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Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

bou.ke

81–90 of 123 posts

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#81

Wow this is like a flashback to my own experiments in Excel, prior to going full mad-scientist for the past 6 months and creating a web app for FI/FIRE planning called ProjectiFi: https://projectifi.io/ I had been using similar functions in parts of my spreadsheet, but as I kept adding more and more nuance and flexibility to the life planning and projection aspects, eventually the formulas just reached such a critica…

Could you make it so that there is not only a blank page, in case one does not enable JS blindly on every never before visited website?

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a dire need for a good personal finance app. Mint is just out there to grab data, YNAB is ok but super limited. And then pretty much every bank site is lacking in any meaningful tools and API access.

If you dislike Mint's business model and find YNAB limited, you might like Buxfer ( https://www.buxfer.com ) We have built Buxfer to cater to power users, so it has lots of powerful functionality - budgeting, forecasting, automated rules, investment tracking and so on. GP's feature set sounds like its for "superpower users" :) We don't (and will likely never) get too much into things like taxes. But Buxfer is still o…

Decent price and looks reasonably featureful. Good job!

Question: Who are you using for Bank sync?

Yodlee? Plaid? Something else?

I'm a mint ->> Personal Capital convert who both use Yodlee, and I'm curious who you use.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#83

Wow this is like a flashback to my own experiments in Excel, prior to going full mad-scientist for the past 6 months and creating a web app for FI/FIRE planning called ProjectiFi: https://projectifi.io/ I had been using similar functions in parts of my spreadsheet, but as I kept adding more and more nuance and flexibility to the life planning and projection aspects, eventually the formulas just reached such a critica…

Have you gotten much traction on the subscriptions? I made some financial simulations for my own use and was thinking about ways to monetize, but I dismissed subscriptions as I didn't feel there would be a big market. I'd love to be wrong about that.

Anyway, I don't plan to actually make a product out of mine, but if you're interested in speeding up Monte Carlo financial simulation by literally a million times, let me know :)

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dislike Mint's business model and find YNAB limited, you might like Buxfer ( https://www.buxfer.com ) We have built Buxfer to cater to power users, so it has lots of powerful functionality - budgeting, forecasting, automated rules, investment tracking and so on. GP's feature set sounds like its for "superpower users" :) We don't (and will likely never) get too much into things like taxes. But Buxfer is still o…

Decent price and looks reasonably featureful. Good job! Question: Who are you using for Bank sync? Yodlee? Plaid? Something else? I'm a mint ->> Personal Capital convert who both use Yodlee, and I'm curious who you use.

ah, found it here for others who might be interested:

https://www.buxfer.com/help/security

Yodlee and SaltEdge

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#85

> An controversial book on investing I recently read is Lifecycle Investing which argues that young people are often much too conservative in their investment strategy, because they should model their future earnings as a bond and allocate enough to equities to compensate for holding this bond, even leveraging up to 100% to get the right allocation. That’s a pretty interesting idea. I wouldn’t take the future earning…

You can do the same thing with Social Security. It’s basically a forced annuity, so your private investing strategy can be more aggressive than if you did not have access to Social Security.

Of course this is only true for people who do have access to Social Security. Those who do, can create an account on the Social Security website and generate an estimate of your expected benefit.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#86

Wow this is like a flashback to my own experiments in Excel, prior to going full mad-scientist for the past 6 months and creating a web app for FI/FIRE planning called ProjectiFi: https://projectifi.io/ I had been using similar functions in parts of my spreadsheet, but as I kept adding more and more nuance and flexibility to the life planning and projection aspects, eventually the formulas just reached such a critica…

Have you gotten much traction on the subscriptions? I made some financial simulations for my own use and was thinking about ways to monetize, but I dismissed subscriptions as I didn't feel there would be a big market. I'd love to be wrong about that. Anyway, I don't plan to actually make a product out of mine, but if you're interested in speeding up Monte Carlo financial simulation by literally a million times, let m…

It does seem a bit niche, but there's been modest traction so far. And sure, I'd be curious to hear how your Monte Carlo implementation might differ. Feel free to reach out on email/discord if you'd like to chat more.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#87

Wow this is like a flashback to my own experiments in Excel, prior to going full mad-scientist for the past 6 months and creating a web app for FI/FIRE planning called ProjectiFi: https://projectifi.io/ I had been using similar functions in parts of my spreadsheet, but as I kept adding more and more nuance and flexibility to the life planning and projection aspects, eventually the formulas just reached such a critica…

Could you make it so that there is not only a blank page, in case one does not enable JS blindly on every never before visited website?

Good call, I should have thought of that.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#88
post #28

I wish it was easier to actually pull information from various banks and accounts. For all of mine, I have to log in to the website and click around some 2006 era website to set a range or dates or something before I can generate a CSV file. It's a ton of friction just to get a look at my financials. I wish I could always have access to updated CSV files without having to spend all this time for each and every accoun…

I take this as a positive in my personal financial planning.

Basically the idea is that financial planning should be done primarily for the long term, and therefore the data does not need to be managed in real time. I manually pull all my account totals once a year, update my model, and make adjustments then. If there’s a significant event (example: onset of a global pandemic) I will do a special edition of this process.

To be clear, I’m contributing to investments through the year, but when doing so I’m following a strategy I check about once a year.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool site! If you'd like a bit constructive feedback, the autofolding menus were a bit slow to open and anxiety inducing.

Do you mean the animation should be faster when you open a new one? If so, good to know -- that'll be a simple tweak. I'm sure I should put more effort into the landing page overall... the reality is that so far I've spent nearly all my time trying to make the core app robust but intuitive.

In my opinion, the countdown bar (not sure until what it is counting down) is the anxiety inducing part. I’m trying to read, but my eyes keep skipping to the bar to see if I have enough time left.

Re: Spreadsheet formulas for personal finance

#90

I have an MSC in quant finance, and i'm seriously considering learning Django (in top of my backend skills) to build an complete app for personal finance management. Key features ; - Budget (aka cashflow management, what am I doing with my paycheck next month?) - Project planning (aka balance sheet, what is the purpose of my inflows and outflows over time?) - End of year results(aka do my projected budget match my pr…

> when should I purchase insurance to protect my projects

Basically always?

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