Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by badcppdev » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #62

badcppdev wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say the same thing. Defined benefit pensions are very rare these days in the UK. Also I have to add that your sentences saying, "workplace pension cash-flow priority" and " corresponding income stream" are very confusing. I think the figures for the UK example are not great. Living expenses, health care, and medical expenses are a lot larger than seems correct. Also you should probably put a tool tip d…

Display currency is more of a global setting (About You section), and iirc the Australian sandbox example should already be using AUD there(?) When you add a new account or cash-flow priority for super contributions, the choices should have subtitles distinguishing Concessional from Non-Concessional. But sounds like there are some other places it would be helpful to show those subtitles too? Always happy to tweak/upd…

Oz super is always going to be in AUD even if the subject is living in the UK. Does your system support investments in multiple currencies? ;-)

More typical UK expense figures is a really hard one. I think we've got a crazy wide spread of incomes and expenditures the same as the US but with differences such as almost nobody earning average income will spend any of it on health care.

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

#252

Post by Syntonicles » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #249

Syntonicles wrote: post #248

Very nice! I've been trying to build out a rudimentary simulation / projection spreadsheet. It has scared me into taking my finances much more seriously than I had been. I'm interested in learning more about the self-hosting option. I take it everything is still closed source? Can you share anything about your stack? The front-end is great! What's the scaffold? Is it JavaScript soup to nuts, or Python, or what?

I'm using Vue.js, Vuetify, Chart.js, Firebase, Paddle, and GCP. PL is pretty client-side-heavy, as alluded to here: https://projectionlab.com/help/enter-data . Happy to field any more questions about the stack if you're curious what any of the components are like to work with. Edit: and here's a little more info on how the self-hosted version works: https://projectionlab.com/help/how-self-hosting-works

That's ok, you'd be writing a novella. I've never used any of those components; your stack makes me feel old!

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

#253

Post by Amorymeltzer » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #189

MontagFTB wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes indeed, that'd be grand. I'm finding lots of stuff as I play with it, but after a bit I don't need (or want!) to fiddle with it regularly. A read-only option, whether free or even for a modest fee, would be ideal, especially when paired with occasional editing "unlocks" or "only-monthly/quarterly-progress-point-additions" or the like.

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

#254

Post by maraphon » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:26 PM UTC

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…

I want to join the chorus of praise for your work, it's really outstanding! Good enough that I created my HN account after decades of lurking to praise your work. I intend to tell my own advisor that adopting PL would be a huge improvement over his current, spreadsheet-based methods for modeling my financial future. Regarding my usage pattern, I'd be glad to spend the $14 for month's access on the two or three months in a year when I might want to update my personal plans iff when I re-up it can start out using the data I persisted in previous sessions after the subscription hiatus. Does it work that way?

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

#255

Post by beret4breakfast » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:30 PM UTC

scubakid wrote: post #202

luke_s wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you feel like it's more the price or the billing frequency options that affect the psychology here? To me, a month of planning for the price of a cocktail sounds about right (esp. when compared with traditional advisory services), but perhaps others think in different terms. Or just disagree? haha. Interestingly, I still get messages fairly often from new users that (in their opinion) pricing is actually too low..…

Pricing is a super tricky issue, especially when its for something related to financials. I think there are plenty of people who wouldn't bat an eye at $14p/m (and maybe they are the target audience), but there are also plenty of people who aren't buying $14 cocktails.

I fall into the camp where I like to play around with spreadsheets (free -£time) or other online calculators (free) just to make loose projections and see where I'm at. I make a good salary (for the UK) but don't pay for any financial advice (and probably wouldn't unless my situation got really complicated). I think if it was priced at £30-50 a year or £4-5p/m I (personally) might go for premium because the tool is honestly really great!

One completely different avenue you might consider is to selling direct to companies to provide to this a service to their employees. I'm not talking financial companies, but more as part of the benefit package. My company added something to their benefits, called bippit - which is awful (or at least not useful to me), but provides virtual one-one financial advisors and some very basic online tools.

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

#256

Post by scubakid » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:30 PM UTC

maraphon wrote: post #254

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…

I want to join the chorus of praise for your work, it's really outstanding! Good enough that I created my HN account after decades of lurking to praise your work. I intend to tell my own advisor that adopting PL would be a huge improvement over his current, spreadsheet-based methods for modeling my financial future. Regarding my usage pattern, I'd be glad to spend the $14 for month's access on the two or three months…

Thanks so much! And yep, you should be able to sign up for a month, cancel when you're done, then resubscribe later and pick back up where you left off :)

And you can always export your data to JSON too, if you prefer to have a local backup just to be safe.

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

#257

Post by scubakid » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

beret4breakfast wrote: post #255

scubakid wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel like it's more the price or the billing frequency options that affect the psychology here? To me, a month of planning for the price of a cocktail sounds about right (esp. when compared with traditional advisory services), but perhaps others think in different terms. Or just disagree? haha. Interestingly, I still get messages fairly often from new users that (in their opinion) pricing is actually too low..…

Pricing is a super tricky issue, especially when its for something related to financials. I think there are plenty of people who wouldn't bat an eye at $14p/m (and maybe they are the target audience), but there are also plenty of people who aren't buying $14 cocktails. I fall into the camp where I like to play around with spreadsheets (free -£time) or other online calculators (free) just to make loose projections and…

Would you fall into the camp of "make it universally cheaper"? Or carve up the feature set into more tiers with different prices? Curious how you would divvy things up, if the latter.

I do also grant general discounts on request (info on pricing page).

You're probably right about the enterprise / benefits angle, but at the moment I wouldn't have a clue how to actually go about it. Enterprise sales is the kind of thing I always imagined you might need a team (and a lot of time and pitching) to pull off... True or false?

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

#258

Post by heattemp99 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

gregoryl wrote: post #206

999900000999 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not more? Is there another product that does this as well, for less?

My friends love giving this "value" based on need and benefit example.

The obvious counter example is water. We need it to survive, often. Yet it's basically free. So don't tell me you can just charge based on how important and useful something is.

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

#259

Post by MajimasEyepatch » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 8:00 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #247

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do offer a monthly subscription.

That should be the default, not over 500$ a year when your trial ends.

Have you actually tried the process? Do you know that it defaults to $500 a year, or was that perhaps user error?

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

#260

Post by MajimasEyepatch » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 8:01 PM UTC

heattemp99 wrote: post #258

gregoryl wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not more? Is there another product that does this as well, for less?

My friends love giving this "value" based on need and benefit example. The obvious counter example is water. We need it to survive, often. Yet it's basically free. So don't tell me you can just charge based on how important and useful something is.

So, supply and demand. Got it.

(Also, water is definitely not free unless you’re literally collecting rain or going down to the river yourself. And even that has costs associated with it.)