Lazy Man and Money

Goodbye Google Finance… Hello Google Spreadsheets

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A few months ago Google made the unfortunate decision to end their Google Finance portfolio tracker. This was the main way I checked my stocks and the first website I visited every weekday after the markets open at 9:30. They replaced with… something. It’s terrible. Now I can only view 6 of my stocks at a time and only very limited information about them.

Goodbye Google Finance.

Now, I needed to find a replacement portfolio tracker. I reached out to the masses on Twitter. One person suggested using Google Spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets. (Yes, I’m weird. I know.) However, the value of a portfolio tracker is that you get updated data. It’s not helpful if I have to manually put in the price of Vanguard’s Total Market Index (VTI) each day. After a little research, it seems that Google Spreadsheets supports all kinds of (mostly) real time stock data. Yes, the quotes may be delayed 20 minutes, but for my purposes, that isn’t that big of deal.

I decided to “nerd out” and create my own portfolio tracker. Better yet, I can share it with you! Go to this link and select the File –> Make a Copy. Then edit it to suit yourself. You should only have to put your own stock tickers and cost basis in there. You also might want to look up the price of the stock from Jan 1, 2016 if you want to make use of the 2016 YTD column. Unfortunately, I had some difficulty getting Google to import historical price quotes automatically.

I’ve found this tool really helpful. I’ve consolidated information from three brokerage accounts so now I can see everything at once.

However, it’s not perfect. It’s got three disadvantages from what I had before with Google Finance.

  1. No stock charts – It was always great to click in and use Google’s great financial charts. Now, I have to go elsewhere for that information.
  2. No stock news – Whenever a stock moved 5% or more, I could fairly easily look at the news and see if they released earnings or an analyst gave them an upgrade. Now, I have to do separate research in another browser tab.
  3. It is slow – Doing all the calculations really drags down my computer. Of course, the 50 browser tabs that I already have open don’t help. And having only 4GB of memory isn’t making things better. Your experience may be better than mine. Even though it is slow, I can get most of the information very quickly and move on. It’s not something that I leave running for a long time.

The lack of stock news is kind of a killer. I’ve started using Marketwatch, and it’s okay, but not great. What do you use to track your stock portfolio and where do you get your stock news? Let me know in the comments.

Lending Club Update – August 2009

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While I was writing my alternative income for August, I remembered how I used to count projected interest from my Prosper account. I had stopped that in part because it wasn’t a significant number, but also I had made the mistake of many by lending out money to anyone at 29% thinking that it would have to pay off. I have admitted my mistake there. However, I noticed that my Lending Club account was different. In fact, it was best investment in 2008. Maybe taking the more conservative approach is the way to go. So why not start to add the projected income from that investment to my alternative income… and why not open up my Lending Club account for all to see?

Click for Larger Image
Click for Larger Image

As you can see, I’ve had over 100 loans and only 6 of them are late or charged off. My more recent lending (in the bottom half – i.e. tradable notes), I have only 1 late in 47 loans – perhaps the result of being more conservative or a better economy.

This is a good time to do it too since Lending Club is having a couple of promotions. They are offering to start you out with $25 if you sign up through this link (full disclosure: I’m compensated as well). If you are their 25,000 lender (projected to come in September, you’ll receive $2,500. You can read more about that here. Just conjecture on my part, but I would guess that they are within 1000 of that milestone. If I’m right, then your odds aren’t all that bad at winning.

Before you open a Lending Club account, I should mention that Lending Club notes are a very new. There isn’t a long history of performance to rely on. As such, I would exercise caution with putting a large portion of your portfolio into Lending Club. I would use Lending Club as a way to diversify a portfolio. If stocks drop a lot as we saw earlier this year, the Lending Club portion could help stem the losses.