13 ms·

Show HN: I made a simulator for personal finance and financial independence

294 points by scubakid 5y ago

sheol 5y ago
Thanks! I understand that is not your purpose now, but do you plan to extending to businesses? I'd be glad to have such decision helping tool :). Also, congrats for your website. I find it very clear to understand what the tool does, why it is useful (your example are simple and to the point), and what is your pricing. :+1:
- scubakid 5y ago
  Extending the tool to accommodate planning for businesses sounds like an interesting prospect, though I'll be the first to admit I know less about the nuances there than in the personal finance domain. I'll take a note to do some more research in this direction, and if you have any further thoughts/suggestions on what kind of new features would be needed to accommodate use cases like that, I'd be all ears!
colinplamondon 5y ago
This is so awesome - thank you for building this! Just subscribed.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks Colin! Really appreciate the subscription :)
gjulianm 5y ago
I gave a quick try and just from the first look this looks amazing. It's precisely what I'm missing in my spreadsheets for my personal finance: probabilistic planning. I'd consider paying the premium tier but I miss a few things: - Support for tax brackets in other countries (maybe let users introduce them manually) - Support for "disasters" in the probabilistic case. I'd be interested in knowing how robust is my strategy to being fired, or having a reduced salary. For example, letting me input a "probability of losing employment" per year and possible ranges for time being unemployed would be interesting. - Also, support for variable-rate mortgages would be interesting. Here in Spain there are quite a lot of offers on mortgages at X% + euribor, and it'd be interesting to put together the behaviour of the mortgage index and the investments. Related with the previous points, simulation of economic crisis could be interesting: investments go down, increased probability of losing my job, increased mortgage payments maybe... Do I survive those crisis? What's my margin? All in all, pretty interesting, congratulations on the job.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. It's great to see that you tested out the probabilistic planning mode enough to identify ideas like this that would further enhance it. In fact, some of these things like being able to inject "simulated recessions" are already in my feature backlog, kind of waiting to see how much demand there might be. I'm definitely looking to keep evolving the tool over time, and I'll put some thought into how to accommodate custom tax brackets (seems pretty doable), as well as the other probabilistic features you mention.
- gota 5y ago
  Localization could be important too, for broader adoption - not just for currency display but (most importantly) the kinds of investments available and tax rates vary a lot. A minor thing is that the 'default' values for % return and inflation are also different in different places
  - scubakid 5y ago
    Good point. In addition to customizable income tax brackets, another idea I've been mulling over is a custom investment type with more controls to model a wider variety of investment vehicles. Perhaps I could add more templates as well, and show/hide some based on the localization settings.
    - jamie_ca 5y ago
      Yes custom investment types! Up in Canada I have access to a registered retirement fund (tax-deferred, like a 401k but not as closely tied to employer) and a tax-free savings account (for untaxed growth), and I couldn’t figure out how to model monthly contributions to both out of a single salary stream. Being able to fund both (and then in retirement, set a max annual withdrawal from the tax-deferred account before withdrawing from the tax-free) is to me an important bit of modelling that I couldn’t figure out how to get sorted in 15-20 minutes.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Along the vein of supporting "disasters" one of the most interesting useful features when seeing a financial planner for our family was looking at possible effects of death and disability. I haven't gotten very far in to it so I haven't been able to explore the life events very much. But looking at the long term impact of "what if I died/what if I had life insurance (and what term)" is very helpful to explore.
testing_1_2_3_4 5y ago
I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Do you think it would help if I make a "sandbox mode" where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and jump straight into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates / personas? That's something I've been debating about building for a while but haven't had a chance yet.
  - newman314 5y ago
    IMO that would help with some common scenarios 1. Beginning of career 2. Mid career (20 years in) 3. Close to retirement
  - johntash 5y ago
    I'm not sure if it would help, but maybe a way to import financial data from something like personalcapital or mint? It'd save on some of the starting questions, but I don't know if that's even possible.
  - whydoineedthis 5y ago
    you ask a lot of questions in the funnel that if I knew the answer to, I would likely have an accounting degree and certainly not need this software.
    - scubakid 5y ago
      username checks out :D It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?
      - whydoineedthis 5y ago
Mavvie 5y ago
Wow, amazing how well you integrated the feedback from the last time this was posted, especially architecture level stuff like storing everything client-side by default. The stock/bond allocation curve is really well done too. Awesome stuff, I just signed up for premium. I assume for people that are not single you're meant to add their expected income and expenses as well? That could maybe more clear
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks so much! And yeah I took a lot of that feedback to heart, and have been working hard to make improvements in many aspects and communicate more clearly about things like data storage and where calculations happen (i.e. client side). For couples, things like age values are from the perspective of the person creating the plan, and yeah the idea is to just add in their income, expenses, goals, etc. Switching status to Married in the tax section should auto-adjust contribution limits for US investment types, but custom limits can be set on most things as well. Couples planning is still not perfect overall, but is at least better than how it was before. And if you have more ideas on how it could be improved on from here, just let me know!
  - smaug7 5y ago
    I am planning on getting married later next year - would we be able to add that in for the future?
    - scubakid 5y ago
      If you create a Wedding expense event, there's a checkbox which should update your status to Married when that event occurs. Does that help?
      - smaug7 5y ago
        Yup let me try that out!
chewymouse 5y ago
Is there consideration for automatically estimating taxes per year based on input assets/income? Great GUI.
- scubakid 5y ago
  The premium version has an automatic tax estimation feature which shows a breakdown of estimates for each year in the sim, but it is US-specific at the moment.
BeetleB 5y ago
Does it store any of the user's financial data that they input?
- scubakid 5y ago
  The way it currently works is: when a new user onboards and creates a plan, enters some data, and experiments with the app, plan data and results are kept on the client side and not transmitted. Calculations are performed in the browser, and data disappears on refresh. If the user upgrades to Premium, they are then presented with a choice of several data persistence options, including Cloud Storage, LocalStorage Only, and Manual Import/Export. Plan data is only stored server-side if the user enables that option.
dalyons 5y ago
I actually have a draft open in gmail that i was meaning to send to you, so ill post it here instead :) I saw your initial release of this many months ago, tried it out, was like, ok thats kinda cool, put it down. But then recently i needed to do some serious life financial planning, remembered your tool, searched for the HN post and gave it a real go.... and WOW. Im so impressed. It does exactly what i need; give me a semi-realistic long term plan of finances, retirement, how much house i can afford, effect of jobs, stocks, etc. Being able to play around with scenarios like "what if one of us didnt work for a few years?" really easily. I probably could do all this stuff on a spreadsheet, but the fiddly details of things like inflation, raises, tax, etc are incredibly tedious to model. theres a lot of near term budgeting type apps etc out there, but there was no other product i found that works so well for long term macro stuff. So its well worth the premium subscription fee to me, on a time saved basis alone. The UI/X is mostly great(ill email you some minor suggestions :) ), and your development velocity is really impressive. Perhaps the total market for a tool like this is niche, but hopefully it turns into a profitable enough endeavor for you so you can keep working on it forever :)
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! It started out as something I knew I wanted for my own planning purposes, as well as friends and family, and it's awesome to hear that it's a tool you too can imagine coming back to when you consider new life plans and decisions. I aim to keep evolving it over time, and I'll be happy to take a look at those UI/UX suggestions you have.
  - dalyons 5y ago
    heres a couple: - it was really un-intuitive to me to edit my starting investments/position. The little cal icon top of the left sidebar was not where i was looking for that. Suggestion: add starting conditions it as a collapsed column furthest to the left in the stacks under the main graphs. thats where i expected it to be, along side the other personal detail stacks - adding a house mortgage and having it default to trying to pay it off as fast as possible seems wrong, few people would do that, makes more sense at low interest rates to do the regular 30yr - its easy to accidentally do something that doesnt make sense that has big consequences... eg i was playing around quite awhile before i realized i had my living expenses marked as $X,000 per year instead of per month. I wonder if you could come up with a nice way to warn people when things are significantly outside "normal". eg "hey looks like your living expenses of $200/mo are unrealistic, did you mean this? y/n" dismissable, but might help people into correcting the bigger mistakes
sct202 5y ago
I remember your site from the earlier thread, and the experience is so much smoother now. I'm definitely going to start sharing it out since it seems like a very usable tool. I like how you broke out the different types of investments because a lot of other tools tend to have awkward configurations. The only other feedback I have is for the pricing screens to upgrade if you could list the payment options paypal, etc to manage subscriptions. I've been burned a couple times when smaller creators self manage subscriptions, and I had to email and wait for them to manually adjust the subscription.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! Really glad to hear you enjoy the improvements. I spent a lot of time thinking about the data modeling and visualization aspects, so I'm happy you find the configuration here less awkward.
