Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

projectionlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 294 posts

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

#281

Post by Amorymeltzer »

scubakid wrote: post #279
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if the commenter who was talking about dark patterns might look at the notional implementation for this and say it feels like the tool holding your plans hostage. I'm also curious how much you would see yourself returning to this "read-only" view. I don't imagine there would be a lot to do if you can't make changes to anything.

All good points! I mostly just don’t want my personal use to be I spend each day adjusting models. Having a thing I can check scratches some of the need for action/anxiety about the future/etc. Right now I have some complex-ish spreadsheets, and while not much changes, I find I often look at things just to feel like I’ve “done something.” And yeah, I do sometimes say “what if better market/worse inflation” and then change the values back, so I take your point well.

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

#282

Post by Amorymeltzer »

scubakid wrote: post #240
dhumph wrote: post #233

It looks very nice. I have used wealthtrace in the past. I see a lot of mentions of various other tools in the thread. You might consider a competition comparison page to distinguish your solution.

That could be a good idea, yeah. I think on the whole, PL is at the point now where my engineering abilities have definitely outstripped my marketing/outreach abilities. So I guess I should spend some time really thinking about how to get the word out more broadly.

Just got mentioned on the latest Dough Roller podcast FWIW, from July 21.

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

#283

Post by scubakid »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #282
scubakid wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be a good idea, yeah. I think on the whole, PL is at the point now where my engineering abilities have definitely outstripped my marketing/outreach abilities. So I guess I should spend some time really thinking about how to get the word out more broadly.

Just got mentioned on the latest Dough Roller podcast FWIW, from July 21.

Oh thanks, I had no idea!

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

#284

Post by scubakid »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #281
scubakid wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the commenter who was talking about dark patterns might look at the notional implementation for this and say it feels like the tool holding your plans hostage. I'm also curious how much you would see yourself returning to this "read-only" view. I don't imagine there would be a lot to do if you can't make changes to anything.

All good points! I mostly just don’t want my personal use to be I spend each day adjusting models. Having a thing I can check scratches some of the need for action/anxiety about the future/etc. Right now I have some complex-ish spreadsheets, and while not much changes, I find I often look at things just to feel like I’ve “done something.” And yeah, I do sometimes say “what if better market/worse inflation” and then c…

Yeah that kind of tinkering is what the app is made for. So it's hard not to wonder if cutting people off from that until they buy another "access pass" to their own plans might feel more frustrating than they realize.

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

#285

Post by Libcat99 »

Quick feedback first

It looks great. I'd love to dig in to it more.

I know you've seen this elsewhere but I don't think I'd pay quite that much for the product, and the blow-away-everything of the free model means I'd probably not come back again.

The housing screen should let you fill in your full payment amount but ask if any of it is escrow/PII or anything else beyond P&I.

A pet peeve with mortgage offers I get in the mail, email, from my bank, etc, is they all know my monthly payment but that payment includes escrow for taxes and insurance. This leads to me getting offers telling me how much I'll save when their offer is actually higher than what I've got (especially true now that rates are higher). I felt the same moment of annoyance when I entered my payment amount and saw I'd have it paid off in half the time I actually will.

Back to cost for a moment.

Like many others, I do my own tracking today, which has a cost in time of course. Since it's coming from my free time I tend to value it in terms of what else I could be doing, and mentally to me that's the "movie model". I spend perhaps 15 minutes twice a month tracking my expenses, debt, etc and in movie terms (a ticket is $18 and provides about 2.5 hours of entertainment) that's about worth about $3 to me.

And because I take the time to look at my expenses regularly, I really, really, really try to avoid any kind of recurring costs when possible. I think this is probably true for a lot of your audience.

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

#286

Post by scubakid »

Libcat99 wrote: post #285

Quick feedback first It looks great. I'd love to dig in to it more. I know you've seen this elsewhere but I don't think I'd pay quite that much for the product, and the blow-away-everything of the free model means I'd probably not come back again. The housing screen should let you fill in your full payment amount but ask if any of it is escrow/PII or anything else beyond P&I. A pet peeve with mortgage offers I get in…

Thanks for checking it out! Did you make it to the full plan interface? Within the House form on the plan screen, there are additional inputs to model things like insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc., and I have these split out as separate inputs from monthly payment because A) those rates/amounts vary from place to place (and may adjust over time as property value changes), and B) this makes it easier to answer experimental questions like "how would my plan change if property taxes were higher."

