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Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
111–120 of 166 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#112This is super useful but the results were screwed up for me because of the default house maintenance estimate. For HCOL areas, 2.5% in yearly maintenance is HUGE. I'm planning on buying a $2M house in the SF Bay Area and didn't realize this tool was allocating $50K a year just for upkeep. Just a point of feedback :)
Ouch, that's a lot of yearly maintenance. Would you recommend changing the default value or trying to make it dynamic/contextual in some way? Or perhaps just trying to draw the user's attention to it better?
Just draw the user's attention to this and any derived/estimated values. It's impossible to model this correctly without very specific regional data.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#113This is super useful but the results were screwed up for me because of the default house maintenance estimate. For HCOL areas, 2.5% in yearly maintenance is HUGE. I'm planning on buying a $2M house in the SF Bay Area and didn't realize this tool was allocating $50K a year just for upkeep. Just a point of feedback :)
In Texas we need $50k a year for the property taxes on that $2M home.
Yes but looking at Zillow that $2M Bay Area home would go for $250K in Houston TX. In fact, I can't even find homes small enough in Texas to compare some of the houses I see for sale in the Bay...
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#114This is super useful but the results were screwed up for me because of the default house maintenance estimate. For HCOL areas, 2.5% in yearly maintenance is HUGE. I'm planning on buying a $2M house in the SF Bay Area and didn't realize this tool was allocating $50K a year just for upkeep. Just a point of feedback :)
Ouch, that's a lot of yearly maintenance. Would you recommend changing the default value or trying to make it dynamic/contextual in some way? Or perhaps just trying to draw the user's attention to it better?
Just guessing here, would it make more sense to base yearly maintenance on $/sq ft instead of overall property value? Would better take in to account expensive but modest (lower maintenance cost) versus huge home (higher maintenance cost).
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! Interesting thought, though I have a natural hesitance towards recommending advisors (who might steer towards active management) or investment products, since my initial vision was to try to make the tool as unbiased and objective as possible, and more in keeping with some of the principles from the Bogleheads community. You may have a point though; I would be interested to hear where others stand on this.
There is a lot of skepticism around financial advisors and rightful so given the track record of many (picking insanely expensive funds, charging high fees themselves, etc.) However, I do think there is a place for advisors not to pick investments but rather actually plan for life events (including tax stuff), which is right up the alley of this app). Having someone who could take all of your inputs, ask the right fo…
True, planning for life and tax stuff does seem like a more distinctly helpful service. I have no connections in the financial advisory space, but in general I'd be open to discussing this kind of idea further.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ouch, that's a lot of yearly maintenance. Would you recommend changing the default value or trying to make it dynamic/contextual in some way? Or perhaps just trying to draw the user's attention to it better?
Just guessing here, would it make more sense to base yearly maintenance on $/sq ft instead of overall property value? Would better take in to account expensive but modest (lower maintenance cost) versus huge home (higher maintenance cost).
$/sqft glosses over local labor costs, level of finish, landscaping, etc., which is why you see people suggesting 1-2% of value per year, though you're right that it would be an improvement to separate out the value of labor/materials from the value of a the bare lot.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#117Looks like a direct alternative to Personal Capital, which I appreciate. Beyond a certain net worth, they continually reach out to you, which is annoying. Love the net worth back testing screenshot on the front page, but wonder how reasonable it is. Index funds weren’t available to the general public before the 70s IIRC, and investing fees were very different then.
That's a good point regarding historical data, index fund availability, and investing fees. I suppose the current Monte Carlo mode is closer to saying "what might happen in the future assuming index funds remain accessible and given similar overall returns, dividends, inflation, etc., to what was seen historically (but perhaps without some of the other context like you mention)". When you think about what you would w…
No, I’m sure the historical-theoretical view is good enough. Unfortunately it will always suffer from that lack of context wherever it’s implemented, and so I’m not sure you can do anything besides point out to people what the conditions were at that time.
That would be my recommendation. Too much financial software out there doesn’t provide historical context and simply parrots useless quips like “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” (which in finance, it actually is a decent indicator!).
Because whole periods of financial history occurred in blocks of time, I’d like to see some financial software that actually acknowledges that.
I’m less interested in novice implementations which simply provide a graph over time of the Dow/S&P 500 performance benchmark, when realistically people didn’t use the S&P until recent history, and VTSAX’s first generation, precursor to the Vanguard 500 Fund, the First Index Investment Trust wasn’t available to the public until after ‘75.
Today, it’s the largest mutual fund in the world, according to Investopedia.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#118This is fantastic, and the pricing for "lifetime" is nearly a no brainer. Here are some additional ideas for ways to generate revenue: * $100-$200 one time guided setup consulting, where someone spends 30-minutes with me on zoom to get data setup the right way, talk through data analysis process, talk through simulation and projections, etc. * Marketplace to connect me with financial advisors who know your software,…
I completely agree, I'd easily pay $200 for help with this
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point regarding historical data, index fund availability, and investing fees. I suppose the current Monte Carlo mode is closer to saying "what might happen in the future assuming index funds remain accessible and given similar overall returns, dividends, inflation, etc., to what was seen historically (but perhaps without some of the other context like you mention)". When you think about what you would w…
No, I’m sure the historical-theoretical view is good enough. Unfortunately it will always suffer from that lack of context wherever it’s implemented, and so I’m not sure you can do anything besides point out to people what the conditions were at that time. That would be my recommendation. Too much financial software out there doesn’t provide historical context and simply parrots useless quips like “Past performance i…
I wonder what major changes and developments we might be likely to see within our lifetimes... do you have any intuitions there? If so, I wonder if there might be additional variables or situation types/probabilities that could be interesting to throw into a monte carlo simulation.
Re: Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence
#120This is fantastic, and the pricing for "lifetime" is nearly a no brainer. Here are some additional ideas for ways to generate revenue: * $100-$200 one time guided setup consulting, where someone spends 30-minutes with me on zoom to get data setup the right way, talk through data analysis process, talk through simulation and projections, etc. * Marketplace to connect me with financial advisors who know your software,…
I completely agree, I'd easily pay $200 for help with this
I'm not a financial advisor, but if it's ProjectiFi itself that you're looking for help understanding, I could certainly walk you through it. Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to discuss further.