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Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

projectionlab.com

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

#111

Post by scubakid »

MacKay wrote: post #107

This is awesome. I've been considering building a (very) simple version of this for my own use, but this is way better than anything I'd be able to do. I've signed up, and will try to keep up with using it! Only criticism is that after playing with the sandbox data prior to signing up it stuck around and I didn't see an obvious way of removing it besides overwriting it with my own data. The plan settings was non-obvi…

Thanks for sticking with it despite the friction going from sandbox to premium! I did add a "clear sandbox data and restart onboarding" button a while back, but I'm not sure that hangs around if you go right from sandbox to being a subscriber. I'll take a note to improve that flow.

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

#112

Post by zamfi »

Oh, how I wish this were open source, so I could add my own custom inputs, views, code, etc.

I’d love to model ranges of uncertainty on, e.g., inflation, recessions, major events, etc. — I’d love to be able to play out scenarios around stock market dynamics, housing market dynamics, and more — and this interface is beautiful.

Part of me wants to make some mocks for you, in the hopes that you’ll add some of this… :)

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

#113

Post by scubakid »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #108

Having the money showed in today's dollars by default was tripping me up for a bit. The 401k provider my employer uses shows "future dollars" by default, so you have to mentally recognize that the buying power of 10M "35 years from now dollars" is not what $10M would do for you today. Not helping my "11 months till 30" anxiety/depression. I don't know why it's messing with me so much. The internet loves to make is se…

Anything you think I should do to make that today's dollars vs actual dollars distinction more clear?

Oh, and paragraph 2 hit me hard. The countdown to 30 is... happening.

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

#114

Post by scubakid »

zamfi wrote: post #112

Oh, how I wish this were open source, so I could add my own custom inputs, views, code, etc. I’d love to model ranges of uncertainty on, e.g., inflation, recessions, major events, etc. — I’d love to be able to play out scenarios around stock market dynamics, housing market dynamics, and more — and this interface is beautiful. Part of me wants to make some mocks for you, in the hopes that you’ll add some of this… :)

A good chunk of the features I mentioned in my OG comment here were inspired by user feedback; so if there are new features/views you'd like to see, let me know!

Have you seen the Advanced editor yet that you can use to model how various things change over time? That can be helpful for playing out some specific scenarios. And the compare tool might also be worth checking out. I think I see what you mean about ranges of uncertainty though; I can imagine some cool UI possibilities.

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

#115

Post by SmellTheGlove »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #108

Having the money showed in today's dollars by default was tripping me up for a bit. The 401k provider my employer uses shows "future dollars" by default, so you have to mentally recognize that the buying power of 10M "35 years from now dollars" is not what $10M would do for you today. Not helping my "11 months till 30" anxiety/depression. I don't know why it's messing with me so much. The internet loves to make is se…

I just turned 40. When I turned 30 I thought my 20s were pretty amazing and I was sad to leave that behind. But 10 years later I can tell you 30s are definitely your prime years. You’ve got some shit figured out and maybe you’re a real adult, you have a few more dollars than you did before, you probably have a better understanding of what you want in life. 30s are about going and doing that. By not mortgaging your future in your 20s, you’ll have a lot more options in your 30s and 40s.

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

#117

Post by scubakid »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #115
Teknoman117 wrote: post #108

Having the money showed in today's dollars by default was tripping me up for a bit. The 401k provider my employer uses shows "future dollars" by default, so you have to mentally recognize that the buying power of 10M "35 years from now dollars" is not what $10M would do for you today. Not helping my "11 months till 30" anxiety/depression. I don't know why it's messing with me so much. The internet loves to make is se…

I just turned 40. When I turned 30 I thought my 20s were pretty amazing and I was sad to leave that behind. But 10 years later I can tell you 30s are definitely your prime years. You’ve got some shit figured out and maybe you’re a real adult, you have a few more dollars than you did before, you probably have a better understanding of what you want in life. 30s are about going and doing that. By not mortgaging your fu…

what if that's when kids enter into the equation? ◑.◑

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

#118

Post by scubakid »

throwaway39485 wrote: post #116

This sounds great! I'm signing up to try it out now. The only issue is that I'm in New Zealand and have some financial ties to the US, so I'm anticipating that there might be some issues around multiple countries and currencies. But will see how it goes.

Multi-currency planning is something I'd like to add better support for in the future for sure. Feel free to give this one a thumbs up if you like: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5546-multi-c...

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

#119

Post by sthatipamala »

scubakid wrote: post #75
sthatipamala wrote: post #71

Great work! This might be unpopular among the HN crowd, but I think you can monetize this further by bundling this with an advising service. This idea of FIRE has been spreading beyond techies/Internet nerds and into other highly paid professionals like doctors. [0]. The main difference is that non-programmer professionals generally don't get a thrill out of min/max-ing financial projections. Such people might be wil…

To an extent, I was hoping to support use cases like this with the Pro version I rolled out recently. But perhaps I'm currently more out of the loop than you envision, in the sense that I'm not actively pairing people with advisors and it's just a product that advisors can use if they want. What do you imagine a more "bundled" offering might look like?

You’re not too far away. A simple next step is to directly connect me with an advisor who uses ProjectionLab. I bet financial planning is a competitive market and advisors would be willing to use your tool as a unique selling point, or even pay you for the leads you supply.

Another bundling is to help users execute on their projections, similar to how https://www.helloplaybook.com does with tax advantaged investing.

More generally, I think there is an opportunity to market the product not as a tool (“ProjectionLab builds the best financial projections”) but as a solution to a problem (“ProjectionLab lets you retire early/plan to pay down your debt/buy a house”).

I know you’re doing this as a side project and maybe what I’m suggesting is too startup-y. Best of luck either way, it’s a really great product.

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

#120

Post by mgkimsal »

teagoat wrote: post #83
scubakid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent, I was hoping to support use cases like this with the Pro version I rolled out recently. But perhaps I'm currently more out of the loop than you envision, in the sense that I'm not actively pairing people with advisors and it's just a product that advisors can use if they want. What do you imagine a more "bundled" offering might look like?

Personal Capital actively prompt to try to set up a meeting pretty much every time you log in. They're hoping that you'll sign up for some active management stuff, or do they have a robo-investing option (I can't remember.) At a certain net-worth, they'll start calling you on a regular basis trying to get you to do the same. It's all pretty annoying. Perhaps do that, and after a 6 months of so of calls and prompts, t…

> some active management stuff, or do they have a robo-investing option (I can't remember.)

IIRC it's robo-investing. I got a pitch from them, and it was mostly "high expense ratio funds are bad, we put you in low cost funds with expense ratio of "OK... but your expense fee is .90% of funds under management - this puts me at approximately 1%/year in fees."

"But we're actively rebalancing 2x per year and we do tax loss harvesting".

I was close to giving them a small $ to manage/test with, but backed out.

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