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Comment by scubakid | Hacker News Reader

I'd say the premium / monetization aspect is something I'm still open to suggestions on. I knew I wanted most functionality to be free, so that everyone could use the tool to develop insights about their potential life trajectory and trade-offs between different decisions, and I didn't want anyone to feel priced out of that experience. Likewise, I didn't want to bombard people with ads, and would never want to collect and sell data or anything like that. Currently, even more advanced features like monte carlo mode are available for free... I felt all this left me with few remaining monetization options, so I'm currently trying the model where data persistence (bringing more convenient repeat use) is one of the premium features. If you keep the tab open and then eventually upgrade, your data will stay.. but currently it will disappear if you close the app without a subscription.

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There's also some uncertainty around persistence of data if I start a paid plan (or trial) but do not continue.

Does the data I'd entered thus far get purged, and I would have to re-enter it if I picked the plan back up?

I feel like this kind of tool might be something I'd update once a quarter or once a year, but not want to pay for every month. But if my data is deleted in between uses, it's also a lot less useful. Is there a rational middle ground?

If you go to cancel a subscription, there should be a modal that pops up warning that persisted data will be removed if you continue to cancel.

And yeah I see your point on wanting to come back and update things periodically. Is this perhaps where the yearly / lifetime plan options make more sense? Or are those priced too steeply in your estimation?

> If you go to cancel a subscription, there should be a modal that pops up warning that persisted data will be removed if you continue to cancel.

There's no way to know that before choosing a paid plan though, is there?

I'm not a good person to ask - I avoid spending money (I think) much more so than most people. And I wrote my own software for tracking all my finances (with zero graphs.) So I'm hesitant to spend money on other software.

Depending on a person's weakness or uncertainty, this kind of software can fill in a lot of gaps and help them make decisions that can dwarf the cost of your software, so I doubt the pricing is prohibitive.

As always, take me picking apart your software as a token of interest and a compliment. (I really wish I'd start picking up graphs from my back log...!)

> There's no way to know that before choosing a paid plan though, is there?

On the home page in the "How it Works" section, there's a screenshot showing how you can remove your data. Perhaps I should make that even more prominent though, since evidently not everyone notices.

Thanks for the feedback!

One possible suggestion is a one-time payment option. In a couple of my projects I have daily/weekly/monthly plans that allow people to pay up, use the features and then go away without worrying about long-term financial consequences. Maybe an option were someone can pay up, export their data and then whenever they want to import it back in they sign up for another short plan.

The lifetime plan is already a one-time payment option. Are you saying you feel it's priced too steeply for intermittent use?

I think you can find a balance.

Maybe persist for the free plan but only for a month. That should give me enough time to decide if I want to convert.

I feel like a lot of products with subscription plans want to convert too quickly. I have a full time job and family. Life gets in the way of being able to dedicate full attention to getting something setup.

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