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Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance

projectifi.io

151–160 of 266 posts

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

#151
post #140

This 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.

That's not accurate. You actually type numbers in right after the color choice and it shows you chart of the projection etc. No login necessary.

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

#153
Gave it a quick spin, it looks potentially useful. The mortgage calculator seems way off though; I put in some toy numbers ($1m 30yr fixed mortgage @ 3%, copying in values from the external calculator that's linked) and it's computing the payoff in about 5-6 years instead of 30. Ideally you could enter the mortgage terms like period, APR, and have the calculator back in to the mortgage payment, since the monthly payment is more of an output rather than an input in mortgage planning calculations.

Mortgage details are likely to be the dominant term for homeowners, so seems like this one would be important to fix. Plus mortgage interest compounding calculations are pretty opaque to most people, so it would help with explaining different structures (e.g. ARM vs. fixed vs interest-only, what portion of your payment is going to principal vs. interest over time, etc.).

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

#155
post #9

Looks 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…

> ProjectiFi

You might want to reconsider the name -- it looks way too similar to Google's Project Fi. Or at least the logo, which looks like cell phone reception bars, which even further reminds me of Project Fi.

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

#156
post #9

Looks 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…

Could you perhaps just divide all of your financial numbers by some linear factor N that you keep secret?

But yes, this should really be an client-side / offline app.

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

#157
Just out of curiousity, Would you become really a happy person when you become so much focused on financials, investments, growth, independence etc I wonder. I personally have a good income. But I do not invest at all. I hate it. I just spend whatever I think is possible and needed for a happy today. And so far money is something I barely have to think about. I see so much people around me busy with cryptos. Busy with stock markets. And they always talk and dream about the future. Live a life today I always tell them.

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

#159
post #9

Looks 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…

I agree with owning your personal financial data.

Very few people I know understand and appreciate double entry bookkeeping for finances. I learned about it recently from beancount [1] and it was a revelation. I don't go overboard with detailed transactions and keep it high level with around 5 accounts salary/mortgage/cc/investments etc.

I now personally keep my raw data (monthly income/expense/balances) in a spreadsheet. I have 1 html file with js embedded that does my homegrown calculations (works great on a phone). Spreadsheet is updated monthly. I add data from my monthly bank statements (same day I pay my credit card bills so I don't forget). Run the calculations whenever I need to (so far has been very rare).

My takeaway: discipline around personal finances is more important than what tool, services or process I use.

Looking at my income/expense/balances and mapping to what happened last month, looking at trends is valuable. For me that comes from piggybacking on the critical routine/ritual of paying my bills.

1: https://beancount.github.io/docs/the_double_entry_counting_m...

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ufincs looks very cool! During my December holiday, I was thinking of making a web-based platform that had a more modern UI than GNUcash, and it looks like you built it already! Just curious, what's your tech stack, how long have you been working on it, and how many users do you have?

That's exactly what uFincs is, a modern version of GnuCash! I had the exact same thoughts as you did :) The simple tech stack breakdown is that the client-side is React + Redux + TypeScript + Sass. Of note, I use redux-saga, which has been an absolute boon for some of the more complex flows. Design system is completely custom. Backend API is Node + Feathers. Database is Postgres. Marketing site is served separately f…

"but I actually did just acquire my first paying customer yesterday!"

Congratz!

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