I've seen pie charts used particularly effectively in two areas of personal finance: 1) In budgeting apps, to show the distribution of monthly expenses across

I've seen pie charts used particularly effectively in two areas of personal finance: 1) In budgeting apps, to show the distribution of monthly expenses across categories. 2) In investment tutorials and reports, to show a distribution across asset classes. In the case of budgeting, it's true that a pie doesn't capture all variables, like total expense from month to month. But if you'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'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're trying to push yourself to a 50% savings rate, it's an interesting visual benchmark. 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. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios What makes pie charts effective is that they are simple and approachable. There are better graphs for showing a portfolio'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's not an oversight how often pie charts show up on the wiki. 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.