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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

#171

Post by gabereiser »

lolinder wrote: post #135
gabereiser wrote: post #132

While it’s cool to have prebuilt scenarios without signing up. I couldn’t predict my own without signing up. I closed the tab.

I'm not sure what you were seeing, but I spent a solid hour playing with my own data without (yet) creating an account. Aside from that, this kind of low-effort dismissal ("has/lacks X, closed the tab") plagues a lot of Show HNs, and it's not constructive. If you really feel so strongly against signing up, it would be more constructive to explain why you feel that way and suggest ways OP could improve their project.…

I was able to put my data in. The simulation predictions still showed $1m+ retirement data.

Also, I feel strongly against signing up for stuff because I already get tons of spam marketing from sites that I have signed up. I also am very protective over who knows what about my money.

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

#172

Post by themacguffinman »

scubakid wrote: post #161
themacguffinman wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a stretch. Stats suggest it's more like 5 decades for a reasonably healthy American 30yo white male today. Then consider that in your final decade or so, your options are extremely limited because of severe mental and physical decline. 1 in 9 adults will spend one or two of their final decades in a long goodbye due to Alzheimer's alone. But the decline starts earlier, mental speed is high until age 60…

This condensed several of my own musings into one well-reasoned comment. Do you think there's anything ProjectionLab could/should try to do with the concept of health-span?

Not sure, maybe lifespan estimates based on current behavior could be handy. Eg are you a smoker? Are you regularly physically active? What's your race, occupation, etc?

I think chronic conditions are also hard to plan for in your head, so some preset stats-based options for medical costs could be helpful.

No one intuitively imagines it'll happen to them but something like 60% of 65yo+ adults managed 2 or more chronic conditions, which are conditions like heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and of course cancer. It's more likely than you think. Stuff like cancer won't just kill you sooner, it'll bleed you dry towards the end of your life as you attempt all manner of surgeries and treatments to delay the end.

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

#174

Post by tewwill »

scubakid wrote: post #61
tewwill wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fantastic UI. Congrats. It would be really cool to be able to model personal assets such as businesses. For example, I would like to be able to plan when I sell one of my businesses in X amount of years for a price of Y, then perhaps have options on how to spread the proceeds of that sale into different assets like cash, stocks / shares or one off purchases like a house. One thing I couldn't work out how to do was to…

What kind of one-off purchases do you have in mind? Within the plan interface, there are a bunch of expandable columns at the bottom, and within each of those you can create/manage things like types of income, expenses, assets, cash-flow priorities, etc. You can control frequency on things like income/expenses; I imagine setting an expense to happen once would be an example of the kind of one-off you're looking for?…

Thanks, I managed to model buying a house doing a one off expense. I think it might be useful from a usability point of view to put Buy a House as an item in the list of possible expenses as it is such a common goal for people. Anyway I absolutely love what you have done so I subscribed. Best of luck with this. I look forward to see how it grows!

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

#175

Post by nico401 »

I have spent couple hours trying your product, it's pretty damn good! Couple remarks:

1. It would have been great if I could make other variables used in Monte Carlo simulations than the market. It would allow one to model uncertainty. For example, an event could happen following a random distribution (kid arrival, move between 3 and 5 years), or a future salary could follow some normal distribution, etc.

2. The main dashboard for a plan is GREAT. UI/UX-wise, considering the number of dimensions to factor, I find it surprisingly simple to iterate over a plan.

3. Having the option to show expenses on the main plan chart would be great. Expenses are a big part of optimizing personal finances.

4. The plan comparison may deserve a different UI than the simple plan analysis. Seeing differences on the right is not completely intuitive.

5. I'm currently living in France, and we have some accounts with no amount limit but with an annual transfert limit. For example, you cannot add more than 20K€/year to the account. I believe it's currently not possible to set a cash allocation such that it maximizes transfert amount/year instead of overall amount.

6. Related to 5., but we cannot withdraw from that account without paying taxes until retrieving, then it's tax-free up to some amount per month. Maybe similar to a 401k. But it's impossible to set that up on a custom account.

7. I have set that model up, still in trial, but now I'm really scared that my browser might bug or hit refresh by habit and loose everything. The find the saving feature to be really harsh. It'd be nice to find some alternative so that it can be saved, and maybe retrieve it after subscribing? Or limit the number of parameters/events that can be added to the model? Or show in much simplified mode. In my case, I'd like to show my partner and discuss it before subscribing: I want to make sure it contains enough features needed to model our finances.

Really good job overall, I'll certainly follow your work!

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

#176

Post by dalmo3 »

This is astonishing.

Coincidentally, I've just finished a year-long (side-)project building a similar app for a friend.

Similar, I say, if you only read the one-sentence description of what they do. ProjectionLab is 100x prettier, smarter and more featured than anything I could have done.

You have my full admiration, and perhaps my subscription :) I have to come back to it on the weekend, on the computer (although it looks/works fantastic on mobile.)

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

#177

Post by scubakid »

dalmo3 wrote: post #176

This is astonishing. Coincidentally, I've just finished a year-long (side-)project building a similar app for a friend. Similar, I say, if you only read the one-sentence description of what they do. ProjectionLab is 100x prettier, smarter and more featured than anything I could have done. You have my full admiration, and perhaps my subscription :) I have to come back to it on the weekend, on the computer (although it…

Thanks! I did spend quite a while trying to make the mobile experience decent, but if you come back I'd highly recommend checking it out on desktop; nothing beats that 4k monitor with all plan sections expanded.

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

#178

Post by scubakid »

deepGem wrote: post #168
scubakid wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I have loads of ideas for new features and things that will be fun to build; but I should probably at least take a breath sometime soon and contemplate all the possible paths. If you or others have any words of wisdom to share, I always enjoy hearing from other perspectives.

Yep highly encourage to take a breath, at some regular cadence and contemplate on all possible paths. I don't know how to be effective at this though. You need some notion of feature management to accomplish this. I am looking to build a similar tool for engineers who are switching jobs and have multiple job offers. Essentially a financial projection of options 1, 2 and 3 taking into account inflation, location and s…

I'd be happy to chat if you like; feel free to message me on email/discord.

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

#179

Post by mchenier »

Really nice! I like it a lot. One feature I miss there from my spreadsheet is the ability to track and get updated investment values automatically. I mean, it could be great to have a way to specify the number of stock for each investment account, the cost basis and then, have live record of the investment values. At the same time, it would give a better idea of capital gain tax implication.

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

#180

Post by scubakid »

nico401 wrote: post #175

I have spent couple hours trying your product, it's pretty damn good! Couple remarks: 1. It would have been great if I could make other variables used in Monte Carlo simulations than the market. It would allow one to model uncertainty. For example, an event could happen following a random distribution (kid arrival, move between 3 and 5 years), or a future salary could follow some normal distribution, etc. 2. The main…

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

1. Definitely looking to add more degrees of freedom to Monte Carlo scenarios over time. A couple examples: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5736-flex-on... https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5926-allow-s...

3. Have you seen the Plot Builder? (open plot selector and hit new). Expenses are one of the metrics you can use.

4. Totally agree. Eventually I want this to show more than the deltas in the yearly summary, just haven't gotten to it yet.

5. I actually just added some more options for savings type goals to the early access site here: https://projectifi-201a2--dev-xsmyy9im.web.app. let me know if that helps at all.

7. I'd like to make some improvements here too. Losing data sucks, and I should take more steps to reduce the likelihood of that ever happening. I'll see if I can come up with a good approach that's not easy to take advantage of.

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