One question: I was exploring the public spaces and I'm wondering are these your real finances, or is this just a mocked-up example? https://finfam.app/mahmoud/space
And if they are your real finances, are you manually entering in things like your credit card balances, or do you have integrations that automatically track that? If there aren't integrations already, is that on the road map?
Haha, re: finances, everyone wants to know this! Give or take, yeah! I just felt obligated to go all in with the dogfooding. It's probably TMI for most folks, but other users don't have to do the same: https://finfam.app/faq#faq-data_visibility
FinFam is private by default, but publishable by design. It's also totally valid to build/publish hypothetical/prototypical scenarios for the sake of demonstration.
Re: manual entry, the income and expenses were, yeah. The balances from the accounts are all ingested via our "Magic Sync" which is really just parsing from screenshots. Works with Monarch Money, works with spreadsheets. And you don't have to deal with the nightmare of "open banking" (I helped build the first version of Stripe's Financial Connections product and I'd like to delay using it as long as possible...)
Oddly my first impression was “wow this is sort of niche”, but then immediately realized how odd that sentiment is.
There are so many poor quality self help books out there on finance, that really amount to nothing more than a blog post. And whenever I’m trying to learn more or think about what options exist it feels like quite a slog. I’m definitely tired of pretty much all of the accessible financial advice amounting to using the standard 3 fund portfolio: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio
While it’s a fine starting point, it definitely bothered me how inaccessible financial advice is, even with an advisor it gets pretty hand wavey
Haha, spent many hours on the Bogleheads wiki, and I do love it. But yeah, I'd love it even more if it had fields I could punch values into. If only there was some sort of site for that...
I wonder what that calculator would look like? Maybe something that lets you visualize trends of return for different fund blends?
That doesn’t seem particularly useful however, maybe something to help contrast the other common investment profiles? I just wouldn’t know which ones those are
I have a whole rant about this saved for a future blog post. The short version is that people need actionable belief. Charts are useful to demonstrate a concept, but at the end of the day, we want answers. I'm sure there's _someone_ you trust. Whether it's your dad or a friend or a podcast, I think the main gap is giving the user specific action. For example, https://finfam.app/heyfinfam/views/rent-vs-buy boils it down to Rent/Neutral/Buy. Most of the other featured views do the same, to eliminate the exact ambiguity you're describing.
I really like it; the community curations are neat.
So many ideas to explore and I wonder if it can model pre-existing events like if I wanted to explore: Should I DCA ? (I can look historically)
Thanks! Yeah, far-flung plans for integrations. Currently I'm getting way more mileage out of letting other products do the integrations for me. I.e., I use Monarch Money and just upload the screenshots to FinFam which parses out the balances.
I helped build the first version of Stripe's Financial Connections product and while the alumni credit is tempting, I'd like to delay using it as long as possible... Too many error conditions and it's not like planning calls for that level of precision anyways.
Relatable. While I doubt I'd have been able to do all the frontend myself without an agent, it's still pretty early for LLMs + money.
It depends on where you're starting a thread, but assuming you're starting the thread in a view, then we prime the chat with:
- The user's configured financial literacy, education level, etc.
- The reasoning and actual results of the calculator as you see them
- Summary metrics from the space that the view is saved in
The last point is pretty critical. The idea is that you build your own context from the bottom up, exposing as much or as little as you want for the scenario you want to explore. Add the relevant assets/liabilities/income/expenses, and we have a little cash-basis accounting simulator that projects all that into a "scope" usable by the Views, as well as the chatbot ("Finn" http://finfam.app/finn).
Handing these metrics to the chat unlocks a lot of the magic of the chatbot as a "neutral explainer". Any creator can upload a spreadsheet, but as we've currently exposed it, Finn is meant to be moderate and just there to close any explanatory gaps that the creator may have left out, or not considered. If you're looking at a view about buying a second house, Finn's supposed to give you a gut check if you have particularly low cash reserves.
A lot of a financial advisor's time and role is filling gaps in your financial literacy, and a 24/7 chatbot is honestly just better at explaining the difference between a credit and debit card.
Haha, glad you like it! So, originally this was a B2B concept for a friend who was starting an advisory. Original model was around referrals, and advisor client funnels. That might still have a place, but tbd.
The B2C version you're looking at is an app store, so marketplace / app fee structure. Currently, when you save a View to your space, you're actually subscribing to updates. Instead of paying for a newsletter you have to read, digest, and model off, FinFam enables a paid subscription to a spreadsheet that gives you an answer. Skip the read, straight to the guidance.
For most people facing decisions with significant financial components, they keep an eye on the situation for weeks if not months. If they're subscribed to an expert's View, they can pay per update or per time period, kind of like Patreon.
I'm thinking we'll probably add some premium tier for certain SaaS features. E.g., similar to Figma, you can have X spaces, but if you want more, you need to pay more. Something tied to advanced use cases, # of chatbot convos, etc.
For now it's all available for the low low cost of bug reports. the more detailed the better!
Wow this looks really well done, congratulations!
One question: I was exploring the public spaces and I'm wondering are these your real finances, or is this just a mocked-up example? https://finfam.app/mahmoud/space
And if they are your real finances, are you manually entering in things like your credit card balances, or do you have integrations that automatically track that? If there aren't integrations already, is that on the road map?
