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

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

#211

Post by scosman » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

12ian34 wrote: post #131

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".

You can also just check browser locale, show a warning if != US as early setup step. Offer to take their email and tell them when more countries are added (and capture all the traffic to reactivate later).

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

#212

Post by monkeydust » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

12ian34 wrote: post #131

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".

Also this, from UK.

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

#213

Post by scubakid » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #181

scubakid wrote: post #2

I had trouble finding a good FI planning and simulation tool that could model things in enough detail to finally ditch my spreadsheets... so I built one. Would love it if any of you want to try it out. It does not involve linking any accounts and almost all the functionality is free. And if anyone wants to become a beta tester for the few premium features, you can use coupon code BETA-6001 for 60% off :) https://proj…

I had the same experience and even tinkered around with building this myself! IMO the biggest problem with existing calculators, and yours, is that you have to make some pretty strong assumptions about the future. How will rental & housing prices grow? What returns will I get on my investments? Depending on the numbers you put in you will get very different results, and most people are not good at predicting these! I…

You're right about those user estimates and various knobs having a potentially huge effect on results. When I introduce a Monte Carlo simulation mode, I hope to be able to offer better insights into how distributions around some of these variables will impact likelihood of success. I'll also continue to look for opportunities to create smart defaults and/or links to resources that can be used to help calibrate estimates based on historical data, locality, etc. Thanks for the comment!

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

#214

Post by Aachen » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

jameskraus wrote: post #180

Aachen wrote: post #149

Just as a heads-up, this privacy policy is not legal in the EU because it doesn't fulfill even the primary requirements (say what you process, for what purpose, stored for how long), but also this huge template (28 minutes estimated reading time) is not helpful to anyone -- it's just an enumeration of every possible method of data tracking -- so I'm not sure why you would even use this when it's not legal anyway. It'…

Lol, my impression is that OP did exactly that – copied a template privacy policy. They probably don't have a budget for a lawyer to write them a privacy policy, much less a EU-compliant one. If this was a big player in the space, sure, maybe they should have a better policy. But for a homegrown tool like this that's just launching? It makes sense they're using off-the-shelf stuff.

Obviously there isn't an original word in this (see the word 'template' in my comment), and indeed it makes sense to not spend a lot of time on this when you're just starting out. That's exactly why I'd recommend to just write what you actually do instead of finding huge text that isn't actually fulfilling the law. Writing up what data you process takes the time of writing a blog post where you barely have to research anything because the subject you're reporting on is yourself. Or just don't have a privacy policy (effectively the same as having one that isn't legal and doesn't say anything): saves you even more time as well as the reader.

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

#215

Post by scubakid » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #114

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 just created an account but did not feel comfortable uploading data, having already associated my account with my identity via Gmail. Would love to run something locally.

You should be able to use the app without making an account. And plan data is not synced to the cloud unless you upgrade to premium and also explicitly enable that feature.

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

#216

Post by goatcode » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

adamdusty wrote: post #207

goatcode wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an account to post something and coincidentally having friends who on their own decided to make accounts to comment is against the rules?

>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. Posting the same site twice in 2 weeks seems more than "occasional", and in my opinion, crosses the line from "look what I made" to self promotion.

The comment that was being replied to didn't say that he'd posted more than once. The one to which OP was replying said that the article had been posted earlier, but not by whom.

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

#217

Post by scubakid » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

monkeydust wrote: post #65

There is definitely a market for this. I had wealth management review recently and they used a 3rd party piece of software that was doing something similar, their entire pitch revolved around this app. What you really need to have is a demo setup so I can just play with the output without having to input any data. Also concerned about sharing this much personal detail with a start-up so I would not use it unfortunate…

Thanks for the feedback! In the near future I'm hoping to add templates you can choose from to optionally skip the onboarding process and play with an example simulation pre-populated with some interesting data. Based on this and some other commentary on here, I'll boost the priority of that feature.

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

#218

Post by scubakid » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

ketralnis wrote: post #195

Just a point of feedback on the UI. When I switch between the "official" and the alternative plans, you reset all of the UI elements like which graph is active and the time period and what UI elements have been collapsed or hidden and which year's breakdown is currently visible. That makes it very difficult to quickly switch between them to visually see what the actual changes are which is the only reason I'd set up…

Those are good insights, thanks! I'll work on that.

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

#219

Post by singingboyo » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:39 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…

Similar situation, but the way I figure it, it's best to err somewhat on the side of caution. Aim to save more than you expect to need, so that a bad return is still enough.

The thing to remember is that if you are somehow wealthy beyond need, you can just retire. You don't have to keep working if you're financially stable earlier than expected.

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

#220

Post by Someone » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

devinsit wrote: post #203

Someone wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, when you change your password, all data flows back to your browser to be decrypted, then gets re-encrypted, and sent back?

Hmm, that's a good question to add to the Security doc! Not quite. See, we make use of a scheme called envelope encryption. That means we have two separate keys: one to encrypt your data (the 'data encryption key' or DEK) and one to encrypt the DEK (the 'key encryption key' or KEK). We use the KEK to encrypt your DEK to get something called the 'EDEK' (or 'encrypted data encryption key'). The EDEK is what we store in…

“With your new KEK, we just re-encrypt your DEK”

⇒ when users change their password, you have access to the DEK (you decrypt it and then encrypt it with the new KEK)

“one to encrypt your data (the 'data encryption key' or DEK)”

⇒ when users change their password, you could decrypt their data.

I think this boils down to “you don’t store user passwords, but when users change their password, they must trust you to not look at your data or store the KEK”.

Where’s my error?