Problem: At a certain age many of us would like to have a financial plan: a plan for savings, investments, insurance, and taxes, for now and into the future. But making a plan is hard. Hiring a professional advisor to make a plan costs on average US$2,000. LearnVest only costs $299, but they only give you a static PDF file.<p>Solution: Nickel is TurboTax for financial plans. You answer some questions and Nickel generates a financial plan. For free.<p>There's many ways we could generate revenue, but for now we're focusing on improving our design and algorithm.<p>Prototype: <a href="https://nickelhq.com/nickel" rel="nofollow">https://nickelhq.com/nickel</a><p>About Us: Dan and I have been friends since college at New York University. Dan is a certified financial planner and has advised families for over ten years. I'm a product designer with FinTech experience and recently designed an insurance sales web app for MetLife. We met Ashish, a full-stack JavaScript engineer, right here on HN!<p>Why YC? We've bootstrapped our way to our tenth prototype and feel confident we have something people want. We need some money to work on this full-time and guidance to turn this into a proper company.
This is great but ... rudimentary. The same advice on 'create a 6-month emergency fund' no matter the financial situation, without regard to the cost of such a plan (in lost returns) and taking into consideration that depending on your financial situation, getting that amount in credit isn't that difficult.<p>Similar thing with life insurance. Sure, it is great for some. But when I entered that I am single and have no kids, it still recommends life insurance. Why exactly? It is known to be bad from an investment point of view - insurance should be bought for insurance reasons anyway.<p>Similar situation with renters insurance - without knowing what my belongings are worth, how can you recommend that I need renters insurance up to $500 per year?<p>p.s. the app doesn't work if you have ublock origin installed. Just an FYI.
Whom do you consider to be your competitors?<p>The space of automated financial advice is becoming very crowded, but much of the focus so far has been on investments. Is it fair to say that part of your differentiator is that you aim to provide a holistic analysis of a family's entire financial situation?