Haha, re: finances, everyone wants to know this! Give or take, yeah! I just felt obligated to go all in with the dogfooding. It's probably TMI for most folks, but other users don't have to do the same: https://finfam.app/faq#faq-data_visibility
FinFam is private by default, but publishable by design. It's also totally valid to build/publish hypothetical/prototypical scenarios for the sake of demonstration.
Re: manual entry, the income and expenses were, yeah. The balances from the accounts are all ingested via our "Magic Sync" which is really just parsing from screenshots. Works with Monarch Money, works with spreadsheets. And you don't have to deal with the nightmare of "open banking" (I helped build the first version of Stripe's Financial Connections product and I'd like to delay using it as long as possible...)
Oddly my first impression was “wow this is sort of niche”, but then immediately realized how odd that sentiment is.
There are so many poor quality self help books out there on finance, that really amount to nothing more than a blog post. And whenever I’m trying to learn more or think about what options exist it feels like quite a slog. I’m definitely tired of pretty much all of the accessible financial advice amounting to using the standard 3 fund portfolio: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio
While it’s a fine starting point, it definitely bothered me how inaccessible financial advice is, even with an advisor it gets pretty hand wavey
Haha, spent many hours on the Bogleheads wiki, and I do love it. But yeah, I'd love it even more if it had fields I could punch values into. If only there was some sort of site for that...
I wonder what that calculator would look like? Maybe something that lets you visualize trends of return for different fund blends?
That doesn’t seem particularly useful however, maybe something to help contrast the other common investment profiles? I just wouldn’t know which ones those are
I have a whole rant about this saved for a future blog post. The short version is that people need actionable belief. Charts are useful to demonstrate a concept, but at the end of the day, we want answers. I'm sure there's _someone_ you trust. Whether it's your dad or a friend or a podcast, I think the main gap is giving the user specific action. For example, https://finfam.app/heyfinfam/views/rent-vs-buy boils it down to Rent/Neutral/Buy. Most of the other featured views do the same, to eliminate the exact ambiguity you're describing.
I really like it; the community curations are neat. So many ideas to explore and I wonder if it can model pre-existing events like if I wanted to explore: Should I DCA ? (I can look historically)
Hmm, DCA is one I think about a lot. Probably pretty easy to convert this research over: https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/n...
The result won't be super surprising, but it'll be more specific.
Looks really cool. I’m going to try this. Are there plans for plaid integrations? Might want to partner up on something.
Thanks! Yeah, far-flung plans for integrations. Currently I'm getting way more mileage out of letting other products do the integrations for me. I.e., I use Monarch Money and just upload the screenshots to FinFam which parses out the balances.
I helped build the first version of Stripe's Financial Connections product and while the alumni credit is tempting, I'd like to delay using it as long as possible... Too many error conditions and it's not like planning calls for that level of precision anyways.
I'm an AI skeptic but the chatbot sounds interesting. What kind of context do you provide it?
Relatable. While I doubt I'd have been able to do all the frontend myself without an agent, it's still pretty early for LLMs + money.
It depends on where you're starting a thread, but assuming you're starting the thread in a view, then we prime the chat with:
- The user's configured financial literacy, education level, etc.
- The reasoning and actual results of the calculator as you see them
- Summary metrics from the space that the view is saved in
The last point is pretty critical. The idea is that you build your own context from the bottom up, exposing as much or as little as you want for the scenario you want to explore. Add the relevant assets/liabilities/income/expenses, and we have a little cash-basis accounting simulator that projects all that into a "scope" usable by the Views, as well as the chatbot ("Finn" http://finfam.app/finn).
Handing these metrics to the chat unlocks a lot of the magic of the chatbot as a "neutral explainer". Any creator can upload a spreadsheet, but as we've currently exposed it, Finn is meant to be moderate and just there to close any explanatory gaps that the creator may have left out, or not considered. If you're looking at a view about buying a second house, Finn's supposed to give you a gut check if you have particularly low cash reserves.
A lot of a financial advisor's time and role is filling gaps in your financial literacy, and a 24/7 chatbot is honestly just better at explaining the difference between a credit and debit card.
I've been waiting years for someone to make this. What are your plans to monetize?
Haha, glad you like it! So, originally this was a B2B concept for a friend who was starting an advisory. Original model was around referrals, and advisor client funnels. That might still have a place, but tbd.
The B2C version you're looking at is an app store, so marketplace / app fee structure. Currently, when you save a View to your space, you're actually subscribing to updates. Instead of paying for a newsletter you have to read, digest, and model off, FinFam enables a paid subscription to a spreadsheet that gives you an answer. Skip the read, straight to the guidance.
For most people facing decisions with significant financial components, they keep an eye on the situation for weeks if not months. If they're subscribed to an expert's View, they can pay per update or per time period, kind of like Patreon.
I'm thinking we'll probably add some premium tier for certain SaaS features. E.g., similar to Figma, you can have X spaces, but if you want more, you need to pay more. Something tied to advanced use cases, # of chatbot convos, etc.
For now it's all available for the low low cost of bug reports. the more detailed the better!