Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

projectifi.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 166 posts

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

#141

Post by jaclaz »

scubakid wrote: post #86
jaclaz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another side note. Still in Assets->House. Your simulator seems to work "by category", i.e. it takes expenses for the house (taxes, maintenance, insurance) from the value of the asset? I.e. with constant income fixed 6000 (salary until retirement and same amount as pension, tax exempt, todays money, follow inflation), no living expenses, and only a house with value fixed to 200000 (but adjusted to inflation), 1% tax,…

Hmmm, if you open up the "House" asset form and look at the "Value Change Over Time" field within the During Ownership section is it definitely set to "Match Inflation"? I just tried to replicate your scenario, and in mine the house maintains the 200k value throughout the simulation.

Of course not, it isn't but it seems like it is (to me at least).

In the Wizard:

House 200000 200000 paid off

Acknowledge, etc. Confirm

Create a Plan

etc.

Now I have Other Asset value 200,000, Already Owned, cancels out Rent expenses during ownership, Value is fixed only adjusted for inflation, never sold

etc.

House starts at age 25 200,000, arrives at age 92 at 25,986. 25 first year is 200,000 26 second year is 194,000 27 third year is 188,180

The asset is defined "Fixed value only adjusted for inflation".

Of course if I enter the asset and change from "none" (that is now explained as "Inflation of 3% will decrease asset value over time") to "Match inflation" (that is explained as "Asset value will increase over time matching the inflation rate of 3%" and comes out on the main plan as "Value increases to match inflation" I get the "flat graph" I expected.

The issue is about the wording:

"Fixed value only adjusted for inflation"

vs:

"Value increases to match inflation"

The (fixed) value of an asset cannot "increase to match" (it is fixed) it can only be "adjusted to match".

As I see it the first one is "Fixed not adjusted to anything" and the second is "Fixed but adjusted to match inflation". (and something like these will disambiguate from Appreciate/Depreciate).

BTW the actual Appreciate/Depreciate % needs to be increased/decreased of inflation rate.

As I see it, there should be three possibilities only:

Fixed

Appreciate (and its %)

Depreciate (and its %)

and then a separate checkbox for "Match Inflation".

As an example, if you have Inflation at 3% and select Appreciate 1%, the result is a declining value (as you have no way to Appreciate it 1% AND match inflation, while it is common - at least here - to consider appreciation rate not as absolute but the difference over inflation, it should be specified/explained that there you need to put an absolute rate including inflation).

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

#142

Post by dalyons »

scubakid wrote: post #34
dalyons wrote: post #27

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…

Thanks! It started out as something I knew I wanted for my own planning purposes, as well as friends and family, and it's awesome to hear that it's a tool you too can imagine coming back to when you consider new life plans and decisions. I aim to keep evolving it over time, and I'll be happy to take a look at those UI/UX suggestions you have.

heres a couple:

- it was really un-intuitive to me to edit my starting investments/position. The little cal icon top of the left sidebar was not where i was looking for that. Suggestion: add starting conditions it as a collapsed column furthest to the left in the stacks under the main graphs. thats where i expected it to be, along side the other personal detail stacks

- adding a house mortgage and having it default to trying to pay it off as fast as possible seems wrong, few people would do that, makes more sense at low interest rates to do the regular 30yr

- its easy to accidentally do something that doesnt make sense that has big consequences... eg i was playing around quite awhile before i realized i had my living expenses marked as $X,000 per year instead of per month. I wonder if you could come up with a nice way to warn people when things are significantly outside "normal". eg "hey looks like your living expenses of $200/mo are unrealistic, did you mean this? y/n" dismissable, but might help people into correcting the bigger mistakes

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

#143

Post by scubakid »

dalyons wrote: post #142
scubakid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It started out as something I knew I wanted for my own planning purposes, as well as friends and family, and it's awesome to hear that it's a tool you too can imagine coming back to when you consider new life plans and decisions. I aim to keep evolving it over time, and I'll be happy to take a look at those UI/UX suggestions you have.

heres a couple: - it was really un-intuitive to me to edit my starting investments/position. The little cal icon top of the left sidebar was not where i was looking for that. Suggestion: add starting conditions it as a collapsed column furthest to the left in the stacks under the main graphs. thats where i expected it to be, along side the other personal detail stacks - adding a house mortgage and having it default t…

Thanks for the ideas! I've been feeling like the initial conditions concept could use some work, and this approach sounds promising -- seems like it could also facilitate playing around with different initial conditions in different plans (if desired) as well.

I think warnings like you mention would be a great addition as well, though I have an intuition it may be difficult to pin down what outside of normal really is, since things can be different around the world. Still, I bet it's possible to call attention to any truly ridiculous-seeming values.

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

#144

Post by whydoineedthis »

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.

you ask a lot of questions in the funnel that if I knew the answer to, I would likely have an accounting degree and certainly not need this software.

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

#145

Post by fomojola »

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…

One possible suggestion is a one-time payment option. In a couple of my projects I have daily/weekly/monthly plans that allow people to pay up, use the features and then go away without worrying about long-term financial consequences. Maybe an option were someone can pay up, export their data and then whenever they want to import it back in they sign up for another short plan.

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

#146

Post by scubakid »

whydoineedthis wrote: post #144
scubakid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you ask a lot of questions in the funnel that if I knew the answer to, I would likely have an accounting degree and certainly not need this software.

username checks out :D

It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?

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

#147

Post by scubakid »

fomojola wrote: post #145
scubakid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One possible suggestion is a one-time payment option. In a couple of my projects I have daily/weekly/monthly plans that allow people to pay up, use the features and then go away without worrying about long-term financial consequences. Maybe an option were someone can pay up, export their data and then whenever they want to import it back in they sign up for another short plan.

The lifetime plan is already a one-time payment option. Are you saying you feel it's priced too steeply for intermittent use?

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

#148

Post by whydoineedthis »

scubakid wrote: post #146
whydoineedthis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you ask a lot of questions in the funnel that if I knew the answer to, I would likely have an accounting degree and certainly not need this software.

username checks out :D It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?

as others have noted, the house stuff is wrong.

- compound interest should be the default.

- when asked rent and house expenses as a percentage, is it a percentage of initial cost? current value? future value? It doesn't really make sense as a percentage. I don't charge a tenant X% of my cost, I charge market rate which may be more, or less than my actual expenses.

- same for taxes. it's a nearly fixed amount that increases over time, but trying to do it as a % calculation of actual dollars is often incorrect because that's not how it's calculated in real life.

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

#149

Post by gaspard234 »

sthatipamala wrote: post #113
gaspard234 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Do you live in Houston? Yes you can get a home for that in the far flung suburbs, but nowhere near the core city with the cool restaurants and museums Houston is known for. Inside the loop, if you can find houses for ~$300k those are BAD neighborhoods. You need $400k-500k just to leave active active gang violence areas. To be in good neighborhoods you need high 6 figures.

And to your second statement, there are plenty of Much better but not cheap. Houston's median home price is $295 Austin's in $550.

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

#150

Post by scubakid »

whydoineedthis wrote: post #148
scubakid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

username checks out :D It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?

as others have noted, the house stuff is wrong. - compound interest should be the default. - when asked rent and house expenses as a percentage, is it a percentage of initial cost? current value? future value? It doesn't really make sense as a percentage. I don't charge a tenant X% of my cost, I charge market rate which may be more, or less than my actual expenses. - same for taxes. it's a nearly fixed amount that in…

good points. sounds like there need to be some controls added where you choose how you'd like to specify those values.
Post reply on HN