Who Is Your Family Historian?

Do you ever wonder how your father’s life was like when he was your age?  How about your grandfather?  What were the things on their mind?  What were their hopes for their families, what were their worries, concerns?  What did they do for fun?  How about your great grandfather and his father?  Do you know anything about them?

Sometimes I wish they had left a diary, something where I can go back to and read, something that captures their emotions when they were going through a similar stage of their life.  There were hardly any pictures, let alone videos back then.

Today, in the age of digital media, we have chance to leave something lasting behind.  Something our grandkids could look at one day many years from now.  I believe the answer is a tool some of use every day.  But first here is a quiz:  Which of the following is most likely to be your family historian?

a)     Your collection of digital images

b)     Your collection of videos

c)      Your emails

d)     Your personal finance tool, a la Quicken, or Microsoft Money

I strongly believe that the answer is, d) Your personal finance tool, and by a long shot. As cold an unemotional as it appears, you can learn a lot about someone’s life by looking at his finances.  Actually, you can know more about that peson then you can ever do looking at his pictures and videos.  I’ve come to this conclusion after using Microsoft Money for more than 10 years.

First and foremost, pictures and videos mainly capture notable events, as such they are snapshot of ones life.  Your financials capture your routines, what you do over and over again, in a continuous way.  It is not the one off events that define you, it is your routines, things you do over and over again.  Emails are good too, but unlike financials that focus on specific events, email are inefficient since one sends so many of them, hard to get to the essence of your life through email.

Microsoft Money would capture, where you worked, how much you made, how your salary grew over time, when you got a big bonus, what you spent it on, where you lived, what you did for vacation, where you went on vacation, what hobbies you spent your money, what school you sent your children and what activities they did there.  Since most transactions you enter in the system has a memo field, you can enter a little blurb about the transaction.  So, in my case, every time I go to dinner I write down who I went with.  It even keeps track of your social life.

It doesn’t spell out the emotions but they can be gleaned.  Your children can know whether you saved money or lived month to month.  They can know what kinds of health problems you and from what you spent to cure them. It can tell them whether you were able to spend money for events that made you happy.  I would have loved to know what my grandfather did for fun on a random Friday night, wouldn’t you?

None of this data is captured in the video of a birthday party, or in vacation pictures.  It is loud an clear in your financials.  Gordon Bell at Microsoft has a “My Life Bits” project and your spending habits are a small but key part of your life bits.  The 40MB file I accumulated in over 10 years, says far far more about my life then any video I can ever make (an hour of video is 13GB by the way).   

So what I bought as a personal finance tool, ended up being my family historian.  I bet the designers of the program didn’t think it would morpth this way, but it has.  It is bar none the second most important application on my PC after the browser.  That is why I recommend everybody to use one.  One day your children will love to look at it.  It is one of the best gifts you can give them.

Comments

[OU]

Baris your blog is getting better and better. I am so glad you have not succumbed to the pressures of blogging on a daily basis and end up regurgitating what others are writing. I am tired of the general "so and so have written this. I like it. here is the link" as if I cannot get to that link myself.

Anyhow. This piece made me somewhat sad. I recognize painfully that we live in a world of "transactions" but I never took it to a personal level with their permanent personal recording. More like an osterich I guess since VISA, Amex, Safeway, my bank, most everyone out there know about my history and it will likely remain in the digital realm for kingdom come. If my grandchild wants it, (s)he can subphoena the Man, and get my records along with all the emails/phone calls/etc that I have ever sent/made (I am sure it is there somewhere - there is always NSA).

My sadness, therefore, came from the realization that gone are the innocent "moneyless" days we have had adorned with the purest joys. Memory is fleeting, there were no readily available cameras back then, and obviously no MS Money (as recovering from the name intimation, "no money"). Alamo is down, there is nowhere to run.

However, being the osterich, I will refuse to transact with the transactions--my system is refusing it. I bought almost all generations of MS Money, along with a couple of Quickens, even put in most my information (the steep initial investment). In fact I just got Money 2006 a month ago. The love for the tool never resulted in the love for the execution. Partly, I admit, I am lazy. But more importantly, how glib of an activity is balancing your checkbook (my mind wanders to all those accountant/actuarial jokes).

Anyway, the Money 2006 is still sitting in the computer waiting for me to take "control" of my financial life, or simply "life" in your parlance. But I gotta pass on the advice. Life without control (on paper at least) sounds much more appealing.

[baris]

Dear OU,
Thanks for your kind words. Keep reading, I have some new ideas that I think you will like.

Regarding your comments, first of all, don't feel bad about the "innocent days" being gone. If I learned one thing in Tom Cover's Information Theory class, that is that "information can't hurt." You can always chose to ignore it. Despite living in a world of digital cameras, and digital record keeping you can still use Microsoft Money everyday but completely ignore what it captures about you. There is a great benefit of using Microsoft Money in case you or your children change your minds. You'd have the option to embrace it. If you don't use it, you'll lose the option.

As far as the glib activity of balancing your checkbook, yes accountant jokes do come to mind. There was a time I entered every receipt manually including one for $1 each. It was tedious but after a while it becomes a quick routine and you forget about it. Nowadays it's only your cash transactions you have to enter, you can download all credit card transactions. But think of the following benefit of keeping good accounting. If you do use Microsoft Money you can say things like the following.

"Honey, it's March and you've already spent the same amount of money on shoes as you did all of last year."

"Each Starbuck's visit isn't a big deal, but every month on average we go to Starbucks 20 times and pay $70, that's like subscribing to 20 magazines."

Now isn't that a way to keep a lid on your expenses?

[Cara Fletcher]

It's right that you can learn more about someone from his personal fiances than from all his photos.From the finances you can see how responsible and the man is and can you trust him.