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Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

projectionlab.com

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Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#171

Post by j45 »

scubakid wrote: post #38
j45 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that this is a solo-dev project, but there's probably loke, a good chunk of people who like this tool likely have built some kind of spreadsheet or other thing to get close to it and likely know exactly what they would like to see for certain things. Having the abilty to perhaps build our own models and keep them to ourselves, or maybe have them available to share might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure if this…

Having a little trouble parsing the specific feature ideas here. It seems like one of them may be an ability to share a read-only view of your plans... but on the other(s) I might need a little more detail.

I think the comments below summed it up well.

Basically setup my own versions of Roth, or other products.

In Canada, TFSA and RRSP are one

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#172

Post by fishtoaster »

geph2021 wrote: post #155
fishtoaster wrote: post #9

Oh hey, it's you again! I discovered projectionlab (formerly projectfi) on HN a while back and have been loving it. Every other "retirement calculator" I found was a dozen text fields and a simple output graph or two - Projection Lab gave me what I really wanted, which was the ability to do much more involved modeling of various scenarios: - What happens if I buy a house in X years? - What happens if my old company I…

wow! That's a level of personal financial analysis that I've never contemplated doing. It's fantastic that someone has built such a great tool for others, and you get so much value from it. For me personally, I fail to understand the point of doing this level of analysis, at lest for some of the things you listed that seem highly hypothetical and uncertain (e.g. raises, IPOs, even future mortgage rates). I guess that…

Well, I can't speak for most people, but one thing I've been doing is using this modeling as feedback into my budget.

1. Track my current expenses (I use https://lunchmoney.app/, but a spreadsheet works fine). Looks like I'm spending $X/month

2. Build a reasonably complete model of my financial life assuming $X expenses per month (I use ProjectionLab)

3. Do I run out of money before the end of my life? If yes, look at my expense breakdown and look for areas to reduce it (fewer ubers, eat out less, cut back on diamond-encrusted tiaras, etc). My new budget is $Y/mo. Goto 2.

4. Do I have a ton of money left at the end of my life? If yes, I can increase my budget a bit for things I like (more ubers, eat out more, more diamond-encrusted tiaras, etc).

I can revisit this over time as my income changes, or my retirement account value changes based on real-world market performance, or I get a windfall, or I get married, etc etc.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#173

Post by jasrys »

Subscriber here. Just a note to say this is a beautiful, helpful, and well thought out in-depth tool for planning (particularly love the scenario modeling). While my financial updates tend to only be on a ~monthly schedule, I often pop in more frequently simply for design inspiration. Thank you Kyle.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#174

Post by scubakid »

j45 wrote: post #171
scubakid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a little trouble parsing the specific feature ideas here. It seems like one of them may be an ability to share a read-only view of your plans... but on the other(s) I might need a little more detail.

I think the comments below summed it up well. Basically setup my own versions of Roth, or other products. In Canada, TFSA and RRSP are one

Have you seen the TFSA and RRSP account types?

I try to offer as much configurability as I can, but if there are other areas where you'd like to see more of that, definitely let me know.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#175

Post by scubakid »

jasrys wrote: post #173

Subscriber here. Just a note to say this is a beautiful, helpful, and well thought out in-depth tool for planning (particularly love the scenario modeling). While my financial updates tend to only be on a ~monthly schedule, I often pop in more frequently simply for design inspiration. Thank you Kyle.

It's this kind of feedback that has kept me energized through all the ups and downs of solo/indie software development over the past two years :)

And FWIW, I tend to update my plans about monthly as well. Feels like a good cadence for me... maybe a little healthier than becoming overly fixated on all the daily price movements.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#177

Post by scubakid »

tremarley wrote: post #176

Great website! The sandbox was superb! Will you consider offering affiliate deals &/ white-label offers?

I recently introduced a referral partnership / revenue share program. There's a link in the footer on the landing page if you'd like to check that out.

Not sure about a version that can be white-labeled though. Would need to think that through more. Do you have a sense for how that typically works and what kind of requirements are involved?

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#178

Post by xxoo »

I like this.

I've been tracking my financial expenses, incomes, debts and deposits ever since my graduation and start my first job. I've tried saving pdfs of my credit card bills, using beancount (a great tool, text-based, local web UI), developing my own python and in-house text format. I even learnt a bit bookkeeping. Now I'm using Excel and I'm happy with it.

I really don't need your app to gain everything it markets itself with. I either already have it or know how to implement it and it's not hard. But still, if an app could ease my workload and provide a mood-easing beautiful UI and animation, what's the point refusing it ?

My point is, I liked your app and I'm willing to use it only if 1. it's not expensive 2. it does not come with a subscription plan (I hate subscription billing) 3. it's available in any future once my payment is done.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#179

Post by msmith »

I love to see more tools like this for do-it-yourselfers like me. I've only just now tried using ProjectionLab for about 20 minutes, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've watched Rob Berger's review of the tool and I've been a subscriber to New Retirement for a few months now.

First impressions:

- It's obvious you've put a lot of love into this tool and it really shows. The UI is very responsive and I think I would enjoy using it.

- At first glance, it compares favorably to the core features in New Retirement: Tracking your assets and investments; Showing projections based on different scenarios and assumptions.

- I didn't see any places where it's providing financial planning suggestions. New Retirement offers "Digital Coach Suggestions" which recommends various things to look into, based on the information you enter. For me, that's a valuable feature because one of the reasons why I'd pay for a tool like this is so that it can help me poke holes in my financial plan.

- Your pricing is totally fine. I see your competition as financial planners who charge a few thousand dollars for a one-time financial plan or, worse, an ongoing 1% AUM fee. I've paid a human to do a financial plan. It was worth the money because it gave me the reassurance that I kinda know what I'm doing, but I didn't see the value in paying a recurring fee for them to "monitor" my investments going forward. I'd much rather pay for direct access to a tool that lets me do that myself.

- Despite the previous bullet point, I do see some value in having a human who can give good financial planning advice. I would pay a few hundred dollars to meet with a human who can give me useful advice whenever I'm at an inflection point in my financial life. Maybe that's another potential revenue source for you in the long run.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator

#180

Post by scubakid »

xxoo wrote: post #178

I like this. I've been tracking my financial expenses, incomes, debts and deposits ever since my graduation and start my first job. I've tried saving pdfs of my credit card bills, using beancount (a great tool, text-based, local web UI), developing my own python and in-house text format. I even learnt a bit bookkeeping. Now I'm using Excel and I'm happy with it. I really don't need your app to gain everything it mark…

Sounds like the Lifetime plan could potentially be a fit then? And I do offer general discounts on request too (see pricing page) if you feel it's out of reach.
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