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I had the same experience and even tinkered around with building this myself! IMO the biggest problem with existing calculators, and yours, is that you have to
by Eridrus 6y ago
I had the same experience and even tinkered around with building this myself!
IMO the biggest problem with existing calculators, and yours, is that you have to make some pretty strong assumptions about the future. How will rental & housing prices grow? What returns will I get on my investments? Depending on the numbers you put in you will get very different results, and most people are not good at predicting these!
I think the real value here will be to find a way to reduce the number of knobs that users have to specify in some way, with either expert estimates for these variables, or joint distributions of these variables so that users can explore scenarios like "stock market crash" without having to figure out how that could impact every variable.
- scubakid 6y agoYou're right about those user estimates and various knobs having a potentially huge effect on results. When I introduce a Monte Carlo simulation mode, I hope to be able to offer better insights into how distributions around some of these variables will impact likelihood of success. I'll also continue to look for opportunities to create smart defaults and/or links to resources that can be used to help calibrate estimates based on historical data, locality, etc. Thanks for the comment!