ne9xt 5y ago
May I also add that I really appreciate your plain english privacy summary. The first thing that I think about when using a tool like this how my data can be used without my permission for various nefarious purposes. I do appreciate your effort to leave things client side and to save/load data from the client as well.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Sure thing! From the beginning I set out to be as respectful as possible of people's data, but I gathered from the last HN post that I needed to improve some of the communication on that. Hopefully the summary helps, as well as some of the new data storage options for subscribers.
blastro 5y ago
Very impressive!
smaug7 5y ago
This is super cool. I just got a lifetime membership. Please keep this going!
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! Really appreciate the support :)
esseti 5y ago
would be good to have a plan comparison (e.g. rent vs buying house). PS: how should I setup a morgage in the system
- scubakid 5y ago
  You should be able to set up one plan where you rent, then clone that plan and make some changes to add a house, and flip back and forth between the two plans to see the differences. Or, another way to do it is to make a single plan for renting but then add a house asset to it configured to cancel rent expenses when in effect, which you can toggle on and off by clicking the icon. When you add a house to a plan, it should ask you whether you'll be paying in full or financing it. If the latter, then it should provide options for interest rate, down payment, monthly payment, and such.
- esseti 5y ago
  ok, if you add a house it adds the morgage. However, it seems that i get bankrupted very quickly if i do so. And I should live withouth cash. not sure
kolanos 5y ago
There are a lot of buttons without labels, please consider adding alt/title/aria attributes at the minimum. The simulation page is a sea of unlabeled buttons.
- billyruffian 5y ago
  Just clicked to try -- found the display currency I wanted, British Pound Sterling between Egyptian Birr and Georgian Lari. Was expecting it to be amongst the other 'B's.
pilom 5y ago
This is really pretty but I personally appreciate the onboarding speed of cfiresim.com much more. Way easier to save multiple models and I can actually understand what the graph is telling me a little easier. I'll be honest, if I'd never seen one of these graphs before I doubt I'd understand the mobile version of yours. No idea what the different colors mean or what all the icons refer to.
- scubakid 5y ago
  I'd be interested to hear what you think of the experience on desktop -- it's definitely better there than on mobile. But point taken; I'd like to keep making improvements for mobile as well.
michaelml 5y ago
This is something that I would be interested in, but you are asking for too much without giving anything back. You are essentially asking me to put my entire budget as well as future plans into your site before giving me anything interesting. I am estimating it would take > 15 minutes to fill out everything you want, and there is no way I am making that investment into a random website without some token of return. Please consider giving general projections after only a few questions and then allowing the user to refine it by adding more details if they are interested.
- scubakid 5y ago
  One idea that might help with onboarding for users who want to jump right in is a sandbox mode where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and go directly into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates or personas. How would you feel about that?
  - mwerd 5y ago
    I logged in to post this exact suggestion. A couple of templates like [married home owners] and [single renter] that would jumpstart the process would be nice.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Have you ever worked with a financial planner before? I ask, because you’re complaining about the process that every financial planner uses. They’re all very heavy weight, especially when it comes to expenses and tax rates.
ahmadss 5y ago
This is fantastic, and the pricing for "lifetime" is nearly a no brainer. Here are some additional ideas for ways to generate revenue: * $100-$200 one time guided setup consulting, where someone spends 30-minutes with me on zoom to get data setup the right way, talk through data analysis process, talk through simulation and projections, etc. * Marketplace to connect me with financial advisors who know your software, align with your approach to financial planning, and can help me with next level optimization. Nice work!
- Topgamer7 5y ago
  I feel like that might be a hard sell among the FIRE crowd. FIRE is almost synonymous with ultra-frugal.
- rezistik 5y ago
  I completely agree, I'd easily pay $200 for help with this
neogodless 5y ago
Confused by the assets. It's starting with my current home's value, and decreasing it over time, maybe at the rate that it decreases the debt associated with the asset? But that payment should only be applied to the debt, not the value of the asset.
- scubakid 5y ago
  If you're puzzled by asset value appearing to decrease over time, it's possible this is because values are shown in Today's Dollars, i.e. values are adjusted to account for inflation. If you set the asset to appreciate in value at a higher rate than inflation, you should see the value go up over time.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    Thanks - had to dig in a bit to find that, and it's a strange default, but it does have the options you need.
    - scubakid 5y ago
      Yeah I go back and forth on what the default should be with regard to adjusting values for inflation. I have seen other planners do it this way, and perhaps one of the reasons why is so that you don't look at a high projected portfolio value 40 or 60 years down the road and think you're doing amazing, when in reality those values have much less purchasing power than they would today.
      - dr_orpheus 5y ago
        I agree with the choice of presenting in today's dollars by default is more helpful when actually planning. In the deterministic planning it has the note at the top for "All Values in Today's Currency" but I don't see that in the Advanced Simulation and I think it would be helpful to have that reminder on all of the projection graphs so you don't forget what money you are looking at.
  - ac29 5y ago
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
Very well done. Clear UI. Simple to use and it delivers a good overview. The one thing I would suggest ( I assume this would be a part where you attempt to monetize it ) is a referral to financial advisors, who can use the information to assist.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! Interesting thought, though I have a natural hesitance towards recommending advisors (who might steer towards active management) or investment products, since my initial vision was to try to make the tool as unbiased and objective as possible, and more in keeping with some of the principles from the Bogleheads community. You may have a point though; I would be interested to hear where others stand on this.
  - trailrunner46 5y ago
    There is a lot of skepticism around financial advisors and rightful so given the track record of many (picking insanely expensive funds, charging high fees themselves, etc.) However, I do think there is a place for advisors not to pick investments but rather actually plan for life events (including tax stuff), which is right up the alley of this app). Having someone who could take all of your inputs, ask the right followup questions and appropriately model the likely range of outcomes on this kind of app could be quite attractive.
    - scubakid 5y ago
      True, planning for life and tax stuff does seem like a more distinctly helpful service. I have no connections in the financial advisory space, but in general I'd be open to discussing this kind of idea further.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
        I do due to the nature of my work, but I do not feel as comfortable recommending anyone specific. Instead, I would suggest starting by focusing on fiduciary financial advisors ( https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/what-is-a-fiduciary-financial-advisor-a-guide-to-the-fiduciary-duty https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/wh... ), who have a legal duty to not recommend things that do not benefit their client. That alone may help with removing some of the unease of the referral.
trailrunner46 5y ago
This is very slick and well executed. I especially appreciate the thought that went into data transfer (making it opt in, otherwise stays client side). I have a CFA and have been in finance for a while and have maintained a spreadsheet but honestly this does it better so I will use and support you. I wish more people would take a long view with their financial wellness, maybe I can convince a few friends to see the impact of their debt binges :) On the UI side there are a few odd things like trying to paste a number that has decimal points makes it so nothing gets pasted in, the colors on some of the graphs are hard to read (especially for people with color vision deficiencies), etc. As I use it I will try to give more specific feedback. Can't wait to dig in further.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Much appreciated! And yeah before building this, I was surprised there weren't already more tools that can show you a nuanced view of what the future may hold and the ways various decisions affect that picture... and the complexity of the spreadsheet I had been playing around with eventually became untenable haha. Thanks for the UI feedback so far, and since you've been in finance for a while I'll be very curious to hear more of your thoughts as you dig further into the app.
knz42 5y ago
Is there a way to simulate capital tax? Percentage of taxable investments/cash?
mwerd 5y ago
It would be easier for me if I could start with a template. Having a few buttons for representative simulations like "married high income" and "single FIRE" that you could then adjust to your scenario instead of starting from scratch would be nice.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Agreed. I've been thinking about making a "sandbox" mode like this where you can jump right in based on a template. Since there have been multiple others asking for something like this, I'll boost the priority.
mrcolin000 5y ago
Just created a HN account to say how great this looks. Ive signed up and wont be surprised if I grab the paid tier. This is exactly the kind of tool I can get a lot out of! nice work.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out any time.
diordiderot 5y ago
Raise your prices
- scubakid 5y ago
  What do you think would be reasonable?
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Changed my mind. 5 seems fair. But... I'd remove unlimited plans from free tier, rename free tier to trial, and remove lifetime tier all together. That's only 15 months! Milk it
qqqwerty 5y ago
For the married scenario, would you suggest just combining income, cash, investments, etc. under one person? Also, is there a way to model purchasing a house in the future? Probably the biggest decision I am struggling with right now.
