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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

#181

Post by msmith »

scubakid wrote: post #107
teach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't messed around with this when you posted previously but today I did. I tried to forecast buying a house, but it seems to have defaulted to 0% APR for Infinity. I don't know anything about buying houses; that's why I'm using a tool like this in the first place! I poked around and was finally able to open a screen to enter values for a bunch of things but I don't know what's reasonable. It kinda feels like your…

You make a good point that adding more educational scaffolding would be helpful. I try to include some sensible defaults where I can (e.g. assuming houses are going to have some maintenance/insurance/tax costs associated with them), but yeah in some places existing knowledge or independent research comes in handy. Are there sections in the app that jump out to you as good places to inject more educational content? As…

I use New Retirement and one of my biggest complaints about that app is that it expects you to provide the optimistic/pessimistic rate of return for each of your investment accounts. I would love to have a tool that provides some guidance on setting those numbers, based on historical returns and the asset classes in the account.

I can see value in having similar guidance for things like mortgage interest rates. Maintaining all of this educational content and keeping it up to date may be a challenge, though.

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

#182

Post by resonious »

scubakid wrote: post #164
throwanem wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pro" has a 7-day trial and this below the CTA: > Billed annually for $540 + tax. The dollar amount doesn't quite line up, but it's close. Unless there's very clear confirmation before pulling the trigger on the trial, I would agree this feels on the shady side - at that price point after a 7-day trial, and without a lot of messaging at every stage, I would expect to see an elevated rate of chargebacks. If it helps,…

The checkout experience in PL is just standard Paddle checkout, so I imagine the feedback about charging after the free trial applies to everyone who uses Paddle? I tend to think the Paddle checkout flow is clear enough on how their free trial period works, and I don't recall anyone else taking issue with that in the past. But if the sentiment is shared that Paddle's checkout copy needs improvement, I can certainly p…

The Paddle modal says "Total after trial $594.00" in its order summary for me. This is Pro (which OP also mentioned in their comment).

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

#184

Post by 999900000999 »

scubakid wrote: post #164
throwanem wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pro" has a 7-day trial and this below the CTA: > Billed annually for $540 + tax. The dollar amount doesn't quite line up, but it's close. Unless there's very clear confirmation before pulling the trigger on the trial, I would agree this feels on the shady side - at that price point after a 7-day trial, and without a lot of messaging at every stage, I would expect to see an elevated rate of chargebacks. If it helps,…

The checkout experience in PL is just standard Paddle checkout, so I imagine the feedback about charging after the free trial applies to everyone who uses Paddle? I tend to think the Paddle checkout flow is clear enough on how their free trial period works, and I don't recall anyone else taking issue with that in the past. But if the sentiment is shared that Paddle's checkout copy needs improvement, I can certainly p…

Why does this cost so much and why don't you offer a monthly subscription.

If you just add a 10$ a month option most people will just shrug it off even if they never touch the site again. But you start at 108 for the year. That's charge back territory.

If I just forget about this after the free trial but see a 108$ mystery charge I'm asking questions.

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

#185

Post by MajimasEyepatch »

999900000999 wrote: post #184
scubakid wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The checkout experience in PL is just standard Paddle checkout, so I imagine the feedback about charging after the free trial applies to everyone who uses Paddle? I tend to think the Paddle checkout flow is clear enough on how their free trial period works, and I don't recall anyone else taking issue with that in the past. But if the sentiment is shared that Paddle's checkout copy needs improvement, I can certainly p…

Why does this cost so much and why don't you offer a monthly subscription. If you just add a 10$ a month option most people will just shrug it off even if they never touch the site again. But you start at 108 for the year. That's charge back territory. If I just forget about this after the free trial but see a 108$ mystery charge I'm asking questions.

They do offer a monthly subscription.

