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Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

projectionlab.com

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Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#161

Post by scubakid »

themacguffinman wrote: post #159
mym1990 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your prime years are whatever you make them, it’s borderline depressing when people think their best years are behind them when they possibly have 6-7 more decades to live.

That's a bit of a stretch. Stats suggest it's more like 5 decades for a reasonably healthy American 30yo white male today. Then consider that in your final decade or so, your options are extremely limited because of severe mental and physical decline. 1 in 9 adults will spend one or two of their final decades in a long goodbye due to Alzheimer's alone. But the decline starts earlier, mental speed is high until age 60…

This condensed several of my own musings into one well-reasoned comment. Do you think there's anything ProjectionLab could/should try to do with the concept of health-span?

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#162

Post by deepGem »

scubakid wrote: post #128
deepGem wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, the non tech crowd doesn't really know or have the time to learn about investing. They just need someone to manage their finances. The advisory profession is alive mostly because of this. Instead of acting as a lead gen to advisors, perhaps you could add more value by doing some sort of filtering or match making based on user's data, totally at the discretion of the investor/user. This will be incredibly help…

Sounds like an interesting model. I wonder if it would come with any regulatory hurdles in addition to the technical work plus efforts to make inroads with enough advisors... and then I wonder if there's a way to advertise that kind of optional product offering without immediately turning off the contingent of privacy-focused DIYers that the tool currently resonates with.

If you decide to offer advisory services on your own, then yes there might be some regulatory hurdles. You are not going down that route. Match making should still be fine, am not sure.

Agreed about turning off existing users, but you can carefully orchestrate this to help users find appropriate advisors as a completely opt-in service. I think you can find a scalable monetization model in match making. Not sure what your plans are, but yeah unlikely you'll be able to pull it off in solo mode.

Totally impressed with what you have built.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#163

Post by scubakid »

deepGem wrote: post #162
scubakid wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an interesting model. I wonder if it would come with any regulatory hurdles in addition to the technical work plus efforts to make inroads with enough advisors... and then I wonder if there's a way to advertise that kind of optional product offering without immediately turning off the contingent of privacy-focused DIYers that the tool currently resonates with.

If you decide to offer advisory services on your own, then yes there might be some regulatory hurdles. You are not going down that route. Match making should still be fine, am not sure. Agreed about turning off existing users, but you can carefully orchestrate this to help users find appropriate advisors as a completely opt-in service. I think you can find a scalable monetization model in match making. Not sure what…

Thanks! I have loads of ideas for new features and things that will be fun to build; but I should probably at least take a breath sometime soon and contemplate all the possible paths. If you or others have any words of wisdom to share, I always enjoy hearing from other perspectives.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#164

Post by chrsig »

I'm really interested in this. My big question is: how easy can it be made to fill in details?

I've been thinking quite a bit lately on what I could possibly hack together in a few julia scripts, where I can at least munge my own transaction data.

I'd never wind up with this level of polish on presentation -- visually it's very pretty. Manually inputting a bunch of details is such a chore though.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#165

Post by scubakid »

chrsig wrote: post #164

I'm really interested in this. My big question is: how easy can it be made to fill in details? I've been thinking quite a bit lately on what I could possibly hack together in a few julia scripts, where I can at least munge my own transaction data. I'd never wind up with this level of polish on presentation -- visually it's very pretty. Manually inputting a bunch of details is such a chore though.

An option to link accounts could help with one aspect, i.e. updating balances as they change over time... but I get the sense that it's a can of worms, and it seems like the larger incumbents that do that often have syncing issues anyway.

But beyond balance updates, it seems hard to avoid having a ton of input fields in an app where you build a detailed model of your future. It feels like there's a tradeoff between being able to build a super detailed model and having a comparatively frictionless experience where you don't need to enter much.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#167

Post by scubakid »

morgengold wrote: post #166

Nice work. Would you mind sharing your programming stack for this tool?

I'm using Vue.js, Vuetify, Chart.js, and Firebase, as well as some things like vuex, vue-router, threads, and dayjs, among other supporting modules. I also use web workers in a few places, e.g. Monte Carlo mode.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#168

Post by deepGem »

scubakid wrote: post #163
deepGem wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you decide to offer advisory services on your own, then yes there might be some regulatory hurdles. You are not going down that route. Match making should still be fine, am not sure. Agreed about turning off existing users, but you can carefully orchestrate this to help users find appropriate advisors as a completely opt-in service. I think you can find a scalable monetization model in match making. Not sure what…

Thanks! I have loads of ideas for new features and things that will be fun to build; but I should probably at least take a breath sometime soon and contemplate all the possible paths. If you or others have any words of wisdom to share, I always enjoy hearing from other perspectives.

Yep highly encourage to take a breath, at some regular cadence and contemplate on all possible paths. I don't know how to be effective at this though. You need some notion of feature management to accomplish this.

I am looking to build a similar tool for engineers who are switching jobs and have multiple job offers. Essentially a financial projection of options 1, 2 and 3 taking into account inflation, location and salary growth.

Happy to brainstorm and collaborate if you are up for it.

Re: Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance

#170

Post by gabereiser »

scubakid wrote: post #138
gabereiser wrote: post #132

While it’s cool to have prebuilt scenarios without signing up. I couldn’t predict my own without signing up. I closed the tab.

When you say you "couldn't predict your own", what do you mean? You should be able to do everything possible in the free tier without signing up.

When I put my data in, the simulation didn’t update. It was still showing me $1m+ retirement predictions.
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