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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

#121

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

scubakid wrote: post #115
trailrunner46 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do due to the nature of my work, but I do not feel as comfortable recommending anyone specific.

Instead, I would suggest starting by focusing on fiduciary financial advisors ( https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/wh... ), who have a legal duty to not recommend things that do not benefit their client. That alone may help with removing some of the unease of the referral.

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

#124

Post by smaug7 »

scubakid wrote: post #71
smaug7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am planning on getting married later next year - would we be able to add that in for the future?

If you create a Wedding expense event, there's a checkbox which should update your status to Married when that event occurs. Does that help?

Yup let me try that out!

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

#126

Post by scubakid »

grompotr0n wrote: post #125

If you don't mind asking, how did you come up with the design? It's really slick! I ask because it's always the part I struggle the most in projects.

Thanks! In this case I guess you could say I started out with a design idea in mind first. I wanted a tool that could model my whole life in a single view and re-render changes immediately to encourage quick experimentation. I had an approximate vision in my head for how this would look from the beginning, and once I had a decent MVP together, I spent a lot of time user testing with friends and iterating on various design elements (and the onboarding flow) until most new people found it pretty intuitive.

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

#128

Post by andrewmcwatters »

scubakid wrote: post #119
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1: One of John Bogle’s concerns was that the funds were becoming so large, they would cause some systemic issues in the long run, because there are limitations to how much funds can own of these companies. This is something you can easily Google and read about on your own time, and it will produce a better response than I can regurgitate here.

But basically, in our lifetime, there will be some sort of reorganization of these funds so that they can continue to grow, I expect.

This will presumably either happen in legislation, or funds being split across some entities at some level.

My guess is, think VTSAX Fund I, and VTSAX Fund II. New clients being moved into Fund II, and Fund I being closed to new investors.

Also, just… more people invest. Period. It’s very different from the investing rages of the past. This sort of volume today is known to remove pricing at large from the stock market.

That is, Tom, Dick, and Harry are going to continue to buy into the stock market by their 401(k) contribution no matter what the price is which is staggeringly dangerous.

Because of this volume and the US still being the preeminent nation on earth to invest in (no Chinese risk, no Indian maximum retail pricing), securities may continue to be overpriced well into the near future.

I would simulate those market details by reducing potential future returns, which is current conventional knowledge. Less than 5% is frequently discussed and is certainly a safe, and even generous, as a maximum threshold for the next decade.

During the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, the crash then did nothing to bring securities back down to fair market values, so many people just didn’t buy.

If you did, you would have made out great by now, but if you did then, it wasn’t because of the price of stocks. Some people just “bought the dip” without realizing it wasn’t a dip.

A full bushel of Apples today is not worth $250.00. But if that’s all you saw for the last half-decade, and it fell to $200.00, you’d think it was a great deal until you realized the replacement value of Apple trees would generate Apples at lower prices if you just planted them now yourself.

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

#129

Post by andrewmcwatters »

scubakid wrote: post #119
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

2: I might also play around with crash and correction frequencies if you’re not already doing so, which, without thinking deeper about credit cycles, should be fine to simulate based on previously occurring frequencies.

It seems like you already have some sort of analog to this with historical performance to begin with, though.

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