- qqqwerty 5y ago
  Ahh, never mind. I see you can add multiple incomes. And the "Other Assests" form has a "Purchase Year" input. Thanks, very cool tool.
jazzkingrt 5y ago
Superb tool! In 15 mins, I was able to get rough answers to questions like: * When am I financially independent if I keep living the way I do now? * What if I lowered my expenses right now seeking earlier FI? * When could I hypothetically stop working by lowering my expenses at the point of retirement? * How much would be left in my estate? I bought the lifetime subscription, which seems like quite a good deal!
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! Appreciate the subscription, and I'm stoked you're enjoying the app. I imagine there are others in the FI community that might also get a lot out of it, but I'm not quite sure what the best way is to spread the word. Most subreddits don't allow self-promotion, and same with the Bogleheads forums and wiki. If you or others have any ideas, definitely let me know. Pretty much all my time has gone into trying to make the actual tool, so I haven't done much at all in terms of marketing.
ctmcbr 5y ago
This is really good & helpful! Wish I had this thing years ago when I was doing pro-bono financial planning for family members. Would have been much easier than building spreadsheets for them... Couple of points of feedback: 1. The UI flow for adding financial goals (like putting excess earnings into taxable investments, rain day funds, etc.) didn't make it immediately clear what that section was for. Some clearer explanations in that section might improve your funnel. 2. The way that debt is displayed by default on the stacked chart sort of makes it look like an asset, which is confusing. My reaction was just not to trust the chart for the whole duration of having a mortgage. Changing the house asset value in the stacked chart to home equity instead could maybe be a fix? 3. I really liked the little red exclamation indicator when a plan involved you running out of money b/c you retired too early. It felt very well calibrated to clearly indicate the inadvisability of that particular plan w/o being overwrought. You might want to add less alarming yellow indicators to pick up not great, but not terrible situations like you retired too early & all your assets are tied up in retirement accounts and illiquid assists (e.g., home equity), so now you are eating early withdrawal penalties unnecessarily. Great work!
- scubakid 5y ago
  Really good points! For #1, I agree that section can be a bit difficult for new users to grasp. It's laid out the way it is so that later you can simply click and drag to re-prioritize goals and see the effects, but I'll think about how to communicate the purpose of that section better from the beginning. For #2, yeah the concept of showing debt on top of everything else may be a bit... unconventional haha. That's where switching the plot to the net worth one can help somewhat if you want the chart to clearly show total net worth. In the stacked view, changing house value to equity is an interesting thought, though I think that still leaves it an open question how the chart should account for the other kinds of debt one might have. For #3, yes definitely. Identifying warning scenarios and clearly marking those is a good feature idea.
sjg007 5y ago
It seems great but also too sophisticated.. Is there a simple mode or a persona I can clone and update? Wife, 2 kids, etc...
- scubakid 5y ago
  Not yet, but based on all the commentary here I'll definitely be adding a sandbox mode where you can jump into a pre-configured scenario based on templates like that.
antonpuz 5y ago
Tried it out and it's awesome! I've been working with spreadsheets so far and this takes it to a different level!
newman314 5y ago
FWIW, Morgan offers a similar type of service (free) as part of their yearly review with me. I'd be interested in seeing how close/different the projections are.
- scubakid 5y ago
  If you ever do a comparison, let me know! That would be cool to see.
williamdclt 5y ago
This is great, as somebody that's inexperience and uninterested in financial planning (but aware I can't ignore it), I really appreciate the simplicity and clear language. I misread what you were saying in other comments about a sandbox and thought "nah, what this really needs is prefilled scenarios". Looks like you have the right idea: I'd absolutely love that, I have no idea what to fill in most of these boxes and would like some examples! That could orient your tool towards education rather than planning though
- scubakid 5y ago
  Wow, if I had known just how popular a feature this would be I would have done it already! It's going to the top of the list now. And yeah I think the planning process does have an educational element to it, and the way you can quickly experiment with different ideas can help to discover and quantify trade-offs. I'm sure the prefilled template/scenario options would enhance that educational aspect further.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Looks like a direct alternative to Personal Capital, which I appreciate. Beyond a certain net worth, they continually reach out to you, which is annoying. Love the net worth back testing screenshot on the front page, but wonder how reasonable it is. Index funds weren’t available to the general public before the 70s IIRC, and investing fees were very different then.
- scubakid 5y ago
  That's a good point regarding historical data, index fund availability, and investing fees. I suppose the current Monte Carlo mode is closer to saying "what might happen in the future assuming index funds remain accessible and given similar overall returns, dividends, inflation, etc., to what was seen historically (but perhaps without some of the other context like you mention)". When you think about what you would want from a probabilistic planning tool, which are the insights you care most about, and are there changes you would recommend to the current methodology? Or perhaps additional variables?
  - andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    No, I’m sure the historical-theoretical view is good enough. Unfortunately it will always suffer from that lack of context wherever it’s implemented, and so I’m not sure you can do anything besides point out to people what the conditions were at that time. That would be my recommendation. Too much financial software out there doesn’t provide historical context and simply parrots useless quips like “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” (which in finance, it actually is a decent indicator!). Because whole periods of financial history occurred in blocks of time, I’d like to see some financial software that actually acknowledges that. I’m less interested in novice implementations which simply provide a graph over time of the Dow/S&P 500 performance benchmark, when realistically people didn’t use the S&P until recent history, and VTSAX’s first generation, precursor to the Vanguard 500 Fund, the First Index Investment Trust wasn’t available to the public until after ‘75. Today, it’s the largest mutual fund in the world, according to Investopedia.
    - 5y ago
thih9 5y ago
The cookies popup seems opt out rather than opt in, unless I missed something. I felt annoyed when I visited all the tabs and withdrew permissions that I never gave.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Ah, I see what you mean. The way it works now, if you ignore the banner, things are disabled by default (e.g. Google Analytics). If you click settings from the banner, the switches default to on at that point (and you can toggle them off), but GA doesn't activate unless you confirm that dialog with them on. Does that make sense? Or do you feel it should be implemented differently? I'm definitely open to changing it.
  - mawise 5y ago
    I'd love to see more sites skip out of GA entirely. If you use server logs for analytics you get better fidelity[1]. You can probably eliminate the cookie consent banner if you're only storing login or session-continuity (required for functionality) cookies. [1]: Based on this analysis: https://brandur.org/minimal-analytics https://brandur.org/minimal-analytics
  - thih9 5y ago
    Thanks the reply and for the details. > If you click settings from the banner, the switches default to on at that point This is annoying; also, not allowed under GDPR. Cookie and privacy consent should be opt in instead of opt out. Clicking “settings” should not be treated as opting in.
    - scubakid 5y ago
      Thanks for the heads-up, I'll take a note to change that behavior.
fifthofhisname 5y ago
*Incredible* product. I signed up for the monthly membership and, if all goes well, I will likely stick around or buy the lifetime membership. I currently use Undebt It[0] to manage my debts. It supports all kinds of debt payment plans like snowball, avalanche, cash flow index[1], etc. One feature I love is the "extra debt payment" that basically throws an addition X dollars at the highest interest debt (or whatever debt is prioritized by the selected repayment plan). When that debt is paid off, the amount rolls over to the next debt on the list. This helps a person to pay off debts faster and reduce total interest paid across the lifetime of the debt(s). For a family with a few credit cards, a car payment or two, and a mortgage this can save them tens of thousands of dollars. Three suggestions: 1. Create an "extra debt payment" feature that goes towards my prioritized debt(s). This amount is in excess of the total minimum payment amounts. It could be towards the highest interest rate, lowest balance, split across all accounts, etc. When a debt is zeroed out the payment automatically adjusts to target the remaining debt(s). Example: two debts, each of $500/mo and an additional $100 "extra" per month for a total outflow of $1100/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off then new outflow is $600/mo. 2. For each debt "account" add an option to "roll over" the monthly payment when the debt is paid off. This amount would then target the next prioritized debt amount. Example: two debts, each of $500/mo for a total outflow of $1000/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off the "extra" $500/mo targets the second debt, for an unchanged outflow of $1000/mo. Combining #1 and #2 example: two debts, each of $500/mo and an "extra" payment of $100/mo for a total outflow of $1100/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off the "paid off" $500/mo targets the second debt (as well as the "extra" $100/mo), for an unchanged outflow of $1100/mo. 3. Stack the icons on the chart. The vertical scaling of the chart is wonky when adding a 10+ items all in the same year - this makes the chart seem squashed and difficult to parse. Again - GREAT work. Definitely sent this to a few friends. If you don't respond I will shoot you an email in a few days. I'm sure you're very busy with the new release. Good luck! [0] https://undebt.it/ https://undebt.it/ [1] https://undebt.it/blog/cash-flow-index-cfi-debt-payoff-method/ https://undebt.it/blog/cash-flow-index-cfi-debt-payoff-metho...
