I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.
Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
11–20 of 166 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#12I gave a quick try and just from the first look this looks amazing. It's precisely what I'm missing in my spreadsheets for my personal finance: probabilistic planning. I'd consider paying the premium tier but I miss a few things: - Support for tax brackets in other countries (maybe let users introduce them manually) - Support for "disasters" in the probabilistic case. I'd be interested in knowing how robust is my str…
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. It's great to see that you tested out the probabilistic planning mode enough to identify ideas like this that would further enhance it. In fact, some of these things like being able to inject "simulated recessions" are already in my feature backlog, kind of waiting to see how much demand there might be. I'm definitely looking to keep evolving the tool over time, and I'll put some thought into how to accommodate custom tax brackets (seems pretty doable), as well as the other probabilistic features you mention.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#13I gave a quick try and just from the first look this looks amazing. It's precisely what I'm missing in my spreadsheets for my personal finance: probabilistic planning. I'd consider paying the premium tier but I miss a few things: - Support for tax brackets in other countries (maybe let users introduce them manually) - Support for "disasters" in the probabilistic case. I'd be interested in knowing how robust is my str…
Localization could be important too, for broader adoption - not just for currency display but (most importantly) the kinds of investments available and tax rates vary a lot. A minor thing is that the 'default' values for % return and inflation are also different in different places
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#14I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.
Do you think it would help if I make a "sandbox mode" where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and jump straight into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates / personas? That's something I've been debating about building for a while but haven't had a chance yet.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#15Wow, amazing how well you integrated the feedback from the last time this was posted, especially architecture level stuff like storing everything client-side by default. The stock/bond allocation curve is really well done too.
Awesome stuff, I just signed up for premium. I assume for people that are not single you're meant to add their expected income and expenses as well? That could maybe more clear
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#16I gave a quick try and just from the first look this looks amazing. It's precisely what I'm missing in my spreadsheets for my personal finance: probabilistic planning. I'd consider paying the premium tier but I miss a few things: - Support for tax brackets in other countries (maybe let users introduce them manually) - Support for "disasters" in the probabilistic case. I'd be interested in knowing how robust is my str…
Localization could be important too, for broader adoption - not just for currency display but (most importantly) the kinds of investments available and tax rates vary a lot. A minor thing is that the 'default' values for % return and inflation are also different in different places
Good point. In addition to customizable income tax brackets, another idea I've been mulling over is a custom investment type with more controls to model a wider variety of investment vehicles. Perhaps I could add more templates as well, and show/hide some based on the localization settings.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#17Is there consideration for automatically estimating taxes per year based on input assets/income? Great GUI.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#18Wow, amazing how well you integrated the feedback from the last time this was posted, especially architecture level stuff like storing everything client-side by default. The stock/bond allocation curve is really well done too. Awesome stuff, I just signed up for premium. I assume for people that are not single you're meant to add their expected income and expenses as well? That could maybe more clear
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 status to Married in the tax section should auto-adjust contribution limits for US investment types, but custom limits can be set on most things as well. Couples planning is still not perfect overall, but is at least better than how it was before. And if you have more ideas on how it could be improved on from here, just let me know!
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#19Is there consideration for automatically estimating taxes per year based on input assets/income? Great GUI.
The premium version has an automatic tax estimation feature which shows a breakdown of estimates for each year in the sim, but it is US-specific at the moment.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#20I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.
I tried it, filled up all the data and the end screen with a "plan" stopped 1 year after my current age with chart lines looking kind of botched. I think some calculations may be wrong or something.