And maybe I should do something to make this more clear, but the "years to pay off" text embedded in the house form is just a preliminary estimate -- other things like cash-flow priorities you create to make extra payments can impact the actual pay-off time in the full simulation.

On the cost topic, are you familiar with the pricing for other products in the planning space? I've made an effort to position PL competitively, and a piece of unsolicited feedback I get a lot in the wild is that current pricing is actually still too low.

Do you think dicing up the feature set to create a cheaper pricing tier could be helpful? If so, I'd be curious to hear opinions on which features should fall into each tier.

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

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

#287

Post by sieabahlpark »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #227
bobboies wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s a depressing thought—but considering that money can be thought of as a “unit of work”, and so many people are tying it up in stocks of large companies, miles away—praying they won’t get hit by a car before that special day. What about getting units of work to start working right now, instead of hoping some big company will make people’s money “grow” into the future? Invest in local economy. Invest in peop…

I'd rather not be unable to work and be poor by "investing in people" and "local economy". They sure as hell don't come to my aid when I need it. You for shit have no idea how bad elder care is in America

[dead]

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

#288

Post by heattemp99 »

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #260
heattemp99 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Water is basically free. The cost is basically the cost to transport, stock, and process your sale. You can get water for $1 at a gas station, which means they are charging you basically zero markup for the fact that it is a life saving high value product.

I have tons of friends that tell me to price my saas through the roof because "look at the value!!!" ignoring that there are alternatives to it that are basically free, like a piece of paper.

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

#289

Post by Libcat99 »

scubakid wrote: post #286
Libcat99 wrote: post #285

Quick feedback first It looks great. I'd love to dig in to it more. I know you've seen this elsewhere but I don't think I'd pay quite that much for the product, and the blow-away-everything of the free model means I'd probably not come back again. The housing screen should let you fill in your full payment amount but ask if any of it is escrow/PII or anything else beyond P&I. A pet peeve with mortgage offers I get in…

Thanks for checking it out! Did you make it to the full plan interface? Within the House form on the plan screen, there are additional inputs to model things like insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc., and I have these split out as separate inputs from monthly payment because A) those rates/amounts vary from place to place (and may adjust over time as property value changes), and B) this makes it easier to answer exper…

So I think the problem isn't actually the price (or at least not just price) and I'm not exactly surprised to hear some people are saying it could even be higher.

The real issue is the trial. Auto charge trials, especially ones I'm unsure of, are a turnoff. This brings me to 3 issues...

* 7 days is psychologically a short time to try this. For me, this means I have to set aside time in this coming week to set everything up and see how it works. A longer trial period might help.

* The auto charge at the end of the trial is, as mentioned, a dark pattern that I avoid whenever possible. If I'm not 90% sure I'm going to use the product, I won't sign up for something that needs my credit card in advance.

* The free option is too limited for me to start entering data and come back later. It's also missing functionality I think I'll need later. I have to pay at least $14, and setup an auto-charge, to pick up where I left off later, so this is a non-starter for determining if the product is worth the $14 to begin with.

In short, it might be worth $14 a month and it is even likely to be worth the ~ $100 a year, but the limitations and requirements around the trial keep me from feeling comfortable finding out. The most off-putting is the auto-charge, which make me nervous in any case.

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

#290

Post by scubakid »

Libcat99 wrote: post #289
scubakid wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for checking it out! Did you make it to the full plan interface? Within the House form on the plan screen, there are additional inputs to model things like insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc., and I have these split out as separate inputs from monthly payment because A) those rates/amounts vary from place to place (and may adjust over time as property value changes), and B) this makes it easier to answer exper…

So I think the problem isn't actually the price (or at least not just price) and I'm not exactly surprised to hear some people are saying it could even be higher. The real issue is the trial. Auto charge trials, especially ones I'm unsure of, are a turnoff. This brings me to 3 issues... * 7 days is psychologically a short time to try this. For me, this means I have to set aside time in this coming week to set everyth…

I don't think I have much control over Paddle's free trial mechanic, but IMO a pretty effective workaround is to just subscribe and then immediately cancel. That should still give you access for the trial period and then simply not charge at the end.

I also grant extended trials on request. So if you'd like a longer trial (e.g. a month for free), you can just shoot me an email :)

Post reply on HN