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful response! And sure, feel free to continue the conversation over email if you like. Currently, when you create a debt item or financed asset "X", there should be an "Extra X Payments" financial goal automatically generated, which you can click and drag higher up the list if you care more about allocating extra available yearly income towards that than certain other priorities. Is this feature working for you currently? And how close does it come to addressing / approximating your use cases above?
waffenklang 5y ago
Make a german version (with germany related tax, stock and inflation data) and I "shut up and take my money."
- scubakid 5y ago
  I'll definitely look around and see if I can integrate additional historical datasets. That should be a pretty smooth integration if I can find good sources. For taxes, do you think there are some specific ways the tool could maybe be generalized more so that users can adapt it to their country's rules (or at least approximate them) without having to hard-code all the details of every country's tax system?
sthatipamala 5y ago
This is super useful but the results were screwed up for me because of the default house maintenance estimate. For HCOL areas, 2.5% in yearly maintenance is HUGE. I'm planning on buying a $2M house in the SF Bay Area and didn't realize this tool was allocating $50K a year just for upkeep. Just a point of feedback :)
- gaspard234 5y ago
  In Texas we need $50k a year for the property taxes on that $2M home.
  - sthatipamala 5y ago
    Yes but looking at Zillow that $2M Bay Area home would go for $250K in Houston TX. In fact, I can't even find homes small enough in Texas to compare some of the houses I see for sale in the Bay...
    - gaspard234 5y ago
      Do you live in Houston? Yes you can get a home for that in the far flung suburbs, but nowhere near the core city with the cool restaurants and museums Houston is known for. Inside the loop, if you can find houses for ~$300k those are BAD neighborhoods. You need $400k-500k just to leave active active gang violence areas. To be in good neighborhoods you need high 6 figures. And to your second statement, there are plenty of <1000sqft homes, I'm Austin and in my zipcode they start at $600k. Much better but not cheap. Houston's median home price is $295 Austin's in $550.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Ouch, that's a lot of yearly maintenance. Would you recommend changing the default value or trying to make it dynamic/contextual in some way? Or perhaps just trying to draw the user's attention to it better?
  - sthatipamala 5y ago
jrdngonen 5y ago
This is really neat! We've been hacking on a version of this at Compound http://withcompound.com/ http://withcompound.com/ , built specifically for folks who have illiquid assets like startup equity. Similar tools that help you model out your finances/taxes. May find useful!
ixacto 5y ago
Cookie prompt is super annoying on mobile (safari) and hard to close out of.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Apologies. I'll take another look at that on various mobile resolutions and make it less obtrusive and easier to close.
nunez 5y ago
This is really, really neat. Thank you for making this.
- scubakid 5y ago
  You're very welcome! Throughout the course of the pandemic, I went from knowing only a little about personal finance and financial independence, to researching everything I could get my hands on and eventually building this tool. Working on it as my main side project is one of the things that's kept me going through the pandemic months, and it's awesome to see others now enjoying it too.
jonathankoren 5y ago
One thought and one bug Thought: While I appreciate the stuff around child dependents, it feels very weird and tacked on. Sure sticking an expense called “child” works if you don’t already have kids, but if you do, those costs are inextricably integrated with your existing lifestyle costs. I can’t easily estimate how much my grocery budget will go down if I remove the food my kids eat. Even if I could, I’m certainly didn’t think about removing my kids from the expense calculations at step 1, when dependents get added later, because I didn’t think it would ask me that. A better solution would be something that discounted expenses after some date. Similarly, you could always bump up the expenses at some date if you don’t already have kids. Bug: I think the net worth chart is a bit busted. Mine started at 0, but that wasn’t obviously wasn’t true. While the growth line looked reasonable, I think the chart needs to be pushed up by an offset.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks Jonathan. Appreciate the callout about the chart -- I'll look into that. For dependents, wouldn't "discount expenses after some date" be roughly the same as taking some from your current living expenses and putting it into a child expense which eventually goes away? But yeah, point taken. It's probably not the smoothest experience. Perhaps having additional ways to control how expenses change over time would help? Maybe something along the lines of an interactable plot where you can specify different values at different ages to interpolate between?
deleted 5y ago
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rebelos 5y ago
Spreadsheet model for inputting this data is far far superior. I don't think this flow is conducive to a web UI.
_boffin_ 5y ago
On https://projectifi.io/get_started https://projectifi.io/get_started, I'd personally change the age input into type=number. Overall, great work.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Ah, didn't realize it wasn't. Good catch!
grompotr0n 5y ago
If you don't mind asking, how did you come up with the design? It's really slick! I ask because it's always the part I struggle the most in projects.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! In this case I guess you could say I started out with a design idea in mind first. I wanted a tool that could model my whole life in a single view and re-render changes immediately to encourage quick experimentation. I had an approximate vision in my head for how this would look from the beginning, and once I had a decent MVP together, I spent a lot of time user testing with friends and iterating on various design elements (and the onboarding flow) until most new people found it pretty intuitive.
  - grompotr0n 5y ago
    Thank you!
nell 5y ago
Very cool. Love the tool! Is there an option to invest the savings? It seems like the savings just accumulate as cash?
- scubakid 5y ago
  That's where the financial goals section comes in. Once you add some goals like retirement account contributions or taxable investments in independent brokerage accounts, the simulation will rebalance/invest according to the order of those priorities you define.
vcsilva 5y ago
Hey OP, really nice tool! I've been looking for something like this for quite some time now. As some other people suggested, I think it would be nice to be able to add custom investment types for different countries other than US.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks! Are there some specific investment types you'd like to see? And/or perhaps a more general custom investment type with lots of configurable rules/controls? I'd also be curious what your thoughts are on how most things right now are bucketized into cash, taxable, tax-free growth, and tax-deferred. Would it be better to have users configure specific accounts and simulate everything separately at the account level? (trade-off there might be onboarding complexity)
akshaybhalotia 5y ago
I wish there was a country specific pricing. I do not mind paying for this, but purchasing power (dis)parity makes it difficult.
henk23 5y ago
I think there might be something wrong with the mortgage calculation? I have a 190k loan with 1.8% per year interest, and paying off around 10k a year. I expect to be debt-free in about 30 years. But your (really cool btw.) tool tells me I'm debt-free in 3-4 years? Not sure how it comes to this conclusion. Maybe I did something wrong.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Is it possible there's an auto-generated financial goal set to a high priority in your list which is trying to pay it off ASAP?
  - henk23 5y ago
    That is very possible. Thanks for the quick reply, I'll check. :)
ericb1234 5y ago
Thank you for sharing that, I was able to reason about this tool in a straightforward way.
smsm42 5y ago
Very nice! One thing would be great to add - cash reserve. I.e. there's a goal to maximize loan payoffs, but I don't want to spend 100% of my cash for that. I want to keep cash reserve (usually recommended is 3 or 6 months of living expenses) - and the rest could be spent on debt payoffs.
- scubakid 5y ago
  That's sort of the intent of the emergency fund goal. If you put that as a higher priority, it will maintain that much in cash holdings.
  - smsm42 5y ago
    Ah great I didn't realize that. Excellent!
    - scubakid 5y ago
      Do you think I should add another goal type called "Cash Reserves" which is functionally equivalent? Maybe that would be more intuitive.
      - smsm42 5y ago
        I didn't think to look for it in goals, but it makes as much sense as any other place, so I think once you pointed it out, it works fine for me.
scubakid 5y ago
I had trouble finding a good FI planning and simulation tool that could model things in enough detail to finally ditch my spreadsheets... so I decided to build one: ProjectiFi https://projectifi.io/ https://projectifi.io/ A while back I posted a very early version here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173), and just released a major overhaul with loads of new features and enhancements, many inspired by the initial HN commentary: - Monte Carlo mode with customizable simulations, variables, probability distributions - Backtesting on historical data - Multiple data persistence options for subscribers: cloud synchronization, localStorage only, or manual import/export - Stock/bond allocation curve over time - Improved support for international use cases (currency + locale selector, custom options and contribution limits for financial goals) - Ability to quickly switch between deterministic and probabilistic modes - Many new event types to model a broader range of scenarios - Better support for married filing jointly / couples planning (perhaps still not perfect, but definitely better) - Redesigned landing page, additional UI improvements - And more! If you feel like checking it out, I would love to hear what you think. Most of the functionality is free, but for anyone interested in upgrading to Premium, you can use coupon code "HN-15" for 15% off all plans :)
monkeydust 5y ago
Congrats. Remember trying this out on your previous post and it wasn't that UK friendly, sounds like that should be better minus the Tax features so will try again.
- scubakid 5y ago
  Thanks, I'll be interested to hear what you think of the new version. And if you have further ideas/suggestions to continue improving/generalizing things for international use cases, just let me know!
yboris 5y ago
Looks great! I like that there is a FREE tier - thank you! I recently wanted to run some simple simulations (mortgage & investments) so I wrote a simple JS script that outputs the amortization table and a graph in the terminal of multiple scenarios you want to compare. Very limited in scope, but might be useful to others: https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments

294 points by scubakid 5y ago

Thanks! I understand that is not your purpose now, but do you plan to extending to businesses? I'd be glad to have such decision helping tool :). Also, congrats for your website. I find it very clear to understand what the tool does, why it is useful (your example are simple and to the point), and what is your pricing. :+1:

scubakid 5y ago
Extending the tool to accommodate planning for businesses sounds like an interesting prospect, though I'll be the first to admit I know less about the nuances there than in the personal finance domain. I'll take a note to do some more research in this direction, and if you have any further thoughts/suggestions on what kind of new features would be needed to accommodate use cases like that, I'd be all ears!

colinplamondon 5y ago

This is so awesome - thank you for building this! Just subscribed.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks Colin! Really appreciate the subscription :)

gjulianm 5y ago

I gave a quick try and just from the first look this looks amazing. It's precisely what I'm missing in my spreadsheets for my personal finance: probabilistic planning. I'd consider paying the premium tier but I miss a few things: - Support for tax brackets in other countries (maybe let users introduce them manually) - Support for "disasters" in the probabilistic case. I'd be interested in knowing how robust is my strategy to being fired, or having a reduced salary. For example, letting me input a "probability of losing employment" per year and possible ranges for time being unemployed would be interesting. - Also, support for variable-rate mortgages would be interesting. Here in Spain there are quite a lot of offers on mortgages at X% + euribor, and it'd be interesting to put together the behaviour of the mortgage index and the investments. Related with the previous points, simulation of economic crisis could be interesting: investments go down, increased probability of losing my job, increased mortgage payments maybe... Do I survive those crisis? What's my margin? All in all, pretty interesting, congratulations on the job.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. It's great to see that you tested out the probabilistic planning mode enough to identify ideas like this that would further enhance it. In fact, some of these things like being able to inject "simulated recessions" are already in my feature backlog, kind of waiting to see how much demand there might be. I'm definitely looking to keep evolving the tool over time, and I'll put some thought into how to accommodate custom tax brackets (seems pretty doable), as well as the other probabilistic features you mention.
gota 5y ago
Localization could be important too, for broader adoption - not just for currency display but (most importantly) the kinds of investments available and tax rates vary a lot. A minor thing is that the 'default' values for % return and inflation are also different in different places
- scubakid 5y ago
  Good point. In addition to customizable income tax brackets, another idea I've been mulling over is a custom investment type with more controls to model a wider variety of investment vehicles. Perhaps I could add more templates as well, and show/hide some based on the localization settings.
  - jamie_ca 5y ago
    Yes custom investment types! Up in Canada I have access to a registered retirement fund (tax-deferred, like a 401k but not as closely tied to employer) and a tax-free savings account (for untaxed growth), and I couldn’t figure out how to model monthly contributions to both out of a single salary stream. Being able to fund both (and then in retirement, set a max annual withdrawal from the tax-deferred account before withdrawing from the tax-free) is to me an important bit of modelling that I couldn’t figure out how to get sorted in 15-20 minutes.
dr_orpheus 5y ago
Along the vein of supporting "disasters" one of the most interesting useful features when seeing a financial planner for our family was looking at possible effects of death and disability. I haven't gotten very far in to it so I haven't been able to explore the life events very much. But looking at the long term impact of "what if I died/what if I had life insurance (and what term)" is very helpful to explore.

testing_1_2_3_4 5y ago

I'm super interested in this, but, every time I try this you end up losing me in the funnel. It takes too long to set everything up and I eventually lose interest and exit.

scubakid 5y ago
Do you think it would help if I make a "sandbox mode" where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and jump straight into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates / personas? That's something I've been debating about building for a while but haven't had a chance yet.
- newman314 5y ago
  IMO that would help with some common scenarios 1. Beginning of career 2. Mid career (20 years in) 3. Close to retirement
- johntash 5y ago
  I'm not sure if it would help, but maybe a way to import financial data from something like personalcapital or mint? It'd save on some of the starting questions, but I don't know if that's even possible.
- whydoineedthis 5y ago
  you ask a lot of questions in the funnel that if I knew the answer to, I would likely have an accounting degree and certainly not need this software.
  - scubakid 5y ago
    username checks out :D It's true though, making a detailed plan requires detailed inputs. Are there any specific areas in the funnel that you would recommend cutting out or altering?
    - whydoineedthis 5y ago

Mavvie 5y ago

Wow, amazing how well you integrated the feedback from the last time this was posted, especially architecture level stuff like storing everything client-side by default. The stock/bond allocation curve is really well done too. Awesome stuff, I just signed up for premium. I assume for people that are not single you're meant to add their expected income and expenses as well? That could maybe more clear

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks so much! And yeah I took a lot of that feedback to heart, and have been working hard to make improvements in many aspects and communicate more clearly about things like data storage and where calculations happen (i.e. client side). For couples, things like age values are from the perspective of the person creating the plan, and yeah the idea is to just add in their income, expenses, goals, etc. Switching status to Married in the tax section should auto-adjust contribution limits for US investment types, but custom limits can be set on most things as well. Couples planning is still not perfect overall, but is at least better than how it was before. And if you have more ideas on how it could be improved on from here, just let me know!
- smaug7 5y ago
  I am planning on getting married later next year - would we be able to add that in for the future?
  - scubakid 5y ago
    If you create a Wedding expense event, there's a checkbox which should update your status to Married when that event occurs. Does that help?
    - smaug7 5y ago
      Yup let me try that out!

chewymouse 5y ago

Is there consideration for automatically estimating taxes per year based on input assets/income? Great GUI.

scubakid 5y ago
The premium version has an automatic tax estimation feature which shows a breakdown of estimates for each year in the sim, but it is US-specific at the moment.

BeetleB 5y ago

Does it store any of the user's financial data that they input?

scubakid 5y ago
The way it currently works is: when a new user onboards and creates a plan, enters some data, and experiments with the app, plan data and results are kept on the client side and not transmitted. Calculations are performed in the browser, and data disappears on refresh. If the user upgrades to Premium, they are then presented with a choice of several data persistence options, including Cloud Storage, LocalStorage Only, and Manual Import/Export. Plan data is only stored server-side if the user enables that option.

dalyons 5y ago

I actually have a draft open in gmail that i was meaning to send to you, so ill post it here instead :) I saw your initial release of this many months ago, tried it out, was like, ok thats kinda cool, put it down. But then recently i needed to do some serious life financial planning, remembered your tool, searched for the HN post and gave it a real go.... and WOW. Im so impressed. It does exactly what i need; give me a semi-realistic long term plan of finances, retirement, how much house i can afford, effect of jobs, stocks, etc. Being able to play around with scenarios like "what if one of us didnt work for a few years?" really easily. I probably could do all this stuff on a spreadsheet, but the fiddly details of things like inflation, raises, tax, etc are incredibly tedious to model. theres a lot of near term budgeting type apps etc out there, but there was no other product i found that works so well for long term macro stuff. So its well worth the premium subscription fee to me, on a time saved basis alone. The UI/X is mostly great(ill email you some minor suggestions :) ), and your development velocity is really impressive. Perhaps the total market for a tool like this is niche, but hopefully it turns into a profitable enough endeavor for you so you can keep working on it forever :)

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! It started out as something I knew I wanted for my own planning purposes, as well as friends and family, and it's awesome to hear that it's a tool you too can imagine coming back to when you consider new life plans and decisions. I aim to keep evolving it over time, and I'll be happy to take a look at those UI/UX suggestions you have.
- dalyons 5y ago
  heres a couple: - it was really un-intuitive to me to edit my starting investments/position. The little cal icon top of the left sidebar was not where i was looking for that. Suggestion: add starting conditions it as a collapsed column furthest to the left in the stacks under the main graphs. thats where i expected it to be, along side the other personal detail stacks - adding a house mortgage and having it default to trying to pay it off as fast as possible seems wrong, few people would do that, makes more sense at low interest rates to do the regular 30yr - its easy to accidentally do something that doesnt make sense that has big consequences... eg i was playing around quite awhile before i realized i had my living expenses marked as $X,000 per year instead of per month. I wonder if you could come up with a nice way to warn people when things are significantly outside "normal". eg "hey looks like your living expenses of $200/mo are unrealistic, did you mean this? y/n" dismissable, but might help people into correcting the bigger mistakes

sct202 5y ago

I remember your site from the earlier thread, and the experience is so much smoother now. I'm definitely going to start sharing it out since it seems like a very usable tool. I like how you broke out the different types of investments because a lot of other tools tend to have awkward configurations. The only other feedback I have is for the pricing screens to upgrade if you could list the payment options paypal, etc to manage subscriptions. I've been burned a couple times when smaller creators self manage subscriptions, and I had to email and wait for them to manually adjust the subscription.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! Really glad to hear you enjoy the improvements. I spent a lot of time thinking about the data modeling and visualization aspects, so I'm happy you find the configuration here less awkward.

ne9xt 5y ago

May I also add that I really appreciate your plain english privacy summary. The first thing that I think about when using a tool like this how my data can be used without my permission for various nefarious purposes. I do appreciate your effort to leave things client side and to save/load data from the client as well.

scubakid 5y ago
Sure thing! From the beginning I set out to be as respectful as possible of people's data, but I gathered from the last HN post that I needed to improve some of the communication on that. Hopefully the summary helps, as well as some of the new data storage options for subscribers.

blastro 5y ago

Very impressive!

smaug7 5y ago

This is super cool. I just got a lifetime membership. Please keep this going!

