Investments

What Are Investments?

Investments in BananaBird are not a separate type of financial record. They are regular Accounts that have been marked as investment accounts.

This allows BananaBird to group those accounts together and provide a focused view of your investment balances, allocations, contributions, performance, and history.

Marking an Account as an Investment

When creating or editing an account, enable the Investment Account option if you want that account to appear in the Investments section.

Examples may include RRSPs, TFSAs, FHSAs, pensions, non-registered investment accounts, or other accounts you consider part of your investment portfolio.

The Investment Account setting does not change how the account itself is stored or tracked. It simply identifies the account as part of your investment portfolio and makes it available to investment-specific views and calculations.

Investments and Accounts

Because investments are accounts, they use the same balance, snapshot, horizon, liquidity, contribution, and history features described in the Accounts guide. If an investment account does not have a new balance recorded in a Snapshot, BananaBird continues using its most recent known balance.

Changes you make to an investment account - including its classification, contribution tracking, opened or closed dates, and aggregate settings - also affect how it appears throughout the rest of BananaBird.

Read the Accounts Guide

Understanding the Investments Page

The Investments page brings together all accounts marked as investment accounts and summarizes them as a group.

Current Balance

When you have multiple investment accounts, BananaBird shows their combined current balance.

Account List

The account list shows the individual accounts that make up your investment portfolio. These are the same accounts you can view from the main Accounts section.

Allocations

Allocation charts show how your investment balances are distributed across individual accounts, as well as by Horizon and Liquidity.

Balance Over Time

As you record balances through snapshots, the Balance Over Time chart shows how the combined value of your investment accounts has changed.

Performance Summary

BananaBird compares balances across different periods to show balance changes and percentage changes.

If contribution data is available, the performance summary can also separate contributions and withdrawals from estimated growth.

Contributions Over Time

If your investment accounts track contributions, BananaBird can chart the money you've added to or withdrawn from those accounts over time.

History

The History section combines the balances recorded for your investment accounts across submitted snapshots. When contribution data is available, it is shown alongside the corresponding balance history.

Tracking Contributions

For many investment accounts, enabling Tracks Contributions provides a more useful picture of performance.

Without contribution data, BananaBird can show how much an account's balance changed. With contribution data, it can also estimate how much of that change came from money you added or withdrew versus changes in the value of the investment.

Estimated growth is a simplified calculation based on balance changes and recorded contributions or withdrawals. It is not intended to replace a detailed investment return calculation.

Financial Concepts

If you're unsure about terms such as financial horizon, liquidity, contributions, withdrawals, or growth, see the Financial Concepts guide for more detailed explanations.

Financial Concepts