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Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

projectifi.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#111

Post by z0r »

jimmaswell wrote: post #91
29athrowaway wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every person that cares about privacy, there are 10,000 that don't. That's why it's so profitable to be an evil data hoarder.

How is data hoarding evil? Data lets us improve things, know what services need to be made, connect everything better. There's potential for abuse as in anything but we don't call cough syrup evil.

I remember seeing Bruce Schneier talk about this - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...

imo this is the single correct perspective to have about data

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#112

Post by scubakid »

creativeembassy wrote: post #61

Signed up! I'd love to see a little more flexibility in putting some kinds of numbers in, especially as someone not great with understanding financial data. For instance, I'm currently plugging numbers in about my mortgage. I know how much I currently pay per year in homeowner's insurance, but ProjectFi is asking me for the annual rate. I divided what I'm paying per year by the current estimated market value and got…

You're right, more flexibility on those inputs would definitely be a good thing. That's already on the road-map, so stay tuned!

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#113

Post by z0r »

bb123 wrote: post #83
sildur wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can install it in a network isolated Qube. Data wouldn't go anywhere.

Sure, many of us can do stuff like that, but the average user can't.

But the default expectations are very different. The default expectation for a web hosted application is that all your private stuff is stored in a database with dubious security, and if your data is stolen as a result the only consequences are a 'whoops, my bad' (at most!) from the company.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#114

Post by subpixel »

scubakid wrote: post #29
Frost1x wrote: post #9

Looks interesting, but based on the privacy policy terms of data usage, transferability, and so forth, I can't in good faith test with real financial data: https://projectifi.io/privacy-policy.html Everytime I see a tool that shouldn't need to be hosted remotely as a service and could reasonably be deployed to the client where they have more control over their data (not as a service), it's a non-starter for me. I get…

Thanks for the feedback! I've thought about maybe creating a version which is wrapped up as an Electron app and runs natively and with no google analytics, etc. Does it sound like that might alleviate some of your concerns?

I just created an account but did not feel comfortable uploading data, having already associated my account with my identity via Gmail. Would love to run something locally.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#115

Post by royaltjames »

jimmaswell wrote: post #91
29athrowaway wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every person that cares about privacy, there are 10,000 that don't. That's why it's so profitable to be an evil data hoarder.

How is data hoarding evil? Data lets us improve things, know what services need to be made, connect everything better. There's potential for abuse as in anything but we don't call cough syrup evil.

Hoarding of any type is a disorder, just like how addiction used to (still is) be considered a moral defect.

Cough syrup not being evil -used as intended to alleviate symptoms but not cure OR chugged like a panacea ambrosia delivered by the gods- is such a weird analogy to write as the burden of use falls on the individual rather than the collector.

How dare people prescribed highly addictive advertised as nonaddictive cocaine start taking it spoonful up the butthole~

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#116

Post by devinsit »

calderarrow wrote: post #105
devinsit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The trend of handing over all your data ( especially your financial data) to some nebulous service isn't exactly my favourite. Which is why I built https://ufincs.com , a nebulous service where you hand over all your financial data! Yes, that was a joke. In reality, uFincs is more of a stop-gap between what you seek (native app where you own the data) and what the status quo is (web-based app where your data…

ufincs looks very cool! During my December holiday, I was thinking of making a web-based platform that had a more modern UI than GNUcash, and it looks like you built it already! Just curious, what's your tech stack, how long have you been working on it, and how many users do you have?

That's exactly what uFincs is, a modern version of GnuCash! I had the exact same thoughts as you did :)

The simple tech stack breakdown is that the client-side is React + Redux + TypeScript + Sass. Of note, I use redux-saga, which has been an absolute boon for some of the more complex flows.

Design system is completely custom.

Backend API is Node + Feathers. Database is Postgres.

Marketing site is served separately from the app and is React + NextJS + Tailwind CSS.

I intend to write up a more complete breakdown of the tech stack sometime in the future.

In terms of how long it's taken to get this far, longer than I'd like to admit... there was a version '0.1' that was built as a capstone project over the course of 2019, then the redesigned version (uFincs as it exists now) that's been ongoing since the start of 2020.

And the user situation can look... misleading. I only 'officially' launched last week, so for the longest time the only user has been le-moi (and some friends that did testing), but I actually did just acquire my first paying customer yesterday!

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#117

Post by kenned3 »

elil17 wrote: post #54

Nothing makes me more annoyed than when simulations like this make assumptions which don't make any sense. For example. >"Note: currently, ProjectiFi taxes inheritance as ordinary income for simplicity and to maintain a conservative estimation strategy. More nuanced options that more closely mirror current inheritance tax liability scenarios are coming soon." This is an absolutely ridiculous assumption. Federal inher…

Thankfully most people have over $11 million and therefor your proposal really does impact the majority of the users?

Most developers want to build features that service the majority, then add more functionality later.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#118

Post by _zfxr »

Im less concerned about data provacy for this one for whatever reason, but im having issues with it saving really off numbers. like ive input a 400$/ month payment in and its showing in a plan as like $4800 / month and this is with nearly all the data. its got me paying out like 380,000$ this year alone...? i dont even have a fraction of that debt anywhere.... what even.... is going on here... it says im underwater by like 200k+ . my net worth is -40k for sure, but def not -200k.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#119

Post by 29athrowaway »

jimmaswell wrote: post #91
29athrowaway wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every person that cares about privacy, there are 10,000 that don't. That's why it's so profitable to be an evil data hoarder.

How is data hoarding evil? Data lets us improve things, know what services need to be made, connect everything better. There's potential for abuse as in anything but we don't call cough syrup evil.

How to be evil:

- Offer a service.

- Claim that your service exists to make the world better in some vague way.

- Train yourself to sound like a compassionate, altruistic person that cares about others.

- Sell user data. Hide the information about what data is being sold and who is buying it and why as much as possible.

- Become wealthy selling data from users who trusted you.

- Buy bona-fide companies and put them to the service of your evil cause.

- Normalize evil behavior. Force other companies to become evil in order to compete.

- Turn the Internet into a privacy nightmare.

- Turn the field of computer science into satanism.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

#120

Post by comeonseriously »

Bostonian wrote: post #18
nonameiguess wrote: post #15

There is no reason at all for this to be server-hosted. I have of course done this for myself a very long time ago creating an effectively identical feature set using spreadsheets and even put them onto Microsoft's sharing pages (no idea what happened to them, it was such a long time ago). I'm not saying this isn't a better solution than Excel. You work with what's available at the time. But there is nothing at all a…

I think many people have gotten out of the habit of installing software on their computers and prefer web-based solutions.

For me I break it down as such: If it's supposed to be "social", I'll use the web based app (ie: twitter, etc). If it is personal (ie: banking), unless it is my actual bank, I want that on my machine.
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