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! Really appreciate the support :)

esseti 5y ago

would be good to have a plan comparison (e.g. rent vs buying house). PS: how should I setup a morgage in the system

scubakid 5y ago
You should be able to set up one plan where you rent, then clone that plan and make some changes to add a house, and flip back and forth between the two plans to see the differences. Or, another way to do it is to make a single plan for renting but then add a house asset to it configured to cancel rent expenses when in effect, which you can toggle on and off by clicking the icon. When you add a house to a plan, it should ask you whether you'll be paying in full or financing it. If the latter, then it should provide options for interest rate, down payment, monthly payment, and such.
esseti 5y ago
ok, if you add a house it adds the morgage. However, it seems that i get bankrupted very quickly if i do so. And I should live withouth cash. not sure

kolanos 5y ago

There are a lot of buttons without labels, please consider adding alt/title/aria attributes at the minimum. The simulation page is a sea of unlabeled buttons.

billyruffian 5y ago
Just clicked to try -- found the display currency I wanted, British Pound Sterling between Egyptian Birr and Georgian Lari. Was expecting it to be amongst the other 'B's.

pilom 5y ago

This is really pretty but I personally appreciate the onboarding speed of cfiresim.com much more. Way easier to save multiple models and I can actually understand what the graph is telling me a little easier. I'll be honest, if I'd never seen one of these graphs before I doubt I'd understand the mobile version of yours. No idea what the different colors mean or what all the icons refer to.

scubakid 5y ago
I'd be interested to hear what you think of the experience on desktop -- it's definitely better there than on mobile. But point taken; I'd like to keep making improvements for mobile as well.

michaelml 5y ago

This is something that I would be interested in, but you are asking for too much without giving anything back. You are essentially asking me to put my entire budget as well as future plans into your site before giving me anything interesting. I am estimating it would take > 15 minutes to fill out everything you want, and there is no way I am making that investment into a random website without some token of return. Please consider giving general projections after only a few questions and then allowing the user to refine it by adding more details if they are interested.

scubakid 5y ago
One idea that might help with onboarding for users who want to jump right in is a sandbox mode where you can skip onboarding and plan creation and go directly into a scenario pre-configured to model one of several selectable templates or personas. How would you feel about that?
- mwerd 5y ago
  I logged in to post this exact suggestion. A couple of templates like [married home owners] and [single renter] that would jumpstart the process would be nice.
jonathankoren 5y ago
Have you ever worked with a financial planner before? I ask, because you’re complaining about the process that every financial planner uses. They’re all very heavy weight, especially when it comes to expenses and tax rates.

ahmadss 5y ago

This is fantastic, and the pricing for "lifetime" is nearly a no brainer. Here are some additional ideas for ways to generate revenue: * $100-$200 one time guided setup consulting, where someone spends 30-minutes with me on zoom to get data setup the right way, talk through data analysis process, talk through simulation and projections, etc. * Marketplace to connect me with financial advisors who know your software, align with your approach to financial planning, and can help me with next level optimization. Nice work!

Topgamer7 5y ago
I feel like that might be a hard sell among the FIRE crowd. FIRE is almost synonymous with ultra-frugal.
rezistik 5y ago
I completely agree, I'd easily pay $200 for help with this

neogodless 5y ago

Confused by the assets. It's starting with my current home's value, and decreasing it over time, maybe at the rate that it decreases the debt associated with the asset? But that payment should only be applied to the debt, not the value of the asset.

scubakid 5y ago
If you're puzzled by asset value appearing to decrease over time, it's possible this is because values are shown in Today's Dollars, i.e. values are adjusted to account for inflation. If you set the asset to appreciate in value at a higher rate than inflation, you should see the value go up over time.
- neogodless 5y ago
  Thanks - had to dig in a bit to find that, and it's a strange default, but it does have the options you need.
  - scubakid 5y ago
    Yeah I go back and forth on what the default should be with regard to adjusting values for inflation. I have seen other planners do it this way, and perhaps one of the reasons why is so that you don't look at a high projected portfolio value 40 or 60 years down the road and think you're doing amazing, when in reality those values have much less purchasing power than they would today.
    - dr_orpheus 5y ago
      I agree with the choice of presenting in today's dollars by default is more helpful when actually planning. In the deterministic planning it has the note at the top for "All Values in Today's Currency" but I don't see that in the Advanced Simulation and I think it would be helpful to have that reminder on all of the projection graphs so you don't forget what money you are looking at.
- ac29 5y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

Very well done. Clear UI. Simple to use and it delivers a good overview. The one thing I would suggest ( I assume this would be a part where you attempt to monetize it ) is a referral to financial advisors, who can use the information to assist.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! Interesting thought, though I have a natural hesitance towards recommending advisors (who might steer towards active management) or investment products, since my initial vision was to try to make the tool as unbiased and objective as possible, and more in keeping with some of the principles from the Bogleheads community. You may have a point though; I would be interested to hear where others stand on this.
- trailrunner46 5y ago
  There is a lot of skepticism around financial advisors and rightful so given the track record of many (picking insanely expensive funds, charging high fees themselves, etc.) However, I do think there is a place for advisors not to pick investments but rather actually plan for life events (including tax stuff), which is right up the alley of this app). Having someone who could take all of your inputs, ask the right followup questions and appropriately model the likely range of outcomes on this kind of app could be quite attractive.
  - scubakid 5y ago
    True, planning for life and tax stuff does seem like a more distinctly helpful service. I have no connections in the financial advisory space, but in general I'd be open to discussing this kind of idea further.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      I do due to the nature of my work, but I do not feel as comfortable recommending anyone specific. Instead, I would suggest starting by focusing on fiduciary financial advisors ( https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/what-is-a-fiduciary-financial-advisor-a-guide-to-the-fiduciary-duty https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/wh... ), who have a legal duty to not recommend things that do not benefit their client. That alone may help with removing some of the unease of the referral.

trailrunner46 5y ago

This is very slick and well executed. I especially appreciate the thought that went into data transfer (making it opt in, otherwise stays client side). I have a CFA and have been in finance for a while and have maintained a spreadsheet but honestly this does it better so I will use and support you. I wish more people would take a long view with their financial wellness, maybe I can convince a few friends to see the impact of their debt binges :) On the UI side there are a few odd things like trying to paste a number that has decimal points makes it so nothing gets pasted in, the colors on some of the graphs are hard to read (especially for people with color vision deficiencies), etc. As I use it I will try to give more specific feedback. Can't wait to dig in further.

scubakid 5y ago
Much appreciated! And yeah before building this, I was surprised there weren't already more tools that can show you a nuanced view of what the future may hold and the ways various decisions affect that picture... and the complexity of the spreadsheet I had been playing around with eventually became untenable haha. Thanks for the UI feedback so far, and since you've been in finance for a while I'll be very curious to hear more of your thoughts as you dig further into the app.

knz42 5y ago

Is there a way to simulate capital tax? Percentage of taxable investments/cash?

mwerd 5y ago

It would be easier for me if I could start with a template. Having a few buttons for representative simulations like "married high income" and "single FIRE" that you could then adjust to your scenario instead of starting from scratch would be nice.

scubakid 5y ago
Agreed. I've been thinking about making a "sandbox" mode like this where you can jump right in based on a template. Since there have been multiple others asking for something like this, I'll boost the priority.

mrcolin000 5y ago

Just created a HN account to say how great this looks. Ive signed up and wont be surprised if I grab the paid tier. This is exactly the kind of tool I can get a lot out of! nice work.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out any time.

diordiderot 5y ago

Raise your prices

scubakid 5y ago
What do you think would be reasonable?
- diordiderot 5y ago
  Changed my mind. 5 seems fair. But... I'd remove unlimited plans from free tier, rename free tier to trial, and remove lifetime tier all together. That's only 15 months! Milk it

qqqwerty 5y ago

For the married scenario, would you suggest just combining income, cash, investments, etc. under one person? Also, is there a way to model purchasing a house in the future? Probably the biggest decision I am struggling with right now.

qqqwerty 5y ago
Ahh, never mind. I see you can add multiple incomes. And the "Other Assests" form has a "Purchase Year" input. Thanks, very cool tool.

jazzkingrt 5y ago

Superb tool! In 15 mins, I was able to get rough answers to questions like: * When am I financially independent if I keep living the way I do now? * What if I lowered my expenses right now seeking earlier FI? * When could I hypothetically stop working by lowering my expenses at the point of retirement? * How much would be left in my estate? I bought the lifetime subscription, which seems like quite a good deal!

