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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

#191

Post by kelnos »

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…

> The "right" answer is to go with a shorter-term, variable rate, because on average you'll pay less interest than longer-term/fixed rates.

My 30 year fixed-rate mortgage at 2.6% begs to differ ;) Yes, I had lucky timing; I was able to refinance right at the start of 2022 when rates were pretty much at their lowest.

But overall, I think your assertion isn't correct. It really just depends on conditions. If rates are in general very low, you probably want that fixed-rate mortgage, even if the variable one is -- at least for now -- a little bit lower. In the US, most people get 30-year mortgages, and it's pretty much impossible to predict what rates will be like in 10, 15, 20, 25 years.

If rates are higher, and you believe the reason for that is temporary (like the inflation reduction measures going on now), a variable-rate mortgage is probably a good gamble. If rates drop, you can always refinance (either into another variable-rate mortgage, or to a fixed rate).

Honestly, the 7% now on a 30-year-fixed isn't that bad, historically. It just feels bad because we had such low rates in recent years.

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

#192

Post by resonious »

scubakid wrote: post #190
resonious wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah yes it was a different person who pointed out Pro. Dunno what karaterobot clicked but judging by the number it was probably pro.

Paddle looks pretty normal to me but I think some people find that norm offensive. "Free trial then we auto charge you" definitely feels a bit dark compared to, say, "Free trial then we put you back on basic". I think that would be good for Paddle to consider.

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

#193

Post by ahahahahah »

This looks really, really good. I would certainly use and pay for this if it had my data, but I'm not willing to take the time to enter it all and keep it up-to-date. I don't see anything discussing features for importing data and linking accounts, so it just doesn't work for me.

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

#194

Post by scubakid »

resonious wrote: post #192
scubakid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah yes it was a different person who pointed out Pro. Dunno what karaterobot clicked but judging by the number it was probably pro. Paddle looks pretty normal to me but I think some people find that norm offensive. "Free trial then we auto charge you" definitely feels a bit dark compared to, say, "Free trial then we put you back on basic". I think that would be good for Paddle to consider.

Yeah I could see that being a nice option to grant the user during checkout.

I guess another workaround for now would be to start the trial then cancel right away -- should have the same effect I believe.

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

#195

Post by scubakid »

ahahahahah wrote: post #193

This looks really, really good. I would certainly use and pay for this if it had my data, but I'm not willing to take the time to enter it all and keep it up-to-date. I don't see anything discussing features for importing data and linking accounts, so it just doesn't work for me.

Is account linking the primary thing you'd like to see? Or is there another kind of data as well?

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the back-and-forth in the public roadmap and also the discord related to account linking. Whether or not I should actually try to tackle that (and in what way) is a somewhat contentious topic within the PL community.

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

#196

Post by scubakid »

fishtoaster wrote: post #172
geph2021 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cutting back on the tiaras before the mocha lattes, huh? Starbucks really has their customer retention on lock ;P

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

#197

Post by luke_s »

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…

Yeah, I feel the same way about the $14 a month.

Perhaps a "one shot access pass" or something that lets you in for a few months while you do financial planning may be useful.

It might also be a good opportunity to check back in with people later (say in 12 months time) and get them to sign up again, if you can provide them with valuable insights and help them stick to their plan

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

#198

Post by chillbill »

scubakid wrote: post #83
plorntus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had it reappear 3 times when I was trying it out moving between pages. First time was before I created an account though in the sandbox. Not sure exactly the replication steps for the second and third time it showed up.

A complicating factor is that there are at least 2 different tours for different sections of the interface (e.g. high-level dashboards vs plan interface). Do you think it would be better to infer from one tour dismissal that a user never wants to see another tour for anything else?

I would say just write a tutorial page (or pages) or a record a video to show usage. Those tours really are useless.

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

#199

Post by ahahahahah »

scubakid wrote: post #195
ahahahahah wrote: post #193

This looks really, really good. I would certainly use and pay for this if it had my data, but I'm not willing to take the time to enter it all and keep it up-to-date. I don't see anything discussing features for importing data and linking accounts, so it just doesn't work for me.

Is account linking the primary thing you'd like to see? Or is there another kind of data as well? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the back-and-forth in the public roadmap and also the discord related to account linking. Whether or not I should actually try to tackle that (and in what way) is a somewhat contentious topic within the PL community.

Pretty much just account linking to get the balances for all my investment accounts and for mortgage (honestly don't care much about checking/savings/credit) and to keep them automatically updated. Don't really care about anything around transactions or finer grained budgeting. like, i imagine there's people that really want that, but it feels like a different (huge) project. I guess I find I get some small value from mint tracking that stuff, I wouldn't be against that being supported (but i wouldn't want it to detract from the main point).

i don't think i would use pdf imports. i'm sure some would be fine with that, but it's not worth my time.

I probably wouldn't really trust you with my credentials to any of those accounts, like i begrudgingly would for intuit/mint, and i don't know the state of integration apis these days but maybe that, unfortunately, would mean that you'd need to integrate with someone else that I do trust with that (if all the things i cared about allowed me to give you read-only access without sharing passwords, that's fine).

getting rsu vesting schedule automatically would be a nice bonus, but at least schwab's handling of this seems pretty much like a second class citizen so wouldn't be surprised if it's rather impossible.

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