How do you use Firefly III for investment tracking?

[henu-wang]

Curious how others in this community use Firefly III to track investments. I have been using it for budgeting for over a year and recently started logging investment transactions too.

A few things I have been experimenting with:

1. Separate accounts per brokerage — Each brokerage gets its own asset account
2. Tags for investment type — I tag transactions as dividend, buy, sell, or rebalance
3. Monthly investment review — I use Firefly III reports to review my investment allocation alongside my budget

One gap I have noticed is the behavioral side of investing. I have started keeping a separate decision journal to track WHY I make each investment decision (inspired by resources like KeepRule which collects investment principles from legendary investors).

Would love to hear:

• Do you track investments in Firefly III?
• How do you categorize investment transactions?
• Do you have any tips for combining budgeting discipline with investment discipline?

[devclef]

I am not in the USA so investing is a bit different here. I know it is not meant for tracking investments and clear position by Mr Cole.

I do ultimately track my pension, stocks(ISK), and mortgage/house in firefly iii. Goal for me is the trend over months/years, not day to day or even tracking an individual stock performance. Below is what i've settled on.

Pension
I have an asset account named Pension. Last day of every month I check the latest balance and create a transaction to reconcile the balance. I have the account 'excluded' from net worth as my day to day net worth I don't find this interesting. It is also not checked to show on home page. This is not perfect. I've also had times I did not update, but all in all I have data from 2019 to now on my pension, so happy i've tracked it at all.

The 'In/Out' widget on the homepage will show a positive increase in the month as income. When I generate reports I do not include pension, and this gives me an accurate monthly number.

If the value is negative, the reconcile transaction will show as a 'not in budget' transaction if this bothers you. I have a budget for reconciliation that I can hide. A positive value only 'needs' a category, as income is not assigned a budget.

Private Stocks
Stocks - I have what is called an ISK in Sweden. I can transfer money to the ISK, and it remains there until I purchase or sell a stock. The approach I have settled on is have one 'My ISK' asset account, and one 'My Stocks' asset account.

I transfer to/from my checking account and My ISK account. When I buy or sell a stock I create a transfer for this amount to/from 'My ISK' <-> 'My Stocks' account. Once a month I reconcile the 'My Stocks' account to match current balance based on market value. The My ISK account is always correct/matches 'available funds' in the account. I can either buy stocks with, or transfer out of the My ISK account.

These accounts are 'included in my net worth', as I see them more liquid. I actually have two different ISKs, one for 'fun' trades and another more boring X in each month, buy, hold approach.

I do not buy many stocks, and am more interested in seeing my trends over time than day to day changes. My main goals with this was to ensure my reports would always be 'accurate' -- No extreme values in either direction skewing graphs, etc.

If I could ask for anything from the app.

• Set 'Default' Report/Widgets from home screen to either use a list of accounts, or the accounts marked for home screen -- They all by default include all asset accounts. It just means I always create my own reports, and never use the links from the home page.

• The 'Exclude from net worth' checkbox, is this really needed to set that there and for all eternity :) ? If I am doing a report, and including an account, I don't see why a setting on the account should determine whether to appear in the net worth on that very report. Only other place I can think of is the home screen, but maybe a better way to control what accounts is shown/used there period than this check box?

Not complaining though, this works and I chose to keep it all here instead of using a second tool for tracking these investments. I tried a few, but ultimately satisfied with firefly iii. It's nice having 7+ years of data across all areas in one place.