my untamed slider obsession turned into an app

I have to confess: I get mesmerised by sliders.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m sliding for. I’ll drag a number back and forth, watch it change, and feel the same joy as staring at the old-school DVD logo bouncing around the TV, waiting for it to hit the corner.

There’s no real purpose… except it’s hypnotic. Pure joy.

And that joy is exactly what property investing is missing.

1. Sliders Over Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are powerful, sure — but they’re joyless. Fragile formulas, endless tabs, and that one cell you accidentally break at midnight. And you can’t exactly whip out Excel at an inspection while the agent hovers.

Sliders, though? They’re instant. Drag left, drag right, and the world updates. Deposit, borrowing, interest rate, rent — all recalculated in seconds.

Psychologists call this instant feedback — the same principle that makes slot machines addictive or why we refresh social media 200 times a day.

Your brain gets a dopamine hit when action = reaction, instantly!

In property investing, that feedback matters. The faster you can test “what ifs,” the better your decisions become.

2. Sliding, Stepping, Playing

Full confession: it’s not just sliders. minimally loancheck also has steppers — those little + and – buttons that nudge numbers up or down.

Tap + + +, and suddenly your repayments creep into sweat territory.

Tap – – – and the risk melts back into something manageable.

Behavioural economists call this mental accounting — we like to break numbers down into digestible steps. Steppers make you feel in control, while sliders let you explore freely.

Together, they turn dry calculations into play.

And play is underrated in investing. It lowers the barrier to curiosity. You’re not afraid to test, tweak, and see where the edge lies.

3. Scenarios Made Human

At its core, property investing is about scenarios.

What if interest rates rise?

What if rent dips?

What if you borrow 70% instead of 80%?

Spreadsheets can answer, but they’re clunky. Every tweak means copying a tab, adjusting formulas, and praying you don’t wipe your base case.

Friction kills curiosity.

But curiosity is what investors need. Prospect theory shows humans are terrible at assessing risk — we overreact to small changes and underreact to big ones. The only way to fight that bias is to see multiple perspectives quickly. Sliders and steppers make that effortless.

This is embodied interaction — design that lets you feel numbers shift, not just read them. It makes complexity manageable, risk tangible, and decisions faster. In short: it makes investing more human.

Conclusion: Why I Built It

So yes, minimally loancheck started with me mesmerised by sliders — dragging numbers for no reason, like a finance fidget toy.

It grew into steppers, tapping + and – just to see repayments creep up or down. And somewhere along the way, it turned into something useful.

Because property investing isn’t just about the current numbers. It’s about scenarios, risk, and decisions. And the faster, clearer, and more engaging those scenarios are, the better choices you make.

That’s why I built minimally loancheck Not as a grand fintech empire, but as a simple, pocket-sized way to explore scenarios.

Because property investors don’t just need data. They need answers. And sometimes the answer comes from something as simple — and joyful — as sliding back and forth.