The Money Mustache Community

General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: just_retire on May 16, 2018, 08:46:27 AM

Title: Is there a version of FIRECalc with a better interface?
Post by: just_retire on May 16, 2018, 08:46:27 AM
I love the concept behind FIRECalc but the site's design is very old school. I checked out CFIREsim and that was slightly better but still pretty unfriendly.

I'm a software developer and am considering putting together a site with similar functionality but with a modern UI. Does anything like this exist already?
Title: Re: Is there a version of FIRECalc with a better interface?
Post by: BTDretire on May 16, 2018, 09:03:31 AM
I'm very happy with FIRECalc, and like the way the adjustments work.
On the other hand I don't like the Cfiresim interface.
Feel free to make a better interface, if it's intuative, it will work,
but if you have to read a manual to use it, it won't be used. (much)
Title: Re: Is there a version of FIRECalc with a better interface?
Post by: mathlete on May 16, 2018, 09:11:20 AM
Personally, I use a home grown excel spreadsheet. Then I can make it as simple or as complex as I'd like.

As Google Sheets becomes more sophisticated, maybe you could consider building your model there instead.

Just as an aside, I rather like the FIRECalc website (even though I don't really use it anymore). Reminds me of the old days when everything had to be built to load on a 56K modem connection. Now everyone has high speed internet, and websites have bloated up to take advantage of that.

It's like visiting NFL.com (bad) for football stats versus going to pro-football-reference.com (good).
Title: Re: Is there a version of FIRECalc with a better interface?
Post by: simonsez on May 16, 2018, 09:13:09 AM
FIRECalc and cfiresim are pretty ubiquitous around here, if there are others they don't have critical mass.  If you come up with something, be sure to share!  Good luck!
Title: Re: Is there a version of FIRECalc with a better interface?
Post by: boarder42 on May 16, 2018, 09:23:04 AM
yeah those are the main 2 and then the rest of us have our own spreadsheets.  i just use FIREcalc as a safety in FIRE tool to test different AA's/mortgage/ withdrawal strategies - i do not use it to actually predict when i will FIRE and the likelihood of that.  my spreadsheet is a much simpler way to calc that.