FinFam Spaces

Life’s biggest financial decisions shouldn’t have to be made alone. Whether you’re planning with your spouse, getting input from your financial advisor, or exploring scenarios with trusted friends, Spaces give you a private workspace to track your financial life and collaborate with the people who matter most.

Think of a Space like Google Sheets for your finances, but in addition to collaboration Spaces get you:

• Automatically calculated vital statistics
• Saved Views. Imagine having a spreadsheet maintained by an expert, but automatically personalized to your situation.
• AI-assisted discussion threads

This guide covers everything you need to know about FinFam Spaces: what they are, how to use them, and how to collaborate effectively with family, friends, and financial professionals.

What is a Space?

A Space represents finances shared with or known to a circle of people. It’s your collaborative financial planning workspace where you:

• Track your complete financial picture with Holdings (assets, liabilities, income, expenses)
• Save expert Views and get personalized expert-maintained answers based on your actual situation
• Collaborate with family, friends, and advisors through discussion threads
• Get AI insights from Finn, who understands your complete financial context
• See vital statistics automatically calculated from your holdings

A Space doesn’t control the money or accounts itself, but it lets you plan and share information with the people you trust.

Circle of Trust

Each Space represents the people you’re planning with—whether that’s just you, your family, or a broader group of trusted advisors.

Complete Financial Picture

Track all your holdings and get automatic vital statistics like net worth, runway, and asset allocation.

Expert Integration

Save Views from financial experts and get results personalized to your actual financial situation.

Built for Discussion

Chat about financial decisions with built-in discussions that can reference specific holdings or Views.

Your Default Space

When you sign up for FinFam, we automatically create your first Space. This becomes your personal financial hub where you can:

• Add your holdings to track your complete financial picture
• Save Views that interest you for future reference
• Experiment with scenarios using your real or hypothetical data

Everything is private by default, but you can share with people you trust. Most users start solo and expand as their needs grow.

Creating Additional Spaces

You might want multiple Spaces for different purposes:

Different Circles of People

• Personal Space: Just for you and your partner
• Family Space: Including parents, siblings, or adult children
• Professional Space: With your financial advisor or accountant
• Friend Group: For informal financial discussions and advice

Different Scenarios

• Current Situation: Your actual financial picture
• Scenario Planning: “What if we moved to Denver?”
• Goal Planning: “Our 2030 financial independence plan”
• Hypothetical Modeling: Exploring someone else’s situation (like a Money Diaries entry)

To create a new Space, click here: Create New Space

Space Features

Holdings: Your Financial Foundation

Holdings represent everything in your financial life: assets, liabilities, income, and expenses. For detailed guidance on managing Holdings, see our Managing Your Holdings guide.

Automatic Vital Statistics

Once you add Holdings to your Space, FinFam automatically calculates key financial metrics:

FinFam automatically calculates key financial metrics for your Space, including:

• Assets & Allocation:
  • Total asset value and breakdown by category
  • Asset allocation percentages: Real Estate, Retirement, Stock, Cash, Fixed Income
  • Investment performance tracking over time
• Debt Summary:
  • Total debt and category breakdown
  • Debt type percentages: Card, Installment, Other debt
  • Credit utilization ratio (credit used vs available)
• Income & Expenses:
  • Annual income by source (Active income, Investment returns, etc.)
  • Annual expenses by category (Essential, Discretionary spending)
  • Monthly cash flow analysis
• Key Financial Health Metrics:
  • Net Worth: Total assets minus total liabilities
  • Personal Runway: How long your savings would last at current spending (e.g., “10+ years”)
  • Gains/Losses: Investment performance over different time periods
  • Credit Health: Credit utilization and debt ratios

These statistics update automatically as you modify your Holdings or as market values change, giving you real-time insight into your financial health.

Saved Views

When you find a View in the FinFam marketplace that addresses a question you’re exploring, you can save a copy to your Space. This creates a private version that:

• Uses your actual Holdings for personalized results
• Remembers your inputs and preferences
• Updates automatically when your Holdings change
• Can be shared with Space collaborators for discussion

Collaboration and Sharing

Spaces are designed for collaboration, but you control exactly who sees what:

Visibility Levels

• Private: Only you can see it (default for new Spaces)
• Unlisted: Anyone with the link can view, but it won’t appear in public listings
• Public: Listed in FinFam’s explore section for anyone to discover
• Requestable: Others can request access, which you can approve or deny

Permission Roles

When you share your Space, collaborators get specific permission levels:

• Owner: You (full control over everything)
• Admin: Can manage access and edit all content
• Editor: Can modify Holdings and Views but not manage collaborators
• Commenter: Can participate in discussions but not edit financial data
• Viewer: Can see everything but not make changes

Example: You might give your spouse Editor access to your family Space, your financial advisor Commenter access for input and discussion, and your adult children Viewer access to learn from your planning process.

Space Discussions

Every Space includes a built-in chat system for financial discussions. You can:

• Start threads about specific Holdings, Views, or general planning topics
• Make threads private (between specific people) or open to all Space members
• Mention @finn to get AI assistance based on your Space’s financial context
• Reference specific Holdings or Views in conversations
• Keep discussions organized by topic or decision

Using Multiple Spaces

Copying Spaces

When you want to explore scenarios or share with different groups, you can copy any existing Space:

1. Go to your Space and click the settings menu
2. Select “Copy Space”
3. Choose what to copy: Holdings, saved Views, or both
4. Name your copy to reflect its purpose
5. Modify as needed for the new scenario or audience

Managing Multiple Spaces

Common patterns for multiple Spaces:

• Personal → Family: Start with your own Space, then create a family version with shared Holdings
• Real → Hypothetical: Copy your actual Space to explore “what if” scenarios
• Current → Future: Model different life stages or major changes
• Private → Professional: Keep detailed personal Spaces while sharing simplified versions with advisors

Understanding Holders

Holders represent the people who own holdings in your Space. This is just informational for now, but in the future we plan to add modes where you can control permissions on holdings based on holders.

When you add Holdings, you specify which Holder owns each one. This helps organize your financial picture and makes collaboration clearer, especially for couples or families planning together.

For more details on working with Holdings and Holders, see Managing Your Holdings.

Tips

• Don’t stress about perfection - estimates often work fine for planning
• Keep Holdings reasonably current - for accurate View results and statistics
• Use discussions - don’t just share numbers, talk about the thinking behind them

Privacy and Security

• Everything is private by default: You decide who sees what, when
• Account numbers never stored: FinFam focuses on balances and planning, not account details
• Share thoughtfully: Consider what each collaborator needs to see to be helpful
• You can always change access: Remove collaborators or change permissions anytime

Getting Help

Your Space is the foundation of your FinFam experience. It connects your financial situation with expert guidance and gives you a place to collaborate with the people you trust.

• Explore public Spaces at finfam.app/explore/spaces for inspiration
• Join discussions in our Q&A section to see how others use Spaces
• Reach out at [email protected] if you see something that doesn’t look right

Remember: Financial planning works best when you involve the people you trust. Your Space gives you a secure, private place to do exactly that.

Ready to get started? Sign up for FinFam to create your first Space. 🚀