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Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

projectifi.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#21

Post by cddotdotslash »

testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #11

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.

It seems that this is a difficult problem to solve. These kinds of tools don't provide a lot of value unless they have a significant portion of your financial picture. Providing that picture takes a lot of manual data entry. I suppose it could ask more generic questions first (e.g., "enter total cash," "enter total investments," etc.) but that wouldn't be very accurate.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#22

Post by newman314 »

testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #11

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.

+1

Free tier does not appear to persist data. Please do not make me re-enter the data if I want to get on a plan later...

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#23

Post by newman314 »

scubakid wrote: post #14
testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

IMO that would help with some common scenarios

1. Beginning of career 2. Mid career (20 years in) 3. Close to retirement

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#24

Post by scubakid »

newman314 wrote: post #22
testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #11

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.

+1 Free tier does not appear to persist data. Please do not make me re-enter the data if I want to get on a plan later...

I'd say the premium / monetization aspect is something I'm still open to suggestions on. I knew I wanted most functionality to be free, so that everyone could use the tool to develop insights about their potential life trajectory and trade-offs between different decisions, and I didn't want anyone to feel priced out of that experience. Likewise, I didn't want to bombard people with ads, and would never want to collect and sell data or anything like that. Currently, even more advanced features like monte carlo mode are available for free... I felt all this left me with few remaining monetization options, so I'm currently trying the model where data persistence (bringing more convenient repeat use) is one of the premium features. If you keep the tab open and then eventually upgrade, your data will stay.. but currently it will disappear if you close the app without a subscription.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#26

Post by scubakid »

xtracto wrote: post #20
testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

Hmm, this sounds like the kind of thing that could happen if you have a huge percentage value in an expense or tax input by mistake, or something along those lines that could create an immediate bankruptcy scenario. If you double-check everything though and think there is a more sinister issue at play, I'd be happy to look into it and/or help troubleshoot.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#27

Post by dalyons »

I actually have a draft open in gmail that i was meaning to send to you, so ill post it here instead :)

I saw your initial release of this many months ago, tried it out, was like, ok thats kinda cool, put it down.

But then recently i needed to do some serious life financial planning, remembered your tool, searched for the HN post and gave it a real go.... and WOW. Im so impressed. It does exactly what i need; give me a semi-realistic long term plan of finances, retirement, how much house i can afford, effect of jobs, stocks, etc. Being able to play around with scenarios like "what if one of us didnt work for a few years?" really easily. I probably could do all this stuff on a spreadsheet, but the fiddly details of things like inflation, raises, tax, etc are incredibly tedious to model. theres a lot of near term budgeting type apps etc out there, but there was no other product i found that works so well for long term macro stuff. So its well worth the premium subscription fee to me, on a time saved basis alone.

The UI/X is mostly great(ill email you some minor suggestions :) ), and your development velocity is really impressive.

Perhaps the total market for a tool like this is niche, but hopefully it turns into a profitable enough endeavor for you so you can keep working on it forever :)

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#28

Post by sct202 »

I remember your site from the earlier thread, and the experience is so much smoother now. I'm definitely going to start sharing it out since it seems like a very usable tool. I like how you broke out the different types of investments because a lot of other tools tend to have awkward configurations.

The only other feedback I have is for the pricing screens to upgrade if you could list the payment options paypal, etc to manage subscriptions. I've been burned a couple times when smaller creators self manage subscriptions, and I had to email and wait for them to manually adjust the subscription.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#29

Post by scubakid »

BeetleB wrote: post #25

Does it store any of the user's financial data that they input?

The way it currently works is: when a new user onboards and creates a plan, enters some data, and experiments with the app, plan data and results are kept on the client side and not transmitted. Calculations are performed in the browser, and data disappears on refresh. If the user upgrades to Premium, they are then presented with a choice of several data persistence options, including Cloud Storage, LocalStorage Only, and Manual Import/Export. Plan data is only stored server-side if the user enables that option.

Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

#30

Post by newman314 »

scubakid wrote: post #24
newman314 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 Free tier does not appear to persist data. Please do not make me re-enter the data if I want to get on a plan later...

I'd say the premium / monetization aspect is something I'm still open to suggestions on. I knew I wanted most functionality to be free, so that everyone could use the tool to develop insights about their potential life trajectory and trade-offs between different decisions, and I didn't want anyone to feel priced out of that experience. Likewise, I didn't want to bombard people with ads, and would never want to collec…

I think you can find a balance.

Maybe persist for the free plan but only for a month. That should give me enough time to decide if I want to convert.

I feel like a lot of products with subscription plans want to convert too quickly. I have a full time job and family. Life gets in the way of being able to dedicate full attention to getting something setup.

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