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! Appreciate the subscription, and I'm stoked you're enjoying the app. I imagine there are others in the FI community that might also get a lot out of it, but I'm not quite sure what the best way is to spread the word. Most subreddits don't allow self-promotion, and same with the Bogleheads forums and wiki. If you or others have any ideas, definitely let me know. Pretty much all my time has gone into trying to make the actual tool, so I haven't done much at all in terms of marketing.

ctmcbr 5y ago

This is really good & helpful! Wish I had this thing years ago when I was doing pro-bono financial planning for family members. Would have been much easier than building spreadsheets for them... Couple of points of feedback: 1. The UI flow for adding financial goals (like putting excess earnings into taxable investments, rain day funds, etc.) didn't make it immediately clear what that section was for. Some clearer explanations in that section might improve your funnel. 2. The way that debt is displayed by default on the stacked chart sort of makes it look like an asset, which is confusing. My reaction was just not to trust the chart for the whole duration of having a mortgage. Changing the house asset value in the stacked chart to home equity instead could maybe be a fix? 3. I really liked the little red exclamation indicator when a plan involved you running out of money b/c you retired too early. It felt very well calibrated to clearly indicate the inadvisability of that particular plan w/o being overwrought. You might want to add less alarming yellow indicators to pick up not great, but not terrible situations like you retired too early & all your assets are tied up in retirement accounts and illiquid assists (e.g., home equity), so now you are eating early withdrawal penalties unnecessarily. Great work!

scubakid 5y ago
Really good points! For #1, I agree that section can be a bit difficult for new users to grasp. It's laid out the way it is so that later you can simply click and drag to re-prioritize goals and see the effects, but I'll think about how to communicate the purpose of that section better from the beginning. For #2, yeah the concept of showing debt on top of everything else may be a bit... unconventional haha. That's where switching the plot to the net worth one can help somewhat if you want the chart to clearly show total net worth. In the stacked view, changing house value to equity is an interesting thought, though I think that still leaves it an open question how the chart should account for the other kinds of debt one might have. For #3, yes definitely. Identifying warning scenarios and clearly marking those is a good feature idea.

sjg007 5y ago

It seems great but also too sophisticated.. Is there a simple mode or a persona I can clone and update? Wife, 2 kids, etc...

scubakid 5y ago
Not yet, but based on all the commentary here I'll definitely be adding a sandbox mode where you can jump into a pre-configured scenario based on templates like that.

antonpuz 5y ago

Tried it out and it's awesome! I've been working with spreadsheets so far and this takes it to a different level!

newman314 5y ago

FWIW, Morgan offers a similar type of service (free) as part of their yearly review with me. I'd be interested in seeing how close/different the projections are.

scubakid 5y ago
If you ever do a comparison, let me know! That would be cool to see.

williamdclt 5y ago

This is great, as somebody that's inexperience and uninterested in financial planning (but aware I can't ignore it), I really appreciate the simplicity and clear language. I misread what you were saying in other comments about a sandbox and thought "nah, what this really needs is prefilled scenarios". Looks like you have the right idea: I'd absolutely love that, I have no idea what to fill in most of these boxes and would like some examples! That could orient your tool towards education rather than planning though

scubakid 5y ago
Wow, if I had known just how popular a feature this would be I would have done it already! It's going to the top of the list now. And yeah I think the planning process does have an educational element to it, and the way you can quickly experiment with different ideas can help to discover and quantify trade-offs. I'm sure the prefilled template/scenario options would enhance that educational aspect further.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

Looks like a direct alternative to Personal Capital, which I appreciate. Beyond a certain net worth, they continually reach out to you, which is annoying. Love the net worth back testing screenshot on the front page, but wonder how reasonable it is. Index funds weren’t available to the general public before the 70s IIRC, and investing fees were very different then.

scubakid 5y ago
That's a good point regarding historical data, index fund availability, and investing fees. I suppose the current Monte Carlo mode is closer to saying "what might happen in the future assuming index funds remain accessible and given similar overall returns, dividends, inflation, etc., to what was seen historically (but perhaps without some of the other context like you mention)". When you think about what you would want from a probabilistic planning tool, which are the insights you care most about, and are there changes you would recommend to the current methodology? Or perhaps additional variables?
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  No, I’m sure the historical-theoretical view is good enough. Unfortunately it will always suffer from that lack of context wherever it’s implemented, and so I’m not sure you can do anything besides point out to people what the conditions were at that time. That would be my recommendation. Too much financial software out there doesn’t provide historical context and simply parrots useless quips like “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” (which in finance, it actually is a decent indicator!). Because whole periods of financial history occurred in blocks of time, I’d like to see some financial software that actually acknowledges that. I’m less interested in novice implementations which simply provide a graph over time of the Dow/S&P 500 performance benchmark, when realistically people didn’t use the S&P until recent history, and VTSAX’s first generation, precursor to the Vanguard 500 Fund, the First Index Investment Trust wasn’t available to the public until after ‘75. Today, it’s the largest mutual fund in the world, according to Investopedia.
  - 5y ago

thih9 5y ago

The cookies popup seems opt out rather than opt in, unless I missed something. I felt annoyed when I visited all the tabs and withdrew permissions that I never gave.

scubakid 5y ago
Ah, I see what you mean. The way it works now, if you ignore the banner, things are disabled by default (e.g. Google Analytics). If you click settings from the banner, the switches default to on at that point (and you can toggle them off), but GA doesn't activate unless you confirm that dialog with them on. Does that make sense? Or do you feel it should be implemented differently? I'm definitely open to changing it.
- mawise 5y ago
  I'd love to see more sites skip out of GA entirely. If you use server logs for analytics you get better fidelity[1]. You can probably eliminate the cookie consent banner if you're only storing login or session-continuity (required for functionality) cookies. [1]: Based on this analysis: https://brandur.org/minimal-analytics https://brandur.org/minimal-analytics
- thih9 5y ago
  Thanks the reply and for the details. > If you click settings from the banner, the switches default to on at that point This is annoying; also, not allowed under GDPR. Cookie and privacy consent should be opt in instead of opt out. Clicking “settings” should not be treated as opting in.
  - scubakid 5y ago
    Thanks for the heads-up, I'll take a note to change that behavior.

fifthofhisname 5y ago

*Incredible* product. I signed up for the monthly membership and, if all goes well, I will likely stick around or buy the lifetime membership. I currently use Undebt It[0] to manage my debts. It supports all kinds of debt payment plans like snowball, avalanche, cash flow index[1], etc. One feature I love is the "extra debt payment" that basically throws an addition X dollars at the highest interest debt (or whatever debt is prioritized by the selected repayment plan). When that debt is paid off, the amount rolls over to the next debt on the list. This helps a person to pay off debts faster and reduce total interest paid across the lifetime of the debt(s). For a family with a few credit cards, a car payment or two, and a mortgage this can save them tens of thousands of dollars. Three suggestions: 1. Create an "extra debt payment" feature that goes towards my prioritized debt(s). This amount is in excess of the total minimum payment amounts. It could be towards the highest interest rate, lowest balance, split across all accounts, etc. When a debt is zeroed out the payment automatically adjusts to target the remaining debt(s). Example: two debts, each of $500/mo and an additional $100 "extra" per month for a total outflow of $1100/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off then new outflow is $600/mo. 2. For each debt "account" add an option to "roll over" the monthly payment when the debt is paid off. This amount would then target the next prioritized debt amount. Example: two debts, each of $500/mo for a total outflow of $1000/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off the "extra" $500/mo targets the second debt, for an unchanged outflow of $1000/mo. Combining #1 and #2 example: two debts, each of $500/mo and an "extra" payment of $100/mo for a total outflow of $1100/mo. When the first $500/mo is paid off the "paid off" $500/mo targets the second debt (as well as the "extra" $100/mo), for an unchanged outflow of $1100/mo. 3. Stack the icons on the chart. The vertical scaling of the chart is wonky when adding a 10+ items all in the same year - this makes the chart seem squashed and difficult to parse. Again - GREAT work. Definitely sent this to a few friends. If you don't respond I will shoot you an email in a few days. I'm sure you're very busy with the new release. Good luck! [0] https://undebt.it/ https://undebt.it/ [1] https://undebt.it/blog/cash-flow-index-cfi-debt-payoff-method/ https://undebt.it/blog/cash-flow-index-cfi-debt-payoff-metho...

