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Comment by yesimahuman | Hacker News Reader

Congrats! I'm a customer. Haven't used it too much but so far I like having it to check in periodically. One wish list item: live securities prices to avoid having to copy/paste values all the time. For example, with that you can have a live snapshot of the values in most brokerages

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Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request.

I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a small piece of the picture, we need to be really careful about what we choose to take on. Currently there are still dozens of other high-priority feature requests that will also deliver real value but without those downsides.

I do go back-and-forth on this though. And I think eventually there will come a time for it.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the tool, and thanks so much for your support!

p.s. also might be worth noting that there is a plugin system, and community members have built integrations that can pull in balance updates automatically from some of the popular budgeting tools.

Account linking should be reasonably straightforward in the EU with PDS2 open data. I was able to hack together some python via one of the intermediary services to get up to date bank data. There is the complication that the bank doesn't always have fully live data.

Approaches involving password sharing you're right to stay well away from.

To provide a data point from a long-time ProjectionLab user, I don't really need account linking. I use Monarch Money to link cash and CC accounts to track spending.

I use a custom Google Sheet to track retirement portfolio performance. If =GOOGLEFINANCE isn't enough, there is a nice paid extension called WiseSheets, which adds a =WISE function that fills all the gaps.

My monthly ProjectionLab process is to update the "Current Finances" values on the first of the month, using the values from the other tools. Works well enough for me!

I'm glad to hear you have a workflow for updating current finances that's already serving you well. I do plan to add a lot more automation/integration options, it's just always a question of where to invest my time to deliver the most value to the community efficiently.

Something people don't always realize instantly is that with a long-term planning tool, the point is to spend the bulk of your time focused on the future, not fixating on all the latest daily stock price fluctuations... in fact, those can sometimes be a source of noise/distraction.

I don't need/want account linking, I just want $VTSAX etc recent prices. I know it can be noise but what you're saving me from is really annoying copy/paste work when I come in quarterly to update numbers and track my progress.

sounds like that would also mean overhauling the data model to track individual positions within every account, not just balances?

and then folks would expect every account's asset allocation to be automatically derived from those positions too I imagine? that would differ a lot from how asset allocation modeling and change over time currently works in the tool.

maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like there could be a lot of complexity here that would need to be carefully weighed against the product vision and other things on the roadmap.

I think all I can do as a customer is just say what my biggest pain point is (having to copy and paste a bunch of values every time I check in with the tool) and however you think it's best to solve that, or to not solve it, is really up to you.

I think adding account linking is something you absolutely should not do, that definitely will add so much complexity and also touches up on people's security fears around 3rd party linking, so definitely don't do that.

Will keep using the product for sure. Nice work and congrats on the success so far

Live is overkill, all they'd need is an every 30-60 minute update on equity prices, which is not an overly expensive thing to acquire. With a 65% profit margin in their business, this is a dead-obvious feature they should be automating away to save their users a sizable headache.

    > live securities prices

This is probably impossible in 2025. Many stock exchanges now make more money from selling data feeds than trading fees. It is a little bit crazy. The best that you can hope for is a delayed feed, or last closes.

That's the best part about VTSAX and chill: you only ever have last closes. Really though this does not need to be real time at all, just recent enough to save me toil

I much prefer VOO: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. Tight bid ask spread, good size, and crazy low fees that continue to drop.

This is incorrect. Almost all brokers nowadays allow for OAuth connections where you can stream any data you'd see in your broker platform to any consuming web application (given the consuming web application does all the paperwork, dev work, and so on)

    > Almost all brokers

That is a mighty broad brush. I can confidently say that this is untrue for many brokers in continental Europe and North Asia. US brokers? If yes, can you provide some examples?

(with a contractual obligation to never share the data with anyone else or they'll sue you for all you're worth)

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