Show HN: I built an app store for open-source financial plans (on spreadsheets)

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!

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.

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...)

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.

The result won't be super surprising, but it'll be more specific.