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You are here: Home / Personal Finance / Making Our Epileptic Rainbow Unicorn Themed Financial Map
You are here: Home / Personal Finance / Making Our Epileptic Rainbow Unicorn Themed Financial Map

Making Our Epileptic Rainbow Unicorn Themed Financial Map

September 7, 2017 Budget & Debt Management, Personal Finance Lily | The Frugal Gene

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financial-map-how-to-map-your-money

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.

 

Apathy-Ends-Money-Map-financial-map
On a scale of 1 to RuPaul, how pretty is this map?

Table of Contents

  • UPDATE: I SEE THIS WAS FEATURED IN ROCKSTAR TODAY YESSSS SLAY!!!
    • I’ve got all the colors of the rainbow!
    • Let’s start it from the top…
    • See the others! (& join in with your own!)

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

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

my-rainbow-money-mapI’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:

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mrs. Adventure Rich

    September 7, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    Woohoo, another colorful map! I’d say it’s a Ru Paul for sure 😉

    I find it so interesting seeing everyone’s money management and money flow!

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 7, 2017 at 5:46 pm

      Hehe thank yous :3

      Reply
  2. Budget on a Stick

    September 7, 2017 at 6:06 pm

    So. Many, Colors!!!!
    jk..ish 😉
    Love the map. but holy credit card madness batman! What’s the scoop on that?
    There’s a lot going on. Probably helps to have it all mapped out!

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 8, 2017 at 7:44 pm

      I really need to write an updated post on our credit card adventures – I’ve been saying that for months. Maybe I’ll have it done by October!

      Reply
  3. Working Optional

    September 7, 2017 at 7:11 pm

    Love the colors! 🙂

    Reply
  4. EC

    September 7, 2017 at 10:51 pm

    This is so much fun! Love the rainbow chart you have (make sure you use every color out there!) I did not know Money Map existed prior to your post. Love making charts, so I made our own too here. I don’t have a mouse at home and powerpoint for Mac OS is so annoying. Btw, I posted my Hanfun pic in the about page. https://eccentricrichuncle.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/our-money-map/

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 8, 2017 at 7:45 pm

      OMG SO CUTE! Like a blue faerie! Lol nice blur on the face hahaha (unless it’s my internet fudging with me). Safety first!

      Reply
  5. Mr. Freaky Frugal

    September 8, 2017 at 5:50 am

    Cool! I wonder if Mint has enough info to automatically generate a map?

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 8, 2017 at 7:46 pm

      I didn’t know Mint did that! I had a Mint account before I knew anything about finance and I freaked out at the amount of terms I didn’t understand. I should give it another shot 🙂

      Reply
  6. Jing

    September 8, 2017 at 1:09 pm

    Omgsh I’m dizzy! It’s so funny because I have so many accounts but it seems so organized in my own head. I feel if I wrote it out it’d just look crazy! But it’s always fun seeing where everyone’s money is going and what their cash to account flow looks like 🙂

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 8, 2017 at 7:46 pm

      Dizzy from the awesome!! Oh yeah, everyone’s been making an e-map – it’s a good exercise to just hand doodle one out!

      Reply
  7. The Luxe Strategist

    September 8, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    “Epileptic unicorn design skills.” Hahahaha!

    Wait, I want to know about the credit cards, and the kind of churning you’ve got going on!

    Also, how is Robinhood different from other platforms? I guess I could use Google.com, but I’d rather you tell me instead.

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 8, 2017 at 7:47 pm

      Robinhood lets you buy & trade stocks for free! FREE!

      Reply
  8. GYM

    September 9, 2017 at 10:25 am

    I loove the colours, very soothing, reminds me of childhood for some reason, maybe because the colours are like “My Little Pony” colours 🙂

    That’s great you have a Robinhood account, I too have a part of my portfolio that wasn’t just indexing along with the market, it satisfies the gambler and speculator in me lol. What kind of stocks did you have in your Robinhood account?

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 10, 2017 at 2:55 am

      That’s what I thought when I noticed what I’ve done. Haha oh yes the gambler in me likes it a lot! I had um…wait lemme see…SAVE, BPT, ESRX, DHX, IDCC, VVUS and VIAB.

      Reply
  9. Cory @ Growing Dollars from Cents.com

    September 10, 2017 at 12:57 am

    Aww so cute. Some financial maps I’ve seen are sooooo boring. Finally one that’s attractive to look at.

    I love the concept Robinhood uses, allowing it’s users to trade for free! Anyone can invest in a few of their favorite stocks just for fun or seriously but there’s no cost!

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 10, 2017 at 2:56 am

      Thanks Cory!!! Robinhood is such a game changer I thought everyone would know what it is already!

      Reply
  10. Lance @ My Strategic Dollar

    September 11, 2017 at 5:14 am

    Lily this is amazing! I learn so much from you and your husband! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 12, 2017 at 6:53 pm

      Thanks Lance!

      Reply
  11. lyn

    September 11, 2017 at 11:30 pm

    This is pretty and madness. Well, bit of madness cos I find butterflies on my head trying to follow the map. But a lot of pretty, cos the more complicated is our finance, the more we are like big corporations running a no fail business? I shall try to draw one for myself!

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 12, 2017 at 6:53 pm

      Haha let your creative spark fly Lyn!!

      Reply
  12. Ms. Raggedly Rich

    September 12, 2017 at 10:17 am

    Loveeeee this!!! If mine wasn’t just Income to Savings and Expenses, I’d totally be making one too 😛

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 12, 2017 at 6:54 pm

      I was wondering why you didn’t make one! There’s always someday

      Reply
  13. Cubert

    September 15, 2017 at 6:43 am

    A. Congrats on getting featured!!! Well-deserved, if for no other reason than your stick person skewered by the unicorn ?
    B. Airbnb – sweet! I need to explore this. Hoping my condo offer in Michigan comes through…

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 20, 2017 at 9:59 am

      ???

      Reply
  14. Michelle

    September 16, 2017 at 6:50 am

    WELL THIS IS FLIPPING GORGEOUS HOLY COW

    Reply
    • Lily

      September 17, 2017 at 8:45 pm

      Hahahaha *kisses*

      Reply
  15. Maya M

    November 9, 2017 at 1:44 pm

    You had me at “epileptic unicorn”. I’ve never seen such a good-looking financial map before. Congrats on the feature by the way!

    Reply
    • Lily

      November 10, 2017 at 7:26 pm

      Thank you mi lady! 🙂

      Reply

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