[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: I built a simulator for personal finance Author : scubakid Score : 146 points Date : 2022-04-19 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (projectionlab.com) (TXT) w3m dump (projectionlab.com) | hammeiam wrote: | I'm so incredibly impressed with this tool. In addition to the | slick interface, it has some killer features and niceties: | | - You can add a "dependent expense" (have a kid) at a certain age | | - You can run Monte Carlo simulations of your portfolio | performance | | - Expenses can be configured to increase linearly, with | inflation, up to an amount, or using a custom function that the | user can input graphically | | - Adding a house purchase automatically cancels out your existing | rent expense if you indicate that it will be your residence | | - Easily visualize all of your projected earnings from portfolio | growth and losses due to inflation and taxes | | As an avid YNAB-er, this is heaven. | geeny777 wrote: | This is absolutely awesome. I really appreciate how snappy it | feels. I wouldn't mind if it was supported by something like | (tasteful) personal capital or credit card affiliate links. | | Otherwise, it's too expensive for cheap fire-minded folks like | myself. Adding a subscription to this would push back our FIRE | dates :) | | Persistent storage (even if it's just a text file I have to copy- | paste every time) for $12/ a year would add enough value to be | worth it for me, and for me to replace my spreadsheet with this. | samtimalsina wrote: | Wow, I had completely forgotten about this. My login still works! | I signed up for the original ProjectiFi when it came out but did | not use it much. I am a heavy YNAB user and this type of software | is right up my alley. I am going give this a whirl again. | scubakid wrote: | Let me know how it goes! One trend I noticed with people coming | to this from budgeting apps like YNAB is that sometimes the | Cash-Flow Priority system in ProjectionLab takes a minute to | grasp. And for emergency fund / cash reserve goals, I'm in the | process of adding a few more options to try to provide better | support for different strategies there. If you find yourself | looking for those, you can try them out on the early access | site here (v3.0.1): https://projectifi-201a2--dev- | xsmyy9im.web.app | shorne525 wrote: | I like the interface and the fact I don't have to connect any of | my personal accounts. I've used other products that require | permissions or user/pw and usually the connections fail or have | some issue that makes them useless. It's nice I can do this | manually, which I have a spreadsheet I use once a month anyway | manually. I'm going to keep playing with this, maybe I can get | rid of my spreadsheet! | scubakid wrote: | If there's anything you feel your spreadsheet still does | better, just let me know! Always working on new features and | improvements. In the past I've had some bad experiences with | services that require linked accounts as well; seems like | there's still a surprising amount of friction there. | leoqa wrote: | I'm also a subscriber and wanted to export the some stuff to | a Google Sheet to give to my financial adviser- I had to do | some funky js console stuff. | | Adding an export, with yearly/monthly resolution and | customizable columns would be trivial probably. | scubakid wrote: | Recently I added a tabular view with JSON/Excel export | option (v2.7.0); let me know if that helps! | ackbar03 wrote: | Just out of curiosity, do you have a lot paid customers for this? | It's clearly a useful tool but I'm just wondering whether there | is a significant cohort that is interested in paying actually | paying for value added services. | scubakid wrote: | Not enough for me to work on this full-time, but enough that it | continues to be an energizing side project. I'm sure there | could be more if I would pull my head out of the sand and spend | more than ~0% of the time doing marketing haha. Certainly all | the options and customization appeal more to the DIY types | and/or people interested in building detailed plans for | financial independence / FIRE. | YPCrumble wrote: | I worked at a startup that pivoted away from this product so | have the same question. We found that people wouldn't pay for | our product that showed financial projections based on current | data. | | I would be really interested to hear how this product is | different - maybe there's a different monetization strategy or | a different marketing strategy? | scubakid wrote: | So far I've just been building what I really wanted to exist | for my own planning purposes combined with the best ideas | from early adopters, and then I've posted in a few places and | gotten a little traction here and there. I can see how it | might be difficult to build and sustain a real startup around | this kind of product; it does feel a bit niche, and I haven't | tried ads but I've always imagined that the target audience | would probably be especially hostile towards them. | ekanes wrote: | A startup pivoting away can mean a few different things, | but one thing it doesn't mean is this couldn't turn into | something big for a long-term-focused solo dev! | actuallyalys wrote: | > I can see how it might be difficult to build and sustain | a real startup around this kind of product | | Yes, I think the most important difference is that, as far | as I can tell, you're looking for a bit of side income | rather than trying to jump start a whole company. | scubakid wrote: | What direction did that startup take their product out of | curiosity? Did they ditch the projection/forecasting | element altogether or still keep a vestige of it? | kyharri wrote: | This is fantastic. Kudos on the hard work you've got one more | paid subscriber here. | scubakid wrote: | Glad you like it so far! Possibly the hardest I've worked on a | side project by an order of magnitude... actually maybe that's | not true, in years past I did spend an irresponsible amount of | time coding video games that no one would ever buy :D | simanyay wrote: | Played around with the sandbox for a few minutes and it feels | great! Can't wait to try it out properly on the weekend. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks! Did you find the sandbox intuitive? Or did you feel | like it needs more persona types? Recently some people | expressed they would prefer a parameterized system that tries | to dial things in a little closer to their situation... but | since then I've tweaked the presentation/phrasing a bit to try | to make it clearer the sandbox is just for showing how things | work. | eprout wrote: | Lovely interface. What does your tech stack look like? | jasfi wrote: | Definitely, the web design and UI immediately grabbed my | attention. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks! It was tricky to build in so much flexibility and | customization while still keeping the overall UI feeling | relatively clean.. I try to strike a good balance there, but | if you feel there are areas where I haven't succeeded, | definitely let me know. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks! I built it with Vue.js, Vuetify, Chart.js, and | Firebase. Firebase only comes into play for those who get | premium and enable data synchronization though. | eprout wrote: | feedmethecorn wrote: | The interface is really awesome. Nice work overall! I feel like | this is something a financial institution/investment firm would | seek to acquire. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks! And I definitely didn't build it with acquisition in | mind (or have any experience navigating those waters), but I | suppose stranger things have happened haha. My intuition is | that big firms/institutions would probably be looking for | something with more crazy growth metrics and stickiness though, | don't you think? | feedmethecorn wrote: | Financial institutions have been known to throw big money at | products like this one. Many are looking to incorporate new, | unique features into their online banking platforms. | scubakid wrote: | I couldn't find a good financial planning tool that felt modern, | nuanced, and actually fun to use... and I ended up spending all | my free time this past year building one: ProjectionLab | | https://projectionlab.com | | It doesn't involve linking your financial accounts, you don't | have to make an account to try it, the free version has a lot of | features, and there's a sandbox mode if you just want to see how | the interface works. | | Last year I posted a prototype here (back when it was called | ProjectiFi): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27844194, and | the early feedback from the HN community was extremely helpful! | I've put in about 1,000 more hours of dev time on nights/weekends | since then, and it's pretty much a whole new app. Here are just a | few of the things you can do with it, many inspired by the HN | commentary: | | - Build detailed and flexible plans for your future that go | beyond the standard online retirement calculators | | - Backtest on historical data and run Monte Carlo simulations | | - Model international scenarios with various account types and | tax estimation presets | | - Experiment rapidly: the simulation engine runs in your browser | and doesn't need to send your data server-side | | - Control how/where your data is stored: cloud sync, localStorage | only, or manual import/export, (client-side by default, no | persistence in the free tier) | | - Plan for goals like achieving financial independence, taking | time off for travel, home ownership, starting a rental empire, | etc. | | - Create granular models for how | accounts/income/expenses/inflation/etc change over time using | interactive plots | | - Build dynamic configurations using milestones that support | multiple criteria and conditional logic | | - Create custom plots to visualize the metrics you care about | | - Plan separately or as a couple | | - Create and manage client accounts with the Pro version | | - Track progress over time and see it overlaid on top of your | projections | | - Cross-compare between different plans, or stage + analyze | multiple changes within a plan (and revert if desired) | | - Choose your own icons to personalize things | | - And a lot more; for a full breakdown of everything that's new, | see the version history | | If you feel like checking it out, I would love to hear what you | think! Most of the functionality is free (minus data | persistence), but for anyone interested in upgrading to Premium, | you can use coupon code "HN-10" for 10% off any plan :) | actuallyalys wrote: | This tool is really flexible and you mention "a rental empire," | so perhaps it's covered already, but it might be worth trying | to add features for freelancers, contract workers, or people | starting side businesses. I think those people would be more | willing to spend money on a planning tool, since there's more | decisions to make. (I think targeting financial planners is | also a smart move.) | scubakid wrote: | What kind of new features do you feel would add the most | value for freelancer / side-business use cases? | tewwill wrote: | Fantastic UI. Congrats. It would be really cool to be able | to model personal assets such as businesses. For example, I | would like to be able to plan when I sell one of my | businesses in X amount of years for a price of Y, then | perhaps have options on how to spread the proceeds of that | sale into different assets like cash, stocks / shares or | one off purchases like a house. | | One thing I couldn't work out how to do was to add one off | purchases once you had already created a plan. Is that | possible? | scubakid wrote: | What kind of one-off purchases do you have in mind? | Within the plan interface, there are a bunch of | expandable columns at the bottom, and within each of | those you can create/manage things like types of income, | expenses, assets, cash-flow priorities, etc. You can | control frequency on things like income/expenses; I | imagine setting an expense to happen once would be an | example of the kind of one-off you're looking for? You | should also be able to model selling X for the price of Y | pretty efficiently as well, perhaps with a single custom | income event type and using the Advanced change-over-time | editor. | rco8786 wrote: | This is fabulous, will definitely be giving you some money next | time I sit down to do finances. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks so much! If you have questions, suggestions, or new | feature ideas, feel free to hit me up on discord any time: | https://discord.com/invite/dZQ5DDEmT7 | jpuderer wrote: | Same. This is exactly the product I didn't know I wanted until | I saw it. | bestinterest wrote: | I just put in some numbers and wow. Unless I'm missing something | incredible my findings are kinda depressing. | | The top 5% salary in the UK is PS81,000 -> after tax is PS54,817. | PS4568 a month. Say you spend PS2k a month. That's PS2568 for | investments per month. Using the calc, it seems you would be able | to retire at age 50. | | I quickly checked the US salary percentiles and the top 5th | percentile of PS81,000 in the UK is equal to the top 15th in the | US. Thats 3x ceiling you could climb through not to mention taxes | in the US are much much better? | | Am I crazy? | | https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f... | https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php | https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce... | scubakid wrote: | It does seem like there are some pretty wild discrepancies in | total comp between countries. If the distributed/remote trend | continues progressing, I wonder if we'll see things start to | equalize at all in our lifetimes, or if there are other | geopolitical / macroeconomic / other factors that are more | significant. | d4mi3n wrote: | It should up to a point. A lot of high paying tech jobs are | in regulated industries that sometimes have hard restrictions | on who they're allowed to employ. For example, I know someone | who works at Oracle Cloud and works on projects for the US | DoD. For these projects Oracle is required to employ US | citizens, perform background checks, and in some cases ensure | those workers have clearance to work with classified | information. | | I suspect there are other high paying jobs/markets with | similar restrictions. It'll be interesting to see how the | dust settles over the next few years as geographical location | within a country and without impacts the labor market. | scubakid wrote: | It'll be interesting to see how quite a lot goes over the | next few years, given recent events... | TheHideout wrote: | Nice work. I remember being very critical of the first version of | this a year ago and it looks like you legitimately took the | feedback to heart. Thanks. | scubakid wrote: | Sure did! Many of the original comments were tough but fair, | and I appreciated that. And if you play around with it some | more and end up feeling like it's still rough around the edges, | don't hold back. | giantg2 wrote: | Very cool. I vaguely remember the ProjectFi version. It seems | like you made a lot of enhancements. Looks good. | scubakid wrote: | Thanks! I've put a ton of work in since then, and it's been a | fun side project that kept me focused and energized and | thinking positive thoughts during the pandemic. Also, the fact | you remember it as "ProjectFi" is one of the many reasons for | the rebrand -- that first "i" in ProjectiFi got lost by so many | people. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | Ha! Fortunately, in my case I was in a position not to make | that mistake. Project Fi (now Google Fi) used to be my phone | provider. That does seem like it would be a common mistake, | though. | | It's a good product so it's nice to see that it's still | getting some love. | giantg2 wrote: | Haha I did missed that "i". Seems like a it's worthy of more | than just "side project" title. My side projects look like | crap compared to this. Very professionally done. | scubakid wrote: | Well, I must admit there is a graveyard of 60 or so other | projects over the years before making anything worth | posting here. The dream would be to find a way to work on | ProjectionLab full-time, but so far I'm preferring the | side-project/bootstrap route focused on growing it slowly | and sustainably, in contrast to the VC "unicorn or bust" | mentality. | giantg2 wrote: | I think many investment firms would be interested in | buying it out. Just look at the ancient tools the big | places use. Places like r/stocks pretty much joke about | Vanguard having outdated interfaces/tools. | neill wrote: | This is great, I took some time to get a fairly in depth plan | together. There are two things that stuck out: | | 1. You've got RSU's (at first it wasn't clear to me where this | would be addressed, but I think it made sense once I came across | it) but I don't see a dedicated strategy for dealing with | ISO/NSO's. That'd be helpful for the tech community especially. | | 2. I spent the 10-15 minutes working on a plan knowing that I'd | need to upgrade to pro for every feature, but it seems like I | need to upgrade to save my plan. I ended up not paying because I | don't have enough time right now to fully evaluate this, but I | might look back later. It would have been great if I could have | entered my email and saved my plan without paying, and then had | to later pay to access it. This gives you the benefit of getting | my email address, and then sending me an email to access my plan | so that I've got a second touchpoint to your product when I check | my email in the future. | | Looking forward to using this more in depth in the future! | scubakid wrote: | If you've still got your plan up, happy to give you an extended | trial if you want! | | But overall I think you're right on both points. I've been | wanting to add better support for modeling options for a while; | for anyone who'd like to bump priority there, feel free to | upvote this item in changemap: | https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5735-better-... | | For #2, I'll do some thinking to gauge level of effort in | rigging up a mechanic like that with the current stack. Losing | data sucks, and I should take more steps to reduce the chances | of that happening to anyone in the onboarding funnel. | waterproof wrote: | Looking forward to trying this. Last time I searched around for a | tool like this, all I found was OnTrajectory (which seems right | up your alley). Do you have a comparison with that or other | similar tools? | scubakid wrote: | I haven't given that tool much of a try specifically, but | overall I wanted to build something where you could do granular | and flexible modeling across multiple scenarios in a modern and | responsive UI, where you don't link your accounts, you control | and experiment with a wide variety of options and assumptions, | can plot/visualize what you want and see breakdowns of what | happened in each simulated year, etc. If you check it out, I'd | be particularly interested to hear what you think of the | Milestone system, where you can define key events/stages in | your life, add multiple criteria with conditional logic for | when they should occur, and bind the start/end of other events | in your plan to them (with support for offsets as well). So | far, I haven't seen anyone else try to build that kind of | system. | syntaxing wrote: | I loved this when this first came out but kind of ran into this | spiral of using it like a game. I couldn't quite do anything | actionable from it. Any advice on how I can use this to improve | my future financial situation? | scubakid wrote: | I'm curious to hear more about this "spiral" haha. The way I | use it is to create a few different plans and compare between | them to assess long-term tradeoffs of different decisions, and | come back sometimes to update things and consider new paths or | opportunities. The tool can't give you alpha of course, but my | hope is that building a better understanding of the spectrum of | possible outcomes helps people plan more confidently for how to | live life on their terms. | zwass wrote: | Glad to see that you've continued investing in this project! I | paid for the Premium version back in the Projectifi times and | would have loved a heads up by email that you made some | significant updates. | scubakid wrote: | I sent out a few rebranding messages and a bunch of updates on | new features over the past few months, but it sounds like maybe | you subscribed before I even had an email list haha. Thanks for | being an early adopter! It's folks like you that helped | encourage me to keep working on it :) | greenpizza13 wrote: | I knew this looked familiar! I paid for Projectfi this year. | Can I use the same account? | scubakid wrote: | Yep! Provided you mean ProjectiFi, same account should work. | Man, that first "i" really did get lost a lot, didn't it? | bredren wrote: | Me too! OG 5/3/21. How do we get on the mailing list? | scubakid wrote: | Ayyy thanks! There's an option in the setup wizard now and | also on the blog section. | nova27 wrote: | This looks so pretty, building a web app myself and one thing i | am struggling with is the UX/UI, I can build the app but my | initial design/ux looks like crap, op did you design the UX of | this yourself or do you hire a designer to come up with the | design ? | scubakid wrote: | All me actually.. though I do have a couple UX buddies I bounce | ideas off from time to time. My programming journey started in | middle school coding videogames to play with friends, and | perhaps that's always shaped the way I approach projects: as | much as possible, I like to visualize the end state (layout, | interactions, the little things you want to be able to do as a | user and how that should feel) before getting too far down the | road coding the underlying systems. | [deleted] | morelandjs wrote: | Congrats! If you decide you want to monetize this, truebill sold | to rocket mortgage for something like a billion dollars. I could | see your features supplementing their current product nicely. | scubakid wrote: | I wonder what metrics drive acquisitions like that the most... | I would imagine they might look more for products with a huge | userbase, stickiness/gamification, or a demonstrably high | virality factor, no? | chrishemsworth wrote: | It looks pretty great, I hope to try it more extensively in the | future. I was somewhat surprised how intensely I was overcome | with existential dread as I put in my information, and just left. | It's hard to approach thinking at all about finances, being some | years into a pretty volatile career and having basically no | assets, investments, savings of any kind, debt, and very rapidly | rising costs. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-19 23:00 UTC)