium. in progress

Other

• Sort out my finances.
• Save enough money to buy a PC.
• Tidy my room.

I’m sure there are more but I think that’s more than enough to get me started.

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Recently we’ve been hearing about new classes of stimulant drugs such as Modafinil which supposedly promote wakefulness rather than hyperactivity or euphoria. These kinds of drugs appear to be very effective at reducing sleepiness and improving concentration and memory without affecting sleep or having any side effects from withdrawal.

Modafinil and other drugs in its class are sold to help sufferers of Narcolepsy or ADHD but are widely used by people with no such conditions as a way of simply enhancing their general brain functions. Millions of us could benefit from holding better concentration while at work or at school. Or remembering things such as timetables or doing mental arithmetic.

There are few other non-medicinal self enhancement drugs that offer so much potential benefit to such a wide range of people. Caffeine seems to be the nation’s current brain fuel of choice but most people who take it regularly end up simply using it to abate the withdrawal symptoms of the caffeine taken the day before. The question therefore becomes, should people take drugs simply to better themselves? Should people be allowed to use them while taking or revising for exams? Should people be allowed to use them to gain advantages over colleagues at work? Why shouldn’t people be able to function at a higher level than they would naturally? After realising how much better they can be, why would anyone want to live a drug free life?

Personally I find it very difficult to concentrate throughout the day unless I’ve had at least 8 hours’ sleep. My job requires a high level of concentration and logical processing for which I need the highest level of alertness I can get. I would love to try a Modafinil some day just to see how much more code I can churn out in a day. What I’m not so sure about is do I want to need to take the drug every day in order to maintain the same productivity at work? Even if there’s no danger of physical or psychological dependence would I develop a functional dependence such that the drug effectively becomes a medicine rather than a self enhancement?

My theory is that if Modafinil came in a hot drink form, it would so conveniently replace coffee and tea that people would reject any attempts to limit its use by the government. Also it would probably need to be bitter in taste enough to discourage children from becoming dependent on it. Hmm I guess this is how consumption of caffeine and alcohol has worked for centuries. Isn’t it convenient to have traditional beverages to mask our widespread drug taking customs?

Random, Life, Work | 2 Comments »

I’m normally pretty good with taking care of my stuff. In fact I don’t think I lost anything more valuable than a pen until a few months ago. I guess it started with potentially my most valuable possession of all - my wallet. I was returning on the train slightly dazed and weary and must have not made the effort to place my wallet back into my pocket after taking it out to put my train ticket in it. I got off the train without my wallet and didn’t realise until that evening. I canceled my debit card and requested a replacement the following morning. Fortunately no one had tried to charge anything on the card before then. I’m incredibly bad at getting things done (the number of things I’m putting off by writing this is testament to that) so I didn’t bother to replace my driver’s license, young person’s railcard or the wallet itself. The only thing I replaced was the oyster card which is pretty essential if you’re traveling around London all the time. About two weeks later I got a letter saying that my wallet was at Berko station. I picked it up and the only thing missing from it was the oyster card.

Next I was on a bus and left a carrier bag containing the lease for my house and my empty lunch container. Again nothing valuable lost.

Then I managed to leave my bag at the pub (my nice back rucksack this time) containing my trainers and a hat. Rang the pub later that night and a very unhelpful woman wasn’t even able to tell me whether they had it or not. A few days later at work the people I was with told they had it so again fortunately nothing valuable lost.

Next I managed to lose my rear bike light after using it exactly one time. Guess that fell out my coat pocket.

Next exactly one week after losing my bag at the pub I lost my bag at the pub again. This time I was well aware that I might lose but still left it unattended by the stairs at the pub and it had disappeared by the time I wanted to leave. This time the bag contained a hat, a book (a damn good one at that) and my front bike light which I’d used exactly zero times.

I really don’t know what’s changed in the past few months. I’m obviously not the kind of person to trust with keeping things safe but somehow this flaw of mine hasn’t been a problem at all in the past. I guess up till now I’ve just been incredibly lucky to find things where I expect them to be.

I’ve now got so many things to replace and it is going to be a pain to get them back. This isn’t just from losing things but replacing broken things or new things required for my house. On top of that I’ve been spending way too much money recently. I have to keep within the budget of my salary which isn’t easy when half of it is already taken up by rent. Anyway that’s for another post. Before then I still need to break down my outgoings to find out exactly what I’m spending on what.

PS: This rant may seem rather trivial given that I haven’t really lost anything of great value. Yesterday I learnt that the British teacher who was found dead in a bath tub in a Japanese apartment was actually the girlfriend of one of the editors of Bit-Tech (a site I visit often) and for some reason decreasing the degree of separation between yourself and someone else increases the empathy you feel for that person. I don’t expect anyone to feel any empathy for my losing my bag but still, at least it gives me something to blog about.

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Hello and as my past self has already predicted I’m writing from my new room in south London. I would describe the place a bit but since I’m the only one reading this suffice to say that it’s pink and it’s quite nice. Bad things about it are the constant noise of traffic, the lack of curtains, the lack of decent shower in the bathroom and the dodgy wall socket which sparks and makes strange noises. Hopefully though I can get most of those sorted at some point.

Not much else to report at the moment. The job is going ok still mostly staring confusedly at code all day. I predict that my next post will be either existential or ranting in nature.

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