Love the idea, enjoyed the interface, but I feel my time was wasted when I only found out the US focus several clicks into the flow. Speaking as someone not from the US, I do wish more websites didn't just assume that all their traffic was coming from the US. You could alleviate this by having a flag on the home page saying "This is really more for Americans only".
Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
131–140 of 266 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#132Earlier 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.
People thought that data is the new oil, but it turns out it's not. Data is the new uranium. Powerful, yet toxic and irradiates everything in proximity. You most emphatically do not keep large piles of it if you can help it, and if you do, you silo and audit the sh*t out of that to control access and prevent theft because the potential for abuse is very high.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
I think I need context on that last one.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
People thought that data is the new oil, but it turns out it's not. Data is the new uranium. Powerful, yet toxic and irradiates everything in proximity. You most emphatically do not keep large piles of it if you can help it, and if you do, you silo and audit the sh*t out of that to control access and prevent theft because the potential for abuse is very high.
I love the oil vs. uranium analogy. Uranium can be powerful and useful, but risky to hold, difficult to protect, and probably more of a liability than an asset.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#135This 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.
Similarly, the ability to share with another account, so that my spouse can also poke around and create models based on our base case.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#136There 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…
There is absolutely a reason. It's a service and many people (myself included) don't want to download a desktop app to use it.
He's not asking for your SSN or your address. If you want to use a burner email and a VPN or enter fake data to try it out, you can. This hardline approach of "every service should be an open source desktop app that I can run with zero telemetry from my cabin in the woods with no internet" so often found on HN is clearly not the opinion of the majority of internet users.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any thoughts on the comments under the Frost1x post? (e.g. Electron app version, and/or import/export or local storage options for web premium users). Certainly local storage is very doable -- I didn't anticipate how hotly requested that might be. I'll also note that all calculations are actually already client-side.
I like the impression of your tool, but I share Frost1x’s reluctance. However, I was pleasantly surprised to read this up front: > Free planning and projection tools that will never ask to link your financial accounts If it were followed up by convincing me that my data is stored in LocalStorage and doesn’t leave my browser, I’d be sold :). I know I’d still have to trust you that you’re actually implementing what you…
Thanks! A LocalStorage only option seems very doable. With all the interest expressed here, I'll add that to the roadmap. As for the status quo, without Premium no plan data is stored server-side. With Premium, plan data is stored server-side only if the user chooses to enable that feature. Calculations/projections are always made client-side and the results are not stored server-side.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#138Looks 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…
The terms are warning sign. Specially the section "Transfer of Your Personal Data" as well as "Disclosure of Your Personal Data", which states that
> If the Company is involved in an asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred.
The Personal Data is the asset. This is like saying: If we want to sell your financial data, we will do so.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#139Nice 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…
These are excellent suggestions, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. For onboarding, I initially tried a version of what you suggested, but in usability tests many felt there was too much on the screen. Perhaps now it is too minimal though -- I'll think about how to find a better middle ground.
You're spot-on about the need for Monte Carlo simulations. A robust Monte Carlo mode with a variety of variables you can control is the next development priority.
And great point on flexible expense plans. I'll consider how to build some (hopefully) intuitive UI widgets to allow for that in the Monte Carlo mode.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance
#140This app wants you to sign in and change the color scheme before using. This is not good UX, it should be more like https://www.firecalc.com/ where you just type some numbers and hit "go". Not everything needs a google/fb/clever login.