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response! And sure, feel free to continue the conversation over email if you like. Currently, when you create a debt item or financed asset "X", there should be an "Extra X Payments" financial goal automatically generated, which you can click and drag higher up the list if you care more about allocating extra available yearly income towards that than certain other priorities. Is this feature working for you currently? And how close does it come to addressing / approximating your use cases above?

waffenklang 5y ago

Make a german version (with germany related tax, stock and inflation data) and I "shut up and take my money."

scubakid 5y ago
I'll definitely look around and see if I can integrate additional historical datasets. That should be a pretty smooth integration if I can find good sources. For taxes, do you think there are some specific ways the tool could maybe be generalized more so that users can adapt it to their country's rules (or at least approximate them) without having to hard-code all the details of every country's tax system?

sthatipamala 5y ago

This is super useful but the results were screwed up for me because of the default house maintenance estimate. For HCOL areas, 2.5% in yearly maintenance is HUGE. I'm planning on buying a $2M house in the SF Bay Area and didn't realize this tool was allocating $50K a year just for upkeep. Just a point of feedback :)

gaspard234 5y ago
In Texas we need $50k a year for the property taxes on that $2M home.
- sthatipamala 5y ago
  Yes but looking at Zillow that $2M Bay Area home would go for $250K in Houston TX. In fact, I can't even find homes small enough in Texas to compare some of the houses I see for sale in the Bay...
  - gaspard234 5y ago
    Do you live in Houston? Yes you can get a home for that in the far flung suburbs, but nowhere near the core city with the cool restaurants and museums Houston is known for. Inside the loop, if you can find houses for ~$300k those are BAD neighborhoods. You need $400k-500k just to leave active active gang violence areas. To be in good neighborhoods you need high 6 figures. And to your second statement, there are plenty of <1000sqft homes, I'm Austin and in my zipcode they start at $600k. Much better but not cheap. Houston's median home price is $295 Austin's in $550.
scubakid 5y ago
Ouch, that's a lot of yearly maintenance. Would you recommend changing the default value or trying to make it dynamic/contextual in some way? Or perhaps just trying to draw the user's attention to it better?
- sthatipamala 5y ago

jrdngonen 5y ago

This is really neat! We've been hacking on a version of this at Compound http://withcompound.com/ http://withcompound.com/ , built specifically for folks who have illiquid assets like startup equity. Similar tools that help you model out your finances/taxes. May find useful!

ixacto 5y ago

Cookie prompt is super annoying on mobile (safari) and hard to close out of.

scubakid 5y ago
Apologies. I'll take another look at that on various mobile resolutions and make it less obtrusive and easier to close.

nunez 5y ago

This is really, really neat. Thank you for making this.

scubakid 5y ago
You're very welcome! Throughout the course of the pandemic, I went from knowing only a little about personal finance and financial independence, to researching everything I could get my hands on and eventually building this tool. Working on it as my main side project is one of the things that's kept me going through the pandemic months, and it's awesome to see others now enjoying it too.

jonathankoren 5y ago

One thought and one bug Thought: While I appreciate the stuff around child dependents, it feels very weird and tacked on. Sure sticking an expense called “child” works if you don’t already have kids, but if you do, those costs are inextricably integrated with your existing lifestyle costs. I can’t easily estimate how much my grocery budget will go down if I remove the food my kids eat. Even if I could, I’m certainly didn’t think about removing my kids from the expense calculations at step 1, when dependents get added later, because I didn’t think it would ask me that. A better solution would be something that discounted expenses after some date. Similarly, you could always bump up the expenses at some date if you don’t already have kids. Bug: I think the net worth chart is a bit busted. Mine started at 0, but that wasn’t obviously wasn’t true. While the growth line looked reasonable, I think the chart needs to be pushed up by an offset.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks Jonathan. Appreciate the callout about the chart -- I'll look into that. For dependents, wouldn't "discount expenses after some date" be roughly the same as taking some from your current living expenses and putting it into a child expense which eventually goes away? But yeah, point taken. It's probably not the smoothest experience. Perhaps having additional ways to control how expenses change over time would help? Maybe something along the lines of an interactable plot where you can specify different values at different ages to interpolate between?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rebelos 5y ago

Spreadsheet model for inputting this data is far far superior. I don't think this flow is conducive to a web UI.

_boffin_ 5y ago

On https://projectifi.io/get_started https://projectifi.io/get_started, I'd personally change the age input into type=number. Overall, great work.

scubakid 5y ago
Ah, didn't realize it wasn't. Good catch!

grompotr0n 5y ago

If you don't mind asking, how did you come up with the design? It's really slick! I ask because it's always the part I struggle the most in projects.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! In this case I guess you could say I started out with a design idea in mind first. I wanted a tool that could model my whole life in a single view and re-render changes immediately to encourage quick experimentation. I had an approximate vision in my head for how this would look from the beginning, and once I had a decent MVP together, I spent a lot of time user testing with friends and iterating on various design elements (and the onboarding flow) until most new people found it pretty intuitive.
- grompotr0n 5y ago
  Thank you!

nell 5y ago

Very cool. Love the tool! Is there an option to invest the savings? It seems like the savings just accumulate as cash?

scubakid 5y ago
That's where the financial goals section comes in. Once you add some goals like retirement account contributions or taxable investments in independent brokerage accounts, the simulation will rebalance/invest according to the order of those priorities you define.

vcsilva 5y ago

Hey OP, really nice tool! I've been looking for something like this for quite some time now. As some other people suggested, I think it would be nice to be able to add custom investment types for different countries other than US.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks! Are there some specific investment types you'd like to see? And/or perhaps a more general custom investment type with lots of configurable rules/controls? I'd also be curious what your thoughts are on how most things right now are bucketized into cash, taxable, tax-free growth, and tax-deferred. Would it be better to have users configure specific accounts and simulate everything separately at the account level? (trade-off there might be onboarding complexity)

akshaybhalotia 5y ago

I wish there was a country specific pricing. I do not mind paying for this, but purchasing power (dis)parity makes it difficult.

henk23 5y ago

I think there might be something wrong with the mortgage calculation? I have a 190k loan with 1.8% per year interest, and paying off around 10k a year. I expect to be debt-free in about 30 years. But your (really cool btw.) tool tells me I'm debt-free in 3-4 years? Not sure how it comes to this conclusion. Maybe I did something wrong.

scubakid 5y ago
Is it possible there's an auto-generated financial goal set to a high priority in your list which is trying to pay it off ASAP?
- henk23 5y ago
  That is very possible. Thanks for the quick reply, I'll check. :)

ericb1234 5y ago

Thank you for sharing that, I was able to reason about this tool in a straightforward way.

smsm42 5y ago

Very nice! One thing would be great to add - cash reserve. I.e. there's a goal to maximize loan payoffs, but I don't want to spend 100% of my cash for that. I want to keep cash reserve (usually recommended is 3 or 6 months of living expenses) - and the rest could be spent on debt payoffs.

scubakid 5y ago
That's sort of the intent of the emergency fund goal. If you put that as a higher priority, it will maintain that much in cash holdings.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Ah great I didn't realize that. Excellent!
  - scubakid 5y ago
    Do you think I should add another goal type called "Cash Reserves" which is functionally equivalent? Maybe that would be more intuitive.
    - smsm42 5y ago
      I didn't think to look for it in goals, but it makes as much sense as any other place, so I think once you pointed it out, it works fine for me.

scubakid 5y ago

I had trouble finding a good FI planning and simulation tool that could model things in enough detail to finally ditch my spreadsheets... so I decided to build one: ProjectiFi https://projectifi.io/ https://projectifi.io/ A while back I posted a very early version here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173), and just released a major overhaul with loads of new features and enhancements, many inspired by the initial HN commentary: - Monte Carlo mode with customizable simulations, variables, probability distributions - Backtesting on historical data - Multiple data persistence options for subscribers: cloud synchronization, localStorage only, or manual import/export - Stock/bond allocation curve over time - Improved support for international use cases (currency + locale selector, custom options and contribution limits for financial goals) - Ability to quickly switch between deterministic and probabilistic modes - Many new event types to model a broader range of scenarios - Better support for married filing jointly / couples planning (perhaps still not perfect, but definitely better) - Redesigned landing page, additional UI improvements - And more! If you feel like checking it out, I would love to hear what you think. Most of the functionality is free, but for anyone interested in upgrading to Premium, you can use coupon code "HN-15" for 15% off all plans :)

monkeydust 5y ago

Congrats. Remember trying this out on your previous post and it wasn't that UK friendly, sounds like that should be better minus the Tax features so will try again.

scubakid 5y ago
Thanks, I'll be interested to hear what you think of the new version. And if you have further ideas/suggestions to continue improving/generalizing things for international use cases, just let me know!

yboris 5y ago

Looks great! I like that there is a FREE tier - thank you! I recently wanted to run some simple simulations (mortgage & investments) so I wrote a simple JS script that outputs the amortization table and a graph in the terminal of multiple scenarios you want to compare. Very limited in scope, but might be useful to others: https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments https://github.com/whyboris/mortgage-and-investments