AI Project Insights
As I continue to research more on GenAI features, I have an idea on what I’m looking for and not looking for.
If I revert back to my experience back in the US with personal finances and technology, I’m still a heavy and savvy Excel user. Pretty sure I’ve started using Excel in college, so it’s been 20+ years to-date.
Lived in the US, MM, and now Australia, Excel for our personal finances and investments is still the best tool. Used Mint back in the US for a few months, and spent more time reconciling each line item, than I did for analysis. Even after aggregating our data with all of our bank accounts and credit cards, I didn’t find it as useful. The software did it’s job on smaller tasks, but didn’t focus on the big picture.
After relocating to Australia, we’ve focused more on building wealth than we did on personal finances. We’ve considered Pocket Smith and YNAB, but they didn’t offer features tailored to our needs, so we’ve continued with using Excel.
And now GenAI. After using ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot, I can definitely use AI as a tool. AI results still have a lot of issues after prompting, so requires much better prompt engineering on my side to get the results that I’m looking for. It’s good for data consolidation and making my inputs into a more structured format for analysis, but the analysis results generated by AI still isn’t quite there yet.
In summary, we’re not looking a personal AI agent. Prefer not to sync our Superannuation accounts, taxable investment accounts, and bank accounts all in one and become susceptible and vulnerable. Even if I manage to sync the CMS from the external accounts into one, the risk-and-return isn’t justified.
We also don’t think RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is necessary for our purposes. Our stock price information is being updated using Microsoft 365 subscription which I’m happy with. I’m savvy with Excel, so most of our formulas and reports are automated.
We’re considering in building a tool to aggregate and analyze our financials, without needing to sync our accounts. What we want to focus on are:
Consolidating our superannuation and taxable investments to calculate our % allocations for all of our funds
Keeping track of our current cash flow and where we stand financially for investments and properties, including offset accounts, property rental income and expenses, mortgage interests, and market performance in both our superannuation and taxable investments
Planning ahead for the next few years with scenario analysis for stock investments and property, buy/sell stocks, offset account funds reallocation to buy stocks vs mortgage interests, refinance, purchase investment properties and cash flow, and financial planning.
There are many personal finance, home loan, mortgage repayment calculators out there, but requires for us to input our financials every time. There are many financial advisors and planners out there, but we’re DIY Investors and prefer not to pay their % commissions based on AUM. There are also fee-based advisors which we’ve interviewed, but they’re fixated in their own methods and have their own checklists and not tailored to our needs, so we’ll continue to focus on our DIY path.
Uploading our information to AI shouldn’t be a one time use and for a specific purpose. Instead, our financials should be aggregated and updated instantaneously for multi purposes including current position, for analysis and for financial planning.
As of now, we’re considering in creating a consolidated report in Excel, and create a prompt engineering format in AI in PDF, including analysis and planning models utilizing our current position in a scenario analysis model. Mind Mapping might be the best choice using our existing reports, and from there remodel the AI into a more systematic environment.
