I&#x27;ve seen pie charts used particularly effectively in two areas of personal finance:<p>1) In budgeting apps, to show the distribution of monthly expenses across categories.<p>2) In investment tutorials and reports, to show a distribution across asset classes.<p>In the case of budgeting, it&#x27;s true that a pie doesn&#x27;t capture all variables, like total expense from month to month. But if you&#x27;re trying to optimize a metric, such as savings (which can be included as an expense category to visualize savings rate), it makes it intuitive to see which budget categories are throwing you off. Suddenly it&#x27;s not about reducing expenses, but rather shifting them between categories of a whole. At 50%, there is a tipping point where the pie slice becomes concave. If you&#x27;re trying to push yourself to a 50% savings rate, it&#x27;s an interesting visual benchmark.<p>For portfolios, here are a few examples. These are 3d pie charts, perhaps the most-mocked visualization type of all. But they communicate the information effectively enough. Repeated pie charts emphasize to the reader the importance of asset allocation.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lazy_portfolios" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lazy_portfolios</a><p>What makes pie charts effective is that they are simple and approachable. There are better graphs for showing a portfolio&#x27;s size and allocation over time-- but not for initially communicating the idea of asset allocation and giving a few examples. Bogleheads is one of the best resources on passive index investing, and I think it&#x27;s not an oversight how often pie charts show up on the wiki.<p>If anything, I would say visualizing a portfolio as a line chart can be more deceptive. This is a common technique used to sell mutual funds that have recently outperformed to naive investors. Line charts can implicitly promise a future trend which may not materialize.