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Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

projectifi.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#71

Post by scubakid »

smaug7 wrote: post #58
scubakid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much! And yeah I took a lot of that feedback to heart, and have been working hard to make improvements in many aspects and communicate more clearly about things like data storage and where calculations happen (i.e. client side). For couples, things like age values are from the perspective of the person creating the plan, and yeah the idea is to just add in their income, expenses, goals, etc. Switching statu…

I am planning on getting married later next year - would we be able to add that in for the future?

If you create a Wedding expense event, there's a checkbox which should update your status to Married when that event occurs. Does that help?

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#73

Post by scubakid »

mrcolin000 wrote: post #64

Just created a HN account to say how great this looks. Ive signed up and wont be surprised if I grab the paid tier. This is exactly the kind of tool I can get a lot out of! nice work.

Thanks! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out any time.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#75

Post by jazzkingrt »

Superb tool!

In 15 mins, I was able to get rough answers to questions like:

* When am I financially independent if I keep living the way I do now?

* What if I lowered my expenses right now seeking earlier FI?

* When could I hypothetically stop working by lowering my expenses at the point of retirement?

* How much would be left in my estate?

I bought the lifetime subscription, which seems like quite a good deal!

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#76

Post by qqqwerty »

qqqwerty wrote: post #72

For the married scenario, would you suggest just combining income, cash, investments, etc. under one person? Also, is there a way to model purchasing a house in the future? Probably the biggest decision I am struggling with right now.

Ahh, never mind. I see you can add multiple incomes.

And the "Other Assests" form has a "Purchase Year" input.

Thanks, very cool tool.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#77

Post by Topgamer7 »

ahmadss wrote: post #43

This is fantastic, and the pricing for "lifetime" is nearly a no brainer. Here are some additional ideas for ways to generate revenue: * $100-$200 one time guided setup consulting, where someone spends 30-minutes with me on zoom to get data setup the right way, talk through data analysis process, talk through simulation and projections, etc. * Marketplace to connect me with financial advisors who know your software,…

I feel like that might be a hard sell among the FIRE crowd. FIRE is almost synonymous with ultra-frugal.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#78

Post by ctmcbr »

This is really good & helpful! Wish I had this thing years ago when I was doing pro-bono financial planning for family members. Would have been much easier than building spreadsheets for them...

Couple of points of feedback:

1. The UI flow for adding financial goals (like putting excess earnings into taxable investments, rain day funds, etc.) didn't make it immediately clear what that section was for. Some clearer explanations in that section might improve your funnel.

2. The way that debt is displayed by default on the stacked chart sort of makes it look like an asset, which is confusing. My reaction was just not to trust the chart for the whole duration of having a mortgage. Changing the house asset value in the stacked chart to home equity instead could maybe be a fix?

3. I really liked the little red exclamation indicator when a plan involved you running out of money b/c you retired too early. It felt very well calibrated to clearly indicate the inadvisability of that particular plan w/o being overwrought.

You might want to add less alarming yellow indicators to pick up not great, but not terrible situations like you retired too early & all your assets are tied up in retirement accounts and illiquid assists (e.g., home equity), so now you are eating early withdrawal penalties unnecessarily.

Great work!

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#79

Post by scubakid »

jazzkingrt wrote: post #75

Superb tool! In 15 mins, I was able to get rough answers to questions like: * When am I financially independent if I keep living the way I do now? * What if I lowered my expenses right now seeking earlier FI? * When could I hypothetically stop working by lowering my expenses at the point of retirement? * How much would be left in my estate? I bought the lifetime subscription, which seems like quite a good deal!

Thanks! Appreciate the subscription, and I'm stoked you're enjoying the app. I imagine there are others in the FI community that might also get a lot out of it, but I'm not quite sure what the best way is to spread the word. Most subreddits don't allow self-promotion, and same with the Bogleheads forums and wiki. If you or others have any ideas, definitely let me know. Pretty much all my time has gone into trying to make the actual tool, so I haven't done much at all in terms of marketing.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#80

Post by scubakid »

ctmcbr wrote: post #78

This is really good & helpful! Wish I had this thing years ago when I was doing pro-bono financial planning for family members. Would have been much easier than building spreadsheets for them... Couple of points of feedback: 1. The UI flow for adding financial goals (like putting excess earnings into taxable investments, rain day funds, etc.) didn't make it immediately clear what that section was for. Some clearer ex…

Really good points!

For #1, I agree that section can be a bit difficult for new users to grasp. It's laid out the way it is so that later you can simply click and drag to re-prioritize goals and see the effects, but I'll think about how to communicate the purpose of that section better from the beginning.

For #2, yeah the concept of showing debt on top of everything else may be a bit... unconventional haha. That's where switching the plot to the net worth one can help somewhat if you want the chart to clearly show total net worth. In the stacked view, changing house value to equity is an interesting thought, though I think that still leaves it an open question how the chart should account for the other kinds of debt one might have.

For #3, yes definitely. Identifying warning scenarios and clearly marking those is a good feature idea.

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