Published by Adrian Vogel · Reading time: approx. 5 minutes
I have no background in finance, and that is probably why I approached this subject differently from how you might expect. At some point it struck me: life is considerably more complicated than only ever looking at an account balance or a securities account.
Both matter, no question. But the picture I actually move around in consists largely of things that appear in no account overview. Of the car with the garage invoice, the appliance whose guarantee runs out at some point, the collection that has grown over twenty years, and the debts and interest that go with it. And around all of that lie deadlines that nobody keeps in their head unaided. I wanted one place where I could capture all of it and find it again. I looked first where you would assume it to be: in finance apps.
What these apps are genuinely good at
This is not going to be a hatchet job, quite the opposite. Multibanking apps and portfolio trackers solve a real problem, and they solve it well. They pull account balances together from different banks, categorise transactions and show how a portfolio is developing. If you want to know how much money is currently sitting where and where it is flowing, that is the right place.
My mistake was not that I had found poor tools. My mistake was that I had been looking in the wrong category. These apps answer the question: what is in my accounts? My question was a different one: what do I own, and how much of it can I prove?
The part that does not appear in an account
Wealth does not consist only of numbers in accounts. It consists of things: a flat, a car, tools, jewellery, collections. That is not a private point of view. In its survey of household wealth, the Deutsche Bundesbank distinguishes between tangible assets and financial assets, and vehicles, jewellery and collections are expressly counted among tangible assets. The largest single item in the wealth of private households is not the account but the property (see sources).
A high account balance is a fine thing. But of this part it documents precisely nothing. Not which coin came from which estate. Not whether the washing machine is still under guarantee. My grandfather's coin collection has no IBAN. It disappears from any picture built solely out of accounts.
But the purchase was a debit entry, you might object. All that shows is an amount, a date and a retailer's name. Not what exactly was bought, what condition it is in today, whether it still exists or was given away long ago. From a line in a transaction list you can only guess at that, and every guess is an assumption dressed up as a fact. I have a healthy respect for that.
What answers these questions is the receipt and the object behind it. A photo, an invoice, a note on when something arrived and where from. Unspectacular, but solid. And it is the difference that missing papers make to the value of an object. That is why OWNAMIC is built around the object, not around the bank statement.
Searching in the other direction
If finance apps stop at the account, I thought, then I will search on the other side. So I looked at inventory apps. They do in fact answer my first question, and for pure stock lists that works.
The principle was simply too laborious for me. In the applications I tested, every item starts with an empty form, field by field, by hand. With ten things that is fine. With a collection grown over years I gave up after the third evening. And what came out of it was a list that stood on its own. It knew nothing about the invoice for the appliance, nothing about the guarantee expiring in two years, nothing about the loan on the car.
Two categories of tool, then, each of which did one half well, and none that let the two halves talk to each other. At some point I stopped searching and started sketching: the object and the number attached to it, on one surface. OWNAMIC grew out of that.
A picture only emerges if everything is in it
You usually know the individual pieces anyway. What is missing is the connection between them, and that only comes about if everything appears in the same picture. Not because a recommendation would follow from it; that is expressly not OWNAMIC's job. But because a partial view produces a distorted picture, and a distorted picture is worse than none at all.
That is why the area is called the Big Picture with us, and why looking at it over time is called a carry-forward and not a forecast. What exists is described, and how it would develop under assumed conditions is shown. What follows from that is your decision. How the maths works is covered in Projecting net worth with tangible assets.
The benefit I had most underestimated
To be honest, the decisive point was not on my list at all to begin with. You ask a finance app once a month how things stand. You ask a record of your possessions when things get uncomfortable. When the insurer wants a list after the water damage. When the retailer wants to see the receipt from three years ago. When nobody remembers what was in box 14 during the move. When after a death someone stands in front of a flat and does not know what is a keepsake and what has value.
In those moments no account balance helps. What helps is that the receipt, the photo and the information can be found. That is not a finance feature. That is everyday life.
And then there was the matter of the coldness
The last reason is the least objective one, and to me still the most important. Finance apps are often cold. Bar charts, percentages, red and green arrows. That suits accounts. It does not suit a coin your grandfather pressed into your hand at all.
I wanted a beautiful place for my things, where they stay visible, with a picture, an origin and a history. And one where somebody helps me put them in order. That is OWNY's job, the assistant in OWNAMIC: it reads out what is written on photos and receipts, makes suggestions for organising them and takes the dull typing off your hands. How far that carries is something we saw with 500 books and puzzles in one afternoon. The deciding is yours.
Organising and preserving, that was the ambition. Not appraising. Not guessing. Not advising.
I never set out to build a better financial product, and I have not built one either. I lack the background for that and, to be honest, the interest. I have solved a documentation problem that I have known as a collector for twenty years. Finance apps were never the wrong tool. They were simply built for a different question. My question was: what belongs to me, where is it, and what can I prove? There is an answer to that one now.
Sources
- Deutsche Bundesbank: "Private Haushalte und ihre Finanzen (PHF)" (Panel on Household Finances) – results of the household wealth survey (distinction between tangible and financial assets; alongside property and business assets, tangible assets expressly include vehicles, jewellery and collections), https://www.bundesbank.de/de/bundesbank/forschung/studie-zur-wirtschaftlichen-lage-privater-haushalte-phf/ergebnisse-604886