Apply HN: Nickel is personal financial planning for free

Yes, it is rudimentary for now -- it's a prototype after all. There's only one 'financial philosophy' built in to the algorithm, and it's quite conservative about lowering risk. But we think in the future it'll be useful to be able to switch philosophies with a single click.

Regarding life insurance, it only recommends it if you have a spouse, partner, or children. If not, it explicitly says, "Life Insurance: Until you have a spouse, a partner, or kids you probably do not need life insurance." If you're seeing something different it's a bug. I'd love a screenshot if you have one: victor@nickelhq.com

Google's model might work for us: they give away a lot of resources for free and help a lot of people, and they charge certain segments of their audience that can afford to pay. So while people are accustomed to paying advisors for a plan, we think it's better for our audience and a competitive advantage to be free.

There's other ways that people are accustomed to paying advisors now that could work. For example commissions on insurance sales. The price of insurance is fixed by regulations in the U.S., so you pay the same price regardless of where you buy it; might as well buy from us and get a free financial plan too :-)

Another company tried charging for plans, but that didn't seem to work, they've since changed their model. We think it'll be better for our customers and for us if the financial services companies pay for this somehow.

Besides LearnVest, there's PolicyGenius (https://www.policygenius.com) who does a good job evaluating your need for individual insurance products and then selling them. They don't do financial planning.

Investment managers such as Personal Capital and Vanguard offer access to advisors if you meet a minimum of assets under management, but the advice is mostly about investing.

SmartAsset and Nerdwallet are focused on content and calculators but have enough funding to move into planning in the future.

Any of the following companies could move into our space, although they all have channel conflicts: Robo investors (e.g. Betterment), Insurance (e.g. Prudential), Banks (e.g. Wells Fargo), Financial planners (e.g. Ameriprise), Investment managers (e.g. Vanguard), Advisor-facing software (e.g. eMoneyAdvisor)