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

#186

Post by MontagFTB »

scubakid wrote: post #127
beret4breakfast wrote: post #125

This is fantastic, smooth and really very polished. It clearly covers a lot of stuff and you’ve really got a lot covered so great work. I’ve not sat down and tried to fill out all my details as I’m worried I’ll lose all my details and have to start again. But this kind of stuff I find really interesting and most online are really bad/basic. Main concerns are around price tbh (I’m a cheap bastard) and I think $14 a mo…

Thanks for trying it out! I agree the recovery dialog needs some improvement. Ideally I'd like a way to let people back in for a limited time if they accidentally close their browser. Couldn't think of a sufficiently tamper-resistant implementation with the current architecture.. but as another commenter pointed out, maybe that's still net better(?) Sounds like your notional usage pattern fits with how I use the tool…

What about $5 for a one week unlock, so I can make quarterly adjustments as necessary? Or, say, $10 for a week during Q1 of the year so I can plan out my taxes for the upcoming year? (While I’m not paying the info is read-only, tempting me to play with it for $5/week.)

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

#187

Post by scubakid »

msmith wrote: post #179

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 w…

Thanks for the detailed feedback! A lot of love indeed. And also blood, sweat, and tears haha.

I built PL to be as DIY-centric and unopinionated as I could; and the tool itself doesn't provide formal advice, though I can understand why that's something you might like to see in a planning platform.

Your point about offering a human in the loop somewhere is a good one. I wonder what form that kind of offering could/should take, and also what regulatory hurdles it might introduce.

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

#188

Post by scubakid »

msmith wrote: post #181
scubakid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point that adding more educational scaffolding would be helpful. I try to include some sensible defaults where I can (e.g. assuming houses are going to have some maintenance/insurance/tax costs associated with them), but yeah in some places existing knowledge or independent research comes in handy. Are there sections in the app that jump out to you as good places to inject more educational content? As…

I use New Retirement and one of my biggest complaints about that app is that it expects you to provide the optimistic/pessimistic rate of return for each of your investment accounts. I would love to have a tool that provides some guidance on setting those numbers, based on historical returns and the asset classes in the account. I can see value in having similar guidance for things like mortgage interest rates. Maint…

Showing or linking to the relevant historical data/rates next to each of those inputs sounds like a good feature idea to me.

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

#189

Post by scubakid »

MontagFTB wrote: post #186
scubakid wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for trying it out! I agree the recovery dialog needs some improvement. Ideally I'd like a way to let people back in for a limited time if they accidentally close their browser. Couldn't think of a sufficiently tamper-resistant implementation with the current architecture.. but as another commenter pointed out, maybe that's still net better(?) Sounds like your notional usage pattern fits with how I use the tool…

What about $5 for a one week unlock, so I can make quarterly adjustments as necessary? Or, say, $10 for a week during Q1 of the year so I can plan out my taxes for the upcoming year? (While I’m not paying the info is read-only, tempting me to play with it for $5/week.)

Currently you can do $14 for a month of access at a time. Does that scratch this itch? Or is there something about having access for even smaller windows of time that appeals to you?

The read-only idea outside of those windows is an interesting idea. I don't have a mechanism for that at the moment, but I'll consider it if some other folks express interest in this kind of plan.

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

#190

Post by scubakid »

resonious wrote: post #182
scubakid wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The checkout experience in PL is just standard Paddle checkout, so I imagine the feedback about charging after the free trial applies to everyone who uses Paddle? I tend to think the Paddle checkout flow is clear enough on how their free trial period works, and I don't recall anyone else taking issue with that in the past. But if the sentiment is shared that Paddle's checkout copy needs improvement, I can certainly p…

The Paddle modal says "Total after trial $594.00" in its order summary for me. This is Pro (which OP also mentioned in their comment).

Hmm which OP do you mean? I was referring to karaterobot's original/top-level comment, where afaik they didn't specify.

From context though, it sounds to me like maybe they meant to look at the trial for Premium (i.e. personal use) but accidentally started checkout for the Pro version. I wonder if just hopping into the free sandbox might have been a better fit for what they wanted to do.

Anyway, if others find Paddle's free trial / checkout copy problematic, or have other changes to recommend, just let me know.

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