I’m not trying to come off as a hipster but I made this financial map for Apathy Ends long before it started rolling. When I first joined the personal finance community in late March, I connected with Mr. AE on Twitter. He was one of my first follow backs on my Twitter. “How Complex is your Financial Map?” was his most recent post at the time and I thought to myself, “what a neat idea from such a round and yellow-faced man! I’ll do it too!”

So I got on my computer immediately and made a quick map before tweeting it to him. I didn’t write a post about it because…well I was new. I didn’t know what I was doing – I just thought it looked cool. At the time I didn’t even know Rock Star Finance even had a forum!

Hubby and I opened up a few more accounts since March so I updated the map again.

I spent a little too long rainbowifying up the map…as you can see. I wanted my financial map to not only show our money prowess but also my design skills. Epileptic unicorn design skills.

On a scale of 1 to RuPaul, how pretty is this map?

UPDATE: I SEE THIS WAS FEATURED IN ROCKSTAR TODAY YESSSS SLAY!!!

So I made another one. Enjoy!!!! Check out others links below!!

I’ve got all the colors of the rainbow!

So yeah, I got a bit carried away with the colors and literally forgot I was supposed to color code them. I already saved it to my desktop by then. Well, at least they are somewhat grouped together

My other regret is the lack of emojis…I forgot to add them again. (There’s a 50% chance I’ll re-do this again.)

The best part about a money map is how simple it makes your finances look in comparison to reflecting them all over mentally. Hubby and I have so many brokerages and I have so many random, (unstable) side hustles that I thought it was going to come out looking like a total mess. It looks pretty neat actually. That was the biggest thing that surprised me.

Almost everyone on the chain did allude to that as well so I think this is in good practice for everyone. I used Draw.io to make it. It’s fun and free.

Let’s start it from the top…

We use our income sources up top to pay the expenses on the bottom. The reserves to the left and right sides of the map are our brokerage accounts. Not too shabby at all.

Hubby has his employer-sponsored 401K contributions and his HSA contributions that takes an immediate bite out of his pay. My meagerly (in comparison) side hustles goes through the cleaners (taxes) first and whatever remains goes directly from our credit union into mortgage #1 and #2 including MIT (mortgage interest tax) and WST (water sewage trash). Airbnb goes directly into our credit union account but we try to estimate the tax withholding first.

Related: Our glossary of income reports.

Occasionally PayPal is the middleman between side hustle to the credit union. I make a habit of never parking more than $30 in my PayPal account. We use credit cards for almost everything and we pay the full balance every month from either our credit union or Discover account.

Hubby and I have 9-10 active credit cards right now but I didn’t map them because it would just be a cluttered mess. #Churners

The Chase and Morgan Stanley accounts are inactive right now. We were using both to park additional funds. We will be closing our Chase account soon; they ticked off my husband with their lack of security, service, and ethics. We keep a few hundred dollar bills in our cash emergency fund at home in case there was a natural disaster. You can bet our plastic credit cards would do no good during an outage. On a brighter note – I find great deals on Craig’s List sometimes so I like to keep a chunk of cash around for that.

Our main brokerage is Vanguard which holds our retirement accounts. My husband was intrigued by Fidelity’s slightly lower expense ratio but we haven’t made the jump yet.

My Robinhood is down about 6% in 2 weeks. So much for doing research. Blah!

The Robinhood account is our “blow money” where I use for a platform to play various stocks. It’s fun – I did well last year. I was not close to beating the market and I didn’t outperform our funds in Vanguard but…hey, that’s my form of entertainment.

There is also contracted amount of restricted stock units (RSU) on the top left of the graph. Hubby received RSUs as part of his hiring package. Roughly 1/3 of the RSUs will be taken out for taxes before Hubby gets them so we don’t have to reserve any ourselves. The rest of the RSUs will go into our half-abandoned Charles Schwab account. Not totally sure what to do with Charles Schwab yet but we’re definitely closing Chase.

See the others! (& join in with your own!)

Luxe Strategist

Budget on a Stick

Ms. Adventure Rich

Othala Fehu

MinaFI

Working Optional

Atypical Life

Eccentric Rich Uncle

The Retirement Manifesto

Our Financial Path

Cantankerous Life

Debt to Riches

Need 2 Save

Money Metagame

CYinnovations

I Dream of Fire

Stupid Debt

Her Money Moves

Life Zemplified

The Lady in the Black

Smile & Conquer

Making Your Money Matter

Full Time Finance

Abandoned Cubicle

Freedom is Groovy

Millennial Money Diaries

Trail to FI

All About Balance

A Journey to FI

Present Value Finance

[Halt Catch Fire]

Apathy Ends: