Great work! This might be unpopular among the HN crowd, but I think you can monetize this further by bundling this with an advising service.
This idea of FIRE has been spreading beyond techies/Internet nerds and into other highly paid professionals like doctors. [0]. The main difference is that non-programmer professionals generally don't get a thrill out of min/max-ing financial projections.
Such people might be willing to pay a few hundred dollars a year for someone to generate this kind of analysis with them and simply execute on it each year. Similar to how people pay for CPAs. My employer actually pays Goldman Sachs to provide a similar service for its employees (no commission, fiduciary advisors) but their tools suck compared to this.
To an extent, I was hoping to support use cases like this with the Pro version I rolled out recently. But perhaps I'm currently more out of the loop than you envision, in the sense that I'm not actively pairing people with advisors and it's just a product that advisors can use if they want. What do you imagine a more "bundled" offering might look like?
the problem is that the type of advisors you are talking about only care about selling products and making commissions, they actually don't care about helping people make the right decisions.
the same goes for CPAs - the moment they see that your tax situation becomes too complicated or a potential liability or they can't make a good profit (read: cookie cutter tax situation which can be handled by fresh grads but can be invoiced at partner rate) they tell you to go elsewhere.
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!
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.
Thanks a bunch! Mentioned this below, but as a YNAB user, if you find yourself looking for more options on things like cash-flow priorities, you can check out the early access version here where I just added a few for v3.0.1: https://projectifi-201a2--dev-xsmyy9im.web.app
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 £81,000 -> after tax is £54,817. £4568 a month. Say you spend £2k a month. That's £2568 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 £81,000 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?
This is complicated. Taxes in the US are different. For example, a lot of higher earners are concentrated in California and New York, which have fairly high taxes; in New York or San Francisco a single person making $105k would take home about $75k (slightly less in SF, slightly more in NY) or about £3k more. I would suspect (but do not know) that the UK government pension and health-care is at least slightly better than the US version.
On top of that, people of a given income level spend more in the US (either because things are actually more expensive, or people in the US are more spendthrift; probably a bit of both), so if you come to spend like a typical American[1] your savings won't necessarily be higher in the US. Bay area rent, in particular is insane (rent alone would be more than the £2k a month you proposed for expenses, though $105k/year in the bay area would be a very low salary for a bay-area tech worker).
Now, you can do better. I have a friend who works as a DBA in a very inexpensive part of the country; he makes more than the $105k per year. In fact his yearly salary is higher than what he paid for his house. When remote became normal during COVID a lot of people moved to cheaper parts of the country while keeping their high salaries. Also, everything else being equal, a higher top-line will always provide more opportunities for savings
1: Before you dismiss this completely, there are real social costs to spending less than your peer group. IMO they are worth it, but they should be factored into any planning you do.
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.
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.
Glad you appreciate the snappiness :) that's the product of a lot of deliberation on optimizations and occasional shower thought / moment of inspiration. Maybe what I should do is add another tier that's just persistent storage with none of the other premium features; essentially "Basic" but with saving.
I wanted to build something like this myself forever, but decided to start by capturing my data over time into a Google Sheet, and in the end never ended up building it.
However, having that sheet meant I could enter in all my accounts, assets, debts into ProjectionLab in about 30 minutes, and spent the rest of the time fiddling with the projection tool, which far exceeds what I would have built.
The cash flow priorities I simply haven't found in another tool, and was one of the big reasons for me wanting to build my own, since I get about 50% of my total comp annually via RSUs vesting, bonuses and share sales, and route those directly into e.g. my mortgage.
Is there any chance to have the Pay Extra goals be annually (I mean, I can do N/12, but annually probably is more accurate from a charting perspective).
I've never forked out my credit card so quickly, well done.
Thanks so much! Comments like this are a big part of what makes it possible for me to keep consistently carving out the time on nights/weekends :)
And to your point on data entry, I should probably go back and look at all the forms and make more of the inputs multi-type so you can always specify in whatever frequency you like.
I have spent couple hours trying your product, it's pretty damn good! Couple remarks:
1. It would have been great if I could make other variables used in Monte Carlo simulations than the market. It would allow one to model uncertainty. For example, an event could happen following a random distribution (kid arrival, move between 3 and 5 years), or a future salary could follow some normal distribution, etc.
2. The main dashboard for a plan is GREAT. UI/UX-wise, considering the number of dimensions to factor, I find it surprisingly simple to iterate over a plan.
3. Having the option to show expenses on the main plan chart would be great. Expenses are a big part of optimizing personal finances.
4. The plan comparison may deserve a different UI than the simple plan analysis. Seeing differences on the right is not completely intuitive.
5. I'm currently living in France, and we have some accounts with no amount limit but with an annual transfert limit. For example, you cannot add more than 20K€/year to the account. I believe it's currently not possible to set a cash allocation such that it maximizes transfert amount/year instead of overall amount.
6. Related to 5., but we cannot withdraw from that account without paying taxes until retrieving, then it's tax-free up to some amount per month. Maybe similar to a 401k. But it's impossible to set that up on a custom account.
7. I have set that model up, still in trial, but now I'm really scared that my browser might bug or hit refresh by habit and loose everything. The find the saving feature to be really harsh. It'd be nice to find some alternative so that it can be saved, and maybe retrieve it after subscribing? Or limit the number of parameters/events that can be added to the model? Or show in much simplified mode. In my case, I'd like to show my partner and discuss it before subscribing: I want to make sure it contains enough features needed to model our finances.
Really good job overall, I'll certainly follow your work!
7. I'd like to make some improvements here too. Losing data sucks, and I should take more steps to reduce the likelihood of that ever happening. I'll see if I can come up with a good approach that's not easy to take advantage of.
Coincidentally, I've just finished a year-long (side-)project building a similar app for a friend.
Similar, I say, if you only read the one-sentence description of what they do. ProjectionLab is 100x prettier, smarter and more featured than anything I could have done.
You have my full admiration, and perhaps my subscription :) I have to come back to it on the weekend, on the computer (although it looks/works fantastic on mobile.)
Thanks! I did spend quite a while trying to make the mobile experience decent, but if you come back I'd highly recommend checking it out on desktop; nothing beats that 4k monitor with all plan sections expanded.
Oh, how I wish this were open source, so I could add my own custom inputs, views, code, etc.
I’d love to model ranges of uncertainty on, e.g., inflation, recessions, major events, etc. — I’d love to be able to play out scenarios around stock market dynamics, housing market dynamics, and more — and this interface is beautiful.
Part of me wants to make some mocks for you, in the hopes that you’ll add some of this… :)
A good chunk of the features I mentioned in my OG comment here were inspired by user feedback; so if there are new features/views you'd like to see, let me know!
Have you seen the Advanced editor yet that you can use to model how various things change over time? That can be helpful for playing out some specific scenarios. And the compare tool might also be worth checking out. I think I see what you mean about ranges of uncertainty though; I can imagine some cool UI possibilities.
Solid app - I echo others statements on this and am seriously considering switching to this from a spreadsheet for the long term; I tried a similar thing for my own finances (spreadsheet -> own app), but it was _far too tedious_ trying to get all the various financial bits worked out, so this is a huge savings in time. Also, the plan together feature seems to be a solid feature overall so far, and it's really helping my partner with financial anxiety be able to even _look_ at our finances without breaking down so far.
Two things I noticed, one is a minor visual bug and the other is a potential win (unless I missed it entirely, in which case disregard):
- it'd be nice to have a feature to do one-off expenses with greater ease, applied to a subset or all plans right off the bat, the idea being I'd like to see the effect of a spontaneous / fun buy and its greater impact on my plans at that moment (thinking really casual FI where me being off 1-2 years isn't a major dealbreaker);
- the promo image under the `Plan Together` summary for mobile has the app layout _behind_ the device notch when it handles it correctly.
Glad you're enjoying it so far! For one-off expenses, I'm assuming you've noticed that the plan interface has all the expandable columns (accounts, income, expenses, assets, etc.), and that you can create new expenses on the fly by adding them from the expenses column, setting frequency to once, and picking which year to throw it into? Or are you saying that's fine but you'd like a way to propagate specific items from one plan to another/all? If the latter, I'm planning to add something for that: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5878-add-abi...
And thanks for the heads-up! That's what the mock-up generator I used produced and I don't have an iPhone so I wasn't 100% sure how it _should_ look haha. I'll take a note to go back and adjust.
Would love some integration with [plain text accounting](https://plaintextaccounting.org/) so that I don't have to re-document all my finances though, even just a simple `ledger equity` import.
That could be an interesting suggestion to add on changemap. Can't say I'm familiar with the site yet, but what would your vision for a good workflow look like if the right integration was in place?
I like simple projections. Most calculators out there on the web suck or are advertisements. They account for too much and I just need PERT but for various asset classes.
I tried doing the walkthrough and it told me I'd go bankrupt. I think there's a bug somewhere as I have 0 debt and over a mill in liquid assets meaning net worth positive.
The sandbox was a bit confusing with the seeded data and I wasn't able to make much sense so I had to start over with the walkthrough.
I would pay a few hundred dollars a year for a simplified version of this where I can just play around with fixed percentages based on my expected returns for different asset classes. Right now it's a bit complex for me and I'd just go back to pen/paper & excel.
If I could show something simple like this to my friends and family, I'm sure they would enjoy it too.
Hmm is it possible you just had the frequency wrong on an expense type or something along those lines? e.g. yearly amount specified monthly/daily by accident? Or a dollar amount put into a percent field? I've added warnings in some places like that where it's possible to identify what a surprisingly high/low value would be, but those guardrails aren't quite everywhere.
To simulate different asset classes, you can always add different account types, rename them, and set custom growth rates / change-over-time plots.. but I agree that something more built-in could make sense, e.g.: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5670-asset-s... ... though I suppose this moves in the direction of adding even more features rather than simplifying haha.
Having the money showed in today's dollars by default was tripping me up for a bit. The 401k provider my employer uses shows "future dollars" by default, so you have to mentally recognize that the buying power of 10M "35 years from now dollars" is not what $10M would do for you today.
Not helping my "11 months till 30" anxiety/depression. I don't know why it's messing with me so much. The internet loves to make is seem like your 20s are where it's all at but I spent it building a career rather than partying or dating... Leaving the "young adult" phase and just entering "adult". Also mega pissed that I started doing better in 2019 (international travel, lots of time spent with friends) and then the pandemic came and turned the world on its head and trapped me at home for the last bit of my 20s.
I just turned 40. When I turned 30 I thought my 20s were pretty amazing and I was sad to leave that behind. But 10 years later I can tell you 30s are definitely your prime years. You’ve got some shit figured out and maybe you’re a real adult, you have a few more dollars than you did before, you probably have a better understanding of what you want in life. 30s are about going and doing that. By not mortgaging your future in your 20s, you’ll have a lot more options in your 30s and 40s.
Your prime years are whatever you make them, it’s borderline depressing when people think their best years are behind them when they possibly have 6-7 more decades to live.
The internet is wrong. Nothing happens when you cross the barrier. Do what makes you fulfilled and live without regrets. Nothing worse than wasting the limited time we have worrying about things we cannot change. (talking to myself now haha)
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 ?
This looks useful, but isn't really usable. For example, your investments tiles all call up the same dialog. For example, clicking "Cryptocurrency" calls up the same modal as clicking "Taxable Investments". Because of this, you end up producing nonsense numbers since every modal just modifies the same field.
If this is not a bug, then the modal is confusing. The labels inside the modal don't correspond to anything on the dashboard. The investment modal should have a field for each investment, rather than some random fields that don't clearly map. If I click "Cryptocurrency" and a modal with no mention of it shows up, I'll assume the software is broken.
I'd also suggest having less memeish simulation descriptions for younger demographics. It adds friction for the average user when they think "well, I'm none of these things, what do I pick". Might also be taken as condescending. Comparatively, the older demographics all had very simple descriptions which would have mass appeal. Comes off like the developers don't take this demographic seriously, or don't understand how to market to it.
Cool looking dashboard, but crazy amount of UX friction makes it hard to use. I'd love to see it when it's tuned up.
The modal is definitely confusing, you are right! I used to have those stat cards direct you to the Current Finances screen, but then people wanted the ability to edit in place on the dashboard, so I had it open the section from current finances that contains the item you clicked. I see how this makes the overall grouping/hierarchy confusing... in the short-term perhaps I'll revert to the original, but in the long-term maybe I'll restructure the dashboard a bit. Might be nicer to have more of a top-down hierarchy focused on total assets and liabilities anyway.
Edit: which things jump out to you as meme-ish? The plan names in some of the sandbox examples? Milestone types? All of the above? lol
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!
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.
This is awesome! It seems like you've paid close attention to security and privacy, but I would love a clearer, stronger guarantee. "We truly cannot access your data, will never access your data, and will never, ever sell your data." That would go far here.
But more directly to your point, if you enable cloud sync, that uses Google Firebase. Firebase encrypts at rest and in transit and has the usual certifications, but the project owner does have an admin UI for Firestore. If that's a concern, there are always the other data persistence options as alternatives: localStorage only, and/or importing/exporting copies of your data to local JSON files.
Perhaps it would also be wise for me to look into integrating with something like GCP cloud kms, that way maybe the user could supply their own encryption key client-side?
I've been dreaming of building this for myself (when I one day have time to do so) and seeing this is very exciting. I'll give it a shot and pay for it if it works well!
Feature request: make this an Electron app so I can actually use local storage, and feel safe that my data (and work) is safe and won't be wasted.
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
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 :)
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.)
This is absolutely fantastic! I've long wanted a tool similar to this but have been stuck with spreadsheets for quite sometime simply because I do not have the knowledge nor time to build something so beautiful. I plan on playing with this quite a bit more over the next few days.
I've noticed in this thread a few other requests for import and I'd like to also chime in with that request.
I have a unique situation when it comes to income where I can reasonably predict my income overtime because of a collective bargaining agreement. Being able to import a table of income/year that I've already generated would save me a ton of time!
[+] [-] sthatipamala|3 years ago|reply
This idea of FIRE has been spreading beyond techies/Internet nerds and into other highly paid professionals like doctors. [0]. The main difference is that non-programmer professionals generally don't get a thrill out of min/max-ing financial projections.
Such people might be willing to pay a few hundred dollars a year for someone to generate this kind of analysis with them and simply execute on it each year. Similar to how people pay for CPAs. My employer actually pays Goldman Sachs to provide a similar service for its employees (no commission, fiduciary advisors) but their tools suck compared to this.
[0] For example https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/, https://www.physicianonfire.com/
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b20000|3 years ago|reply
the same goes for CPAs - the moment they see that your tax situation becomes too complicated or a potential liability or they can't make a good profit (read: cookie cutter tax situation which can be handled by fresh grads but can be invoiced at partner rate) they tell you to go elsewhere.
[+] [-] neill|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hammeiam|3 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bestinterest|3 years ago|reply
The top 5% salary in the UK is £81,000 -> after tax is £54,817. £4568 a month. Say you spend £2k a month. That's £2568 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 £81,000 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...
[+] [-] aidenn0|3 years ago|reply
This is complicated. Taxes in the US are different. For example, a lot of higher earners are concentrated in California and New York, which have fairly high taxes; in New York or San Francisco a single person making $105k would take home about $75k (slightly less in SF, slightly more in NY) or about £3k more. I would suspect (but do not know) that the UK government pension and health-care is at least slightly better than the US version.
On top of that, people of a given income level spend more in the US (either because things are actually more expensive, or people in the US are more spendthrift; probably a bit of both), so if you come to spend like a typical American[1] your savings won't necessarily be higher in the US. Bay area rent, in particular is insane (rent alone would be more than the £2k a month you proposed for expenses, though $105k/year in the bay area would be a very low salary for a bay-area tech worker).
Now, you can do better. I have a friend who works as a DBA in a very inexpensive part of the country; he makes more than the $105k per year. In fact his yearly salary is higher than what he paid for his house. When remote became normal during COVID a lot of people moved to cheaper parts of the country while keeping their high salaries. Also, everything else being equal, a higher top-line will always provide more opportunities for savings
1: Before you dismiss this completely, there are real social costs to spending less than your peer group. IMO they are worth it, but they should be factored into any planning you do.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geeny777|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hammeiam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indemnity|3 years ago|reply
However, having that sheet meant I could enter in all my accounts, assets, debts into ProjectionLab in about 30 minutes, and spent the rest of the time fiddling with the projection tool, which far exceeds what I would have built.
The cash flow priorities I simply haven't found in another tool, and was one of the big reasons for me wanting to build my own, since I get about 50% of my total comp annually via RSUs vesting, bonuses and share sales, and route those directly into e.g. my mortgage.
Is there any chance to have the Pay Extra goals be annually (I mean, I can do N/12, but annually probably is more accurate from a charting perspective).
I've never forked out my credit card so quickly, well done.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
And to your point on data entry, I should probably go back and look at all the forms and make more of the inputs multi-type so you can always specify in whatever frequency you like.
[+] [-] nico401|3 years ago|reply
1. It would have been great if I could make other variables used in Monte Carlo simulations than the market. It would allow one to model uncertainty. For example, an event could happen following a random distribution (kid arrival, move between 3 and 5 years), or a future salary could follow some normal distribution, etc.
2. The main dashboard for a plan is GREAT. UI/UX-wise, considering the number of dimensions to factor, I find it surprisingly simple to iterate over a plan.
3. Having the option to show expenses on the main plan chart would be great. Expenses are a big part of optimizing personal finances.
4. The plan comparison may deserve a different UI than the simple plan analysis. Seeing differences on the right is not completely intuitive.
5. I'm currently living in France, and we have some accounts with no amount limit but with an annual transfert limit. For example, you cannot add more than 20K€/year to the account. I believe it's currently not possible to set a cash allocation such that it maximizes transfert amount/year instead of overall amount.
6. Related to 5., but we cannot withdraw from that account without paying taxes until retrieving, then it's tax-free up to some amount per month. Maybe similar to a 401k. But it's impossible to set that up on a custom account.
7. I have set that model up, still in trial, but now I'm really scared that my browser might bug or hit refresh by habit and loose everything. The find the saving feature to be really harsh. It'd be nice to find some alternative so that it can be saved, and maybe retrieve it after subscribing? Or limit the number of parameters/events that can be added to the model? Or show in much simplified mode. In my case, I'd like to show my partner and discuss it before subscribing: I want to make sure it contains enough features needed to model our finances.
Really good job overall, I'll certainly follow your work!
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
1. Definitely looking to add more degrees of freedom to Monte Carlo scenarios over time. A couple examples: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5736-flex-on... https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5926-allow-s...
3. Have you seen the Plot Builder? (open plot selector and hit new). Expenses are one of the metrics you can use.
4. Totally agree. Eventually I want this to show more than the deltas in the yearly summary, just haven't gotten to it yet.
5. I actually just added some more options for savings type goals to the early access site here: https://projectifi-201a2--dev-xsmyy9im.web.app. let me know if that helps at all.
7. I'd like to make some improvements here too. Losing data sucks, and I should take more steps to reduce the likelihood of that ever happening. I'll see if I can come up with a good approach that's not easy to take advantage of.
[+] [-] dalmo3|3 years ago|reply
Coincidentally, I've just finished a year-long (side-)project building a similar app for a friend.
Similar, I say, if you only read the one-sentence description of what they do. ProjectionLab is 100x prettier, smarter and more featured than anything I could have done.
You have my full admiration, and perhaps my subscription :) I have to come back to it on the weekend, on the computer (although it looks/works fantastic on mobile.)
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zamfi|3 years ago|reply
I’d love to model ranges of uncertainty on, e.g., inflation, recessions, major events, etc. — I’d love to be able to play out scenarios around stock market dynamics, housing market dynamics, and more — and this interface is beautiful.
Part of me wants to make some mocks for you, in the hopes that you’ll add some of this… :)
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
Have you seen the Advanced editor yet that you can use to model how various things change over time? That can be helpful for playing out some specific scenarios. And the compare tool might also be worth checking out. I think I see what you mean about ranges of uncertainty though; I can imagine some cool UI possibilities.
[+] [-] _drkh|3 years ago|reply
Two things I noticed, one is a minor visual bug and the other is a potential win (unless I missed it entirely, in which case disregard):
- it'd be nice to have a feature to do one-off expenses with greater ease, applied to a subset or all plans right off the bat, the idea being I'd like to see the effect of a spontaneous / fun buy and its greater impact on my plans at that moment (thinking really casual FI where me being off 1-2 years isn't a major dealbreaker);
- the promo image under the `Plan Together` summary for mobile has the app layout _behind_ the device notch when it handles it correctly.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
And thanks for the heads-up! That's what the mock-up generator I used produced and I don't have an iPhone so I wasn't 100% sure how it _should_ look haha. I'll take a note to go back and adjust.
[+] [-] mjsir911|3 years ago|reply
Would love some integration with [plain text accounting](https://plaintextaccounting.org/) so that I don't have to re-document all my finances though, even just a simple `ledger equity` import.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenerdhead|3 years ago|reply
I like simple projections. Most calculators out there on the web suck or are advertisements. They account for too much and I just need PERT but for various asset classes.
I tried doing the walkthrough and it told me I'd go bankrupt. I think there's a bug somewhere as I have 0 debt and over a mill in liquid assets meaning net worth positive.
The sandbox was a bit confusing with the seeded data and I wasn't able to make much sense so I had to start over with the walkthrough.
I would pay a few hundred dollars a year for a simplified version of this where I can just play around with fixed percentages based on my expected returns for different asset classes. Right now it's a bit complex for me and I'd just go back to pen/paper & excel.
If I could show something simple like this to my friends and family, I'm sure they would enjoy it too.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
To simulate different asset classes, you can always add different account types, rename them, and set custom growth rates / change-over-time plots.. but I agree that something more built-in could make sense, e.g.: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/5670-asset-s... ... though I suppose this moves in the direction of adding even more features rather than simplifying haha.
[+] [-] Teknoman117|3 years ago|reply
Not helping my "11 months till 30" anxiety/depression. I don't know why it's messing with me so much. The internet loves to make is seem like your 20s are where it's all at but I spent it building a career rather than partying or dating... Leaving the "young adult" phase and just entering "adult". Also mega pissed that I started doing better in 2019 (international travel, lots of time spent with friends) and then the pandemic came and turned the world on its head and trapped me at home for the last bit of my 20s.
[+] [-] SmellTheGlove|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mym1990|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sailfast|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
Oh, and paragraph 2 hit me hard. The countdown to 30 is... happening.
[+] [-] nova27|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trutannus|3 years ago|reply
If this is not a bug, then the modal is confusing. The labels inside the modal don't correspond to anything on the dashboard. The investment modal should have a field for each investment, rather than some random fields that don't clearly map. If I click "Cryptocurrency" and a modal with no mention of it shows up, I'll assume the software is broken.
I'd also suggest having less memeish simulation descriptions for younger demographics. It adds friction for the average user when they think "well, I'm none of these things, what do I pick". Might also be taken as condescending. Comparatively, the older demographics all had very simple descriptions which would have mass appeal. Comes off like the developers don't take this demographic seriously, or don't understand how to market to it.
Cool looking dashboard, but crazy amount of UX friction makes it hard to use. I'd love to see it when it's tuned up.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
Edit: which things jump out to you as meme-ish? The plan names in some of the sandbox examples? Milestone types? All of the above? lol
[+] [-] shorne525|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaphod4prez|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
https://projectionlab.com?help=enter-data
https://projectionlab.com?help=data-security
https://projectionlab.com?help=am-i-the-product
But more directly to your point, if you enable cloud sync, that uses Google Firebase. Firebase encrypts at rest and in transit and has the usual certifications, but the project owner does have an admin UI for Firestore. If that's a concern, there are always the other data persistence options as alternatives: localStorage only, and/or importing/exporting copies of your data to local JSON files.
Perhaps it would also be wise for me to look into integrating with something like GCP cloud kms, that way maybe the user could supply their own encryption key client-side?
[+] [-] AYBABTME|3 years ago|reply
Feature request: make this an Electron app so I can actually use local storage, and feel safe that my data (and work) is safe and won't be wasted.
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scubakid|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bronco21016|3 years ago|reply
I've noticed in this thread a few other requests for import and I'd like to also chime in with that request.
I have a unique situation when it comes to income where I can reasonably predict my income overtime because of a collective bargaining agreement. Being able to import a table of income/year that I've already generated would save me a ton of time!
Thanks again for the amazing work!