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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

#191

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

scubakid wrote: post #190
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would appreciate, no doubt. I think I have a mental friction on paying monthly based on how much I interact with the software, so it might be me.

There's always the yearly/lifetime options if monthly gives you pause. Would you suggest adding a lower tier lifetime option with just saving?

I missed the lifetime option, that's good!

I'm not sure how I feel about the persisting being a premium feature yet, I have to play with the software a bit more. It might be that a tier in-between with just persisting would solve the problem, but it could just be that I haven't realized the software' s full potential.

You get a lot of points for making it work well with the phone, I was really surprised.

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

#192

Post by scubakid »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #191
scubakid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always the yearly/lifetime options if monthly gives you pause. Would you suggest adding a lower tier lifetime option with just saving?

I missed the lifetime option, that's good! I'm not sure how I feel about the persisting being a premium feature yet, I have to play with the software a bit more. It might be that a tier in-between with just persisting would solve the problem, but it could just be that I haven't realized the software' s full potential. You get a lot of points for making it work well with the phone, I was really surprised.

That was indeed nontrivial haha. Did you try running it as a PWA? I've noticed there's a bit of weirdness in mobile browsers where content shifts/clips when you scroll sometimes; haven't dug into what's going on there yet, but that seems to go away when running as a PWA.

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

#193

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

scubakid wrote: post #192
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed the lifetime option, that's good! I'm not sure how I feel about the persisting being a premium feature yet, I have to play with the software a bit more. It might be that a tier in-between with just persisting would solve the problem, but it could just be that I haven't realized the software' s full potential. You get a lot of points for making it work well with the phone, I was really surprised.

That was indeed nontrivial haha. Did you try running it as a PWA? I've noticed there's a bit of weirdness in mobile browsers where content shifts/clips when you scroll sometimes; haven't dug into what's going on there yet, but that seems to go away when running as a PWA.

I installed the PWA but was still using the browser. Will give it a try.

What made it surprising is that usually diagrams and tables display horribly on phone in most apps. This app is centered around those and works well, which is literally amazing.

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

#194

Post by thenerdhead »

Seems really promising.

I like simple projections. Most calculators out there on the web suck or are advertisements. They account for too much and I just need PERT but for various asset classes.

I tried doing the walkthrough and it told me I'd go bankrupt. I think there's a bug somewhere as I have 0 debt and over a mill in liquid assets meaning net worth positive.

The sandbox was a bit confusing with the seeded data and I wasn't able to make much sense so I had to start over with the walkthrough.

I would pay a few hundred dollars a year for a simplified version of this where I can just play around with fixed percentages based on my expected returns for different asset classes. Right now it's a bit complex for me and I'd just go back to pen/paper & excel.

If I could show something simple like this to my friends and family, I'm sure they would enjoy it too.

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

#195

Post by scubakid »

thenerdhead wrote: post #194

Seems really promising. I like simple projections. Most calculators out there on the web suck or are advertisements. They account for too much and I just need PERT but for various asset classes. I tried doing the walkthrough and it told me I'd go bankrupt. I think there's a bug somewhere as I have 0 debt and over a mill in liquid assets meaning net worth positive. The sandbox was a bit confusing with the seeded data…

Hmm is it possible you just had the frequency wrong on an expense type or something along those lines? e.g. yearly amount specified monthly/daily by accident? Or a dollar amount put into a percent field? I've added warnings in some places like that where it's possible to identify what a surprisingly high/low value would be, but those guardrails aren't quite everywhere.

To simulate different asset classes, you can always add different account types, rename them, and set custom growth rates / change-over-time plots.. but I agree that something more built-in could make sense, e.g.: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5670-asset-s... ... though I suppose this moves in the direction of adding even more features rather than simplifying haha.

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

#196

Post by scubakid »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #193
scubakid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was indeed nontrivial haha. Did you try running it as a PWA? I've noticed there's a bit of weirdness in mobile browsers where content shifts/clips when you scroll sometimes; haven't dug into what's going on there yet, but that seems to go away when running as a PWA.

I installed the PWA but was still using the browser. Will give it a try. What made it surprising is that usually diagrams and tables display horribly on phone in most apps. This app is centered around those and works well, which is literally amazing.

Thanks; glad you like it! I think there's still some room for improvement in the mobile version. To me it definitely doesn't feel like a "mobile first" experience... but it is serviceable at least.

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

#197

Post by bronco21016 »

This is absolutely fantastic! I've long wanted a tool similar to this but have been stuck with spreadsheets for quite sometime simply because I do not have the knowledge nor time to build something so beautiful. I plan on playing with this quite a bit more over the next few days.

I've noticed in this thread a few other requests for import and I'd like to also chime in with that request.

I have a unique situation when it comes to income where I can reasonably predict my income overtime because of a collective bargaining agreement. Being able to import a table of income/year that I've already generated would save me a ton of time!

Thanks again for the amazing work!

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

#198

Post by scubakid »

bronco21016 wrote: post #197

This is absolutely fantastic! I've long wanted a tool similar to this but have been stuck with spreadsheets for quite sometime simply because I do not have the knowledge nor time to build something so beautiful. I plan on playing with this quite a bit more over the next few days. I've noticed in this thread a few other requests for import and I'd like to also chime in with that request. I have a unique situation when…

Happy you like it so far! Have you seen the Advanced editor I added recently to control precisely how things like investment returns, accounts, income, and expenses change over time? When you open up the full dialog for that, I bet that control point table would be a perfect place to add support for CSV import of income (or whatever other variable) by year.

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

#199

Post by scubakid »

chrishemsworth wrote: post #57

It looks pretty great, I hope to try it more extensively in the future. I was somewhat surprised how intensely I was overcome with existential dread as I put in my information, and just left. It's hard to approach thinking at all about finances, being some years into a pretty volatile career and having basically no assets, investments, savings of any kind, debt, and very rapidly rising costs.

Huh, I figured Thor would have had you set up pretty good by now... kidding aside though, if you have any thoughts on how I could do better with the UI to ease the existential dread a little, always open to feedback!

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

#200

Post by bronco21016 »

scubakid wrote: post #198
bronco21016 wrote: post #197

This is absolutely fantastic! I've long wanted a tool similar to this but have been stuck with spreadsheets for quite sometime simply because I do not have the knowledge nor time to build something so beautiful. I plan on playing with this quite a bit more over the next few days. I've noticed in this thread a few other requests for import and I'd like to also chime in with that request. I have a unique situation when…

Happy you like it so far! Have you seen the Advanced editor I added recently to control precisely how things like investment returns, accounts, income, and expenses change over time? When you open up the full dialog for that, I bet that control point table would be a perfect place to add support for CSV import of income (or whatever other variable) by year.

I did! When I get some time to get everything setup this weekend that where I'll fill in my data. Unfortunately, I have 31 years to go :S so it will take time to manually enter. But a quick import of CSV on the left hand side where the points are added would be perfect!
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