It is easy – enter balances for all of your assets and set a financial goal. But what would happen if:
- your main income is not stable
- unexpected expenditure occurs
- you own shares and bonds and their value jumps all over the place
- inflation interferes with your plans and its rate is not constant
- your rental income in not guaranteed
- besides, you might change your financial goals all together

Perhaps then you need software which will store and analyse all this data, freeing your mind for the most important task of figuring out the way to your goals. Aimiya accounts for different indices like inflation or Dow Jones. Besides, it calculates your virtual profits and losses (see explanation below).

Fig 17 – “Indices” screen
Fig 18 – Dow Jones history
Fig 19 – Dow Jones diagram

Each index has a title, unit of measurement and historical data bank. You could change their value at any time and the change will automatically affect the calculation of your financial goals as well as your virtual profits and losses. You could set some future value for each index and monitor changes of the relevant activities.

Inflation – rate of inflation measured in % p/a
Inflation rate influences calculation of intermediary amounts on the way to your aim. If inflation value was 0, the intermediary values would be spread evenly throughout the period. When inflation is taken into consideration the first intermediary amounts would appear to be lower than later date amounts. For example the first month amount in Figure 3 was calculated as $987, whereas the last month amount comes to $1,015. Inflation rate will influence the very amount you set as your financial aim «Target in current terms». Inflation index can be of zero or even negative value. Only you can decide on whether to adopt the official rate of inflation or resort to alternative sources of information.

Dow Jones – index of stock market where your shares circulate or the index you could use as a market indicator in general. This index is used in calculation of the virtual losses and gains for your shares. For example, if DJ dropped 5% a month when your shares lost only 4% during the same period, then you’d be accrued a virtual income of 1% of your shares value. This virtual income is only an indication that your shares are dropping in value slower than others. But in long term it can help you correctly evaluate the quality of your stock portfolio.

Fig 20 – compare real balance and estimated balance
Fig 21 – calculate estimated Profits/Losses

Min Cash – the total amount of cash in hand and on your bank account enough to cover your overheads in the nearest future. We would usually recommend setting this amount three times your monthly overheads, presuming that the remaining funds could be considered free for investment in different types of assets. If the software identifies free funds it will run a calculation on lost interest on deposit as if these funds were placed on deposit under Depo Rate. This interest is a virtual loss and indicates irrational use of available funds.

Depo Rate – average interest on deposit you could gain when placing your funds on deposit. It is used for calculation of virtual losses combined with Min Cash index. This showing may depend on many factors (reliability of your bank, deposited amount, placement terms), therefore average rate is used.

Significant Sum – minimum amount of virtual losses and gains which you believe to be significant. Values below this will be disregarded. For example, when Significant Sum is set as $20 a virtual loss of $10 will be omitted. If you do not want to calculate virtual losses and gains please set this value to zero.


Tips and remarks

Calculation on achievement of any financial goal begins with the total amount of Balance at the start date of the calculation. This amount could be set as zero, however in this case you should not chose the option Annual %. The target amount must be higher or lower than the Balance amount.

You can simultaneously monitor several ways of reaching your goal. For example: your preferred scenario, an optimistic and a pessimistic one.  Use Settings\Scenario option where for each of them you could choose different settings from Target menu, compare them against others or the Balance, generate comparison charts. Please note, that the demo sequence is preset for only one of those scenarios.

Fig 22 – list of scenarios

We recommend to users the following order of entering information:
1.    Specify settings: font size, interface language, currency symbol.
2.    Fill in Balances of your assets and liabilities.
3.    Set up your goal.
4.    Correct and update indices (if necessary)

We would recommend to update the data not less often than once a month.

The end date could be linked to a particular event in your life: extending family, starting up your own business, retiring. This way it’s easier for you to make decisions on goal corrections, if such necessity arises.

Project Aimiya intends to prompt you to acquire indispensable additional knowledge, particularly regarding investments and making your assets grow in value. Our software will help you to address all of the following questions: How? Why? What does it do? How to make it profitable? How to decrease outgoings? How to increase gains? How to reach my goal? However, neither our software nor anybody else could give you a 100% true formula of financial success. Everyone has their own recipe.
Discussion Forum is accessible for all registered users of Aimiya (you can access Discussion Forum from the main page). Here you could share your experiences in achieving your goals and discuss your questions.

Remember, Aimiya is only a convenient tool for storage and processing of your data.  We do not consider money saving as an end in itself. We invite you to dream, to project and to invest. Leave the rest with Aimiya.

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