Show HN: We optimize your finances, for free - Uprise.us

by cgoodmac • 4 years ago

91 21 4 years ago

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Co-founder here - excited to get feedback!

We look at your entire financial picture for free and tell you exactly what to do with your money: which credit card to use; how much to save and where to invest it; how to optimize your taxes, and so on. We've fairly conservatively found an average $1.5M in net worth for our users so far.

We wanted to finally solve personal finance and we think we have the right approach: combining really powerful automation and tooling with a human expert in the loop to make sure our recommendations are actually good.

Note: we're US only for now and focused on single young professionals - we're optimized for this base case - so if you're married/with kids you'll get a notice that we'll reach out to you as soon as we can serve you. (Sorry! We’re going as fast as we can!)

Please write in “Hacker News” for "How did you hear about us?" and that will automatically bump you to the front of the waitlist. We’re scaling up, so if you do this, we should be able to get to you pretty quickly (depending on demand).

Feel free to send feedback/questions here! chris@uprise.us

cl42• 4 years ago

Interesting product!

What do you mean by "found an average of $1.5M in net worth for our users"?

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Great question! Basically we take where your finances currently are and calculate where they would be around retirement if you made no changes vs. where they would be if you applied our optimizations.

The value comes from: (1) tax advantages, (2) free money from employer benefits, (3) investment compounding, (4) increased earnings, and (5) fee savings.

We’re generally assuming our recommendations are implemented for 5 years and tax-advantaged retirement and health savings recommendations are totally invested until retirement at the age of 67.

For debt stuff, we’re assuming recommendations are implemented until the debt is paid off.

For everything else - switching credit cards etc - we’re assuming the change is implemented for 5 years.

fergbrain• 4 years ago

Definitely would be interested in a single income (wife is SAHM) with kids base case.

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Noted! Thanks for the input - if you add yourself to the list we can keep you posted when we’ve built your case!

Spunkie• 4 years ago

I signed up with a gmail account before I saw your comment about the priority queue so I signed up again with my custom domain(via.icu).

The signup form looks like it accepts it but actually it never sends me the "You’re on the list!" confirmation email.

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Yup I see you! Thanks for the heads up - will look into the email issue!

as1729• 4 years ago

As someone that makes decent tech money, but not enough to afford or make use of a dedicated financial advisor-- I found Uprise to be super helpful. I received a personalized game-plan for how to manage all my various types of investments (stock-options, crypto, mortgage, 401k, etc). The advice mostly laid out the risks and did not feel overly prescriptive.

In my ideal world the service would take the next step of automatically re-arranging my finances based on the recommendations with my consent. Example: if the recommendation is to reduce exposure to crypto, then once I sign-off on it, the money is rebalanced and put into an IRA.

Overall love the direction of the product and excited to see how this product evolves!

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Thanks for the compliment - so glad we hit the mark!

This is exactly the direction we're taking the product - not just advice but full-on implementation and management - the control panel for your financial life.

For example, if there a credit card that's better for you based on your spending patterns we'll alert you and let you switch over and link in one click.

CarlosD• 4 years ago

Whats one thing that generally surprises people the most about their finances?

Also, I have alot of friends who dont put much thought into their finances. Is there a way for me, as their friend, to put in general/non-personal info about my friends and send them a summary of deals/credit/cards/savings/etc they're missing out on?

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Thanks for the comment!

Re: surpises: I think the #1 thing is that we can find optimizations for EVERYONE. Like even people who think they've got everything in place, we can find significant tweaks/improvements.

It's the difference between keeping it all in your head vs. having a database of all the best financial products out there applied to your situation.

Re: friends - just send them over to us! The magic really happens when we can get a complete picture of someone (which doesn't take too long - the form is about 15 mins), that way we're giving them truly the best recommendations.

For example, people have come to us saying, "Where should I invest?" not understanding that they're in high-interest debt and should really focus on getting out of debt vs. trying to figure out what crypto platform to use.

aleksiy123• 4 years ago

Any plans to be available in Canada? I was just thinking my finances are a mess.

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

NEVER!

Jk this is coming up surprisingly often - we'll make it happen as soon as we can - if you add your name to the list we can keep you posted!

kadoban• 4 years ago

That privacy policy is long, and far more of it than I'd prefer is listing people you can and will share my data with.

We intend to sustain our business by getting paid when customers sign up for financial products we recommend. That said, this will never impact our advice to you. We won't push products we don't think you need.

That's a good goal. That's pretty easy to say though, harder to do. I prefer when a company's incentives are more aligned with my own though.

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

100% it's hard to do. We're looking at Wirecutter as a great example of a company that does this well.

We want to remove the barrier of entry for everyone to get access to financial optimization and we think this is the best way we can.

We're really committed to providing the best recommendations regardless of commission and we've love to prove it to you if you'd be up for trying us out!

andsoitis• 4 years ago

providing the best recommendations

The bottom of the home page reads: "Ontrail, Inc. is not a legal, tax, or investment advisor. Our services should not be construed as a recommendation or offer to sell or purchase any particular security or investment product. "

What's the right way for me to interpret this?

brycelawrence• 4 years ago

Awesome - this is something I always suck at, and other robo-advisors don't look at the bigger picture. I'm in UK so looking forward to you launching here!

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Thanks!! We’re trying to get to as many people around the world as fast as we can :)

FloatArtifact• 4 years ago

Talk to me about user data retention and and the building for the user to download or delete their data

cgoodmac11• 4 years ago

Our general policy on data retention is retaining only as much as needed and only for long as is required to provide a user with our services - and anyone can have their data fully deleted anytime by emailing us! We currently don't have a function yet to allow people to download their data, but it's a great idea and we're happy to prioritize it if there's demand!

Show HN: We optimize your finances, for free - Uprise.us

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