Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by 0xffff2 » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

The thing I find most difficult about retirement planning is that assumptions about market returns and inflation always seems to overwhelm all other factors by a large margin. I typically assume a 4% inflation-adjusted return for planning purposes (7% average return minus 3% inflation), but half a percentage point in either direction could leave me broke shortly after retirement or wealthy beyond all need.

I guess partly this is just because I'm still 30+ years from retirement, but does anyone have any advice on how to account for the incredibly wide range of possible outcomes based entirely on factors that are impossible to accurately predict?

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

#122

Post by Kalium » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #33

scubakid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 guess I should also add that with the current web version, you can opt out of sending telemetry data via cookie preferences, and with the Premium version you choose whether or not you want your data persisted or not. (there is also a button to remove all your data at a later date if desired). Perhaps something else that might be helpful to add is an import/export button so you can save and load data locally(?)

> I guess I should also add that with the current web version, you can opt out of sending telemetry data via cookie preferences, and with the Premium version you choose whether or not you want your data persisted or not.

Rather than ameliorate concerns about privacy, this intensifies them. This is the approach I would expect from a megacorporation hellbent on mining my private data to death while pointing to the by-sheer-coincidence-hidden option to opt out of telemetry. And the choice to pay for the ability to not be data-mined to death.

These are the design choices I expect from a product team that regards privacy as something to be defeated and evaded. It's the sort of thing I would expect from Facebook.

Perhaps a privacy-centered approach might be worth considering? What might the user experience look like if behavior was not tracked until the user explicitly consented to just specifically that? What if the ability to upload your data was a premium option, with the local-only privacy-preserving experience the default? What data do you need to let people do incredibly personal calculations, as opposed to what data do you want?

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

#123

Post by jokethrowaway » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

Love the idea, I toyed with the idea of building something like this.

When talking to friends, I realised that even smart and relatively wealthy people have zero planning skills and freak out about the idea of "planning your life in the next decades".

I suspect your market is going to be small.

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

#124

Post by evnc » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

This is really nice to use and well-designed!

One feature request: spouses / joint incomes. Obviously my financial picture looks very different if I include my partner's income and assets than if I just include my own, but my partner is a different age than me, so if I just add it up and act like I'm one person who makes our combined household income, it's not going to be quite accurate.

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

#125

Post by Dave_Rosenthal » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

Nice start, onboarding needs lots of work.

My suggestion: have the users start with the big hitters (house, income, savings) and then add more and more. Users could see the model change as they go and the onboarding process itself would become informative as they see the effect of their various assets, 401Ks, asset sales plans, etc.

You also really need monte carlo simulation to elevate this far above 'pretty version of my excel spreadsheet' into 'powerful financial planning tool' category.

Lastly, there is one always overlooked part of retirement planning which is that spending plans should not be set-in-stone. For example, if you plug "spend X per year" into a monte-cargo retirement calculator to get a 95% chance of not running out of money you will need to have a lot. But, if you are willing to adopt a spending policy of 'spend X per year unless there is a stock market crash, in which case spend .75X for three years' you will need a lot less. If you are willing to modulate your spending in response to events you can be comfortable with a lot less.

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

#126

Post by cddotdotslash » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

This is really excellent work! I love the UI and the data points feel very complete but not overly detailed (it took me only about 15 minutes to enter everything and get to the projection charts).

Contrary to many other commenters here, I don't mind that this is a hosted service. In fact, I _don't_ want to download an application for this. If users are concerned they can just use a burner email address.

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

#127

Post by mcshicks » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

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 started out using excel and quicken but at some point ended up using beancount, fava and python. There are so many variables like some investments are tax free, others are tax deferred, some are exempt from state but not federal taxes, etc. I didn't dive in too deep to the app, I agree with other comments here that it would be nice if he had some demo accounts with a few different scenarios, like single, family, different ages, incomes and investments to showcase how the modeling works.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #121

The thing I find most difficult about retirement planning is that assumptions about market returns and inflation always seems to overwhelm all other factors by a large margin. I typically assume a 4% inflation-adjusted return for planning purposes (7% average return minus 3% inflation), but half a percentage point in either direction could leave me broke shortly after retirement or wealthy beyond all need. I guess pa…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by elil17 » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

kenned3 wrote: post #117

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.

The app taxes inheritance as income. No one gets inheritance taxed as income. Most people get inheritance totally tax free.

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

#130

Post by melody_calling » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #33

scubakid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 guess I should also add that with the current web version, you can opt out of sending telemetry data via cookie preferences, and with the Premium version you choose whether or not you want your data persisted or not. (there is also a button to remove all your data at a later date if desired). Perhaps something else that might be helpful to add is an import/export button so you can save and load data locally(?)

I think part of the disconnect is communicating what the app actually does vs. what the terms permit it to do in the future.

It sounds like you've put genuine thought into this, and your privacy policy is very readable, but it suffers from the generic "WTFPL" clauses.

For example, you clearly specify who the third-parties are and what data is shared, which again is commendable. But it's combined with "we may use your data for [any] other purposes", "we may sell and may have sold [extremely personal PII]", and so on.

Are you doing this? Doesn't seem like it. Could you? Apparently, and that's part of the concern.