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Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

pennyapp.io

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Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#61

Post by jbob2000 »

fibbery wrote: post #59
jbob2000 wrote: post #56

The unfortunate thing about apps like these is that if you are wise enough to use it, you are wise enough to not need it. Totally anecdotal, but the people I know who have trouble managing money are just completely unaware of it. Money goes in and money goes out, and they only do something if someone calls them or sends them a letter. As soon as you show these people the numbers, they get it. It clicks for them. Mint…

I totally disagree about Mint. I have accounts across so many different services (bank, credit cards, loans, investments) and it saves me so much time because I only have to log in one place and I can see the full picture of my finances. I also like the trends feature so I can breakdown spending into different categories. Plenty of financial services have stats on their sites, but mint unifies all of them.

Ah, fair enough! That is not an issue for me, all of my accounts, cards, and investments are with one bank. Perhaps I have downplayed the importance of these services because of that.

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#64

Post by cookiecaper »

fibbery wrote: post #59
jbob2000 wrote: post #56

The unfortunate thing about apps like these is that if you are wise enough to use it, you are wise enough to not need it. Totally anecdotal, but the people I know who have trouble managing money are just completely unaware of it. Money goes in and money goes out, and they only do something if someone calls them or sends them a letter. As soon as you show these people the numbers, they get it. It clicks for them. Mint…

I totally disagree about Mint. I have accounts across so many different services (bank, credit cards, loans, investments) and it saves me so much time because I only have to log in one place and I can see the full picture of my finances. I also like the trends feature so I can breakdown spending into different categories. Plenty of financial services have stats on their sites, but mint unifies all of them.

I'd be careful with this. Mint is often out of date or broken for me. Don't accept it as the authoritative source on your balances.

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#65

Post by joshstrange »

bvanslyke wrote: post #22

"Where did my money go" budgeting has never worked for me. I've been way more successful with planning ahead every $ of income as I get it and then manually tracking expenses. Budgeting had to become an actual activity for me, and not just something done automatically by a webapp. I'm a huge shill for YNAB[0]. The software is really nice but basically it's a glorified (paid) spreadsheet. My fiance and I agree that th…

I'm a big fan of YNAB as well (classic, web just isn't there yet and normally I'm the first to jump on the web bandwagon). I'm still just getting started with it but it's an awesome tool!

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#66

Post by hardwaresofton »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
hardwaresofton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might (should?) be standard phrasing for any app that accesses another company's API on your behalf... We may not think of it this way, but this seems like correct legalese for any sort of assistant app, whether it takes your username and password, or you give it an API key.

And does it come with any indemnity for error, or does it make it completely legal for the company to wire your money to the Bahamas and run off with it?

I have no idea, but it's definitely your perogative to make sure it doesn't (even though many of us will not).

Also even if that stuff wasn't explicitly written into the agreement, as long as it wasn't excluded, that's kind of what you pay good lawyers for. I highly doubt a reasonable judge is going to rule on the side of the fraudsters without such a clause -- pretty sure it falls under the purview of "good faith".

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#67

Post by tcfunk »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #33
dontmitch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was our understanding too. One thing to clarify: it's just me and one other guy (imalex) working on this, although we're hoping to hire another person soon. We're not trying to screw anyone over with the privacy policy. We just don't know anything about legalese, so we relied on existing terminology.

Congratulations on shipping! I wouldn't worry about complaints like this too much, it kind of happens a bunch on hn. Have you studied what mint and personal capital are doing right/wrong? Just wanted to say a word of caution as I've heard of different banks making life hard for mint.

AFAIK they won't experience the same issues as Mint until they achieve a similar userbase size. The complaints from the banks was the server load that Mint was putting on them for information they felt users potentially weren't using.

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#68

Post by dang »

oniMaker wrote: post #39

This must be for those people who cannot manage their email, operate a calendar, or create a spreadsheet. I hope the HN audience hasn't degraded to the point of being incapable of handling their personal finances without needing the help of a cutesy avatar painted over a faceless algorithm owned by people who are excited at the prospect of exploiting your financial data to the fullest.

Please don't post comments that are dismissive of people's work. Substantive criticism is fine; nasty swipes are not. This is particularly the case for Show HNs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#69

Post by dang »

enraged_camel wrote: post #40
oniMaker wrote: post #39

This must be for those people who cannot manage their email, operate a calendar, or create a spreadsheet. I hope the HN audience hasn't degraded to the point of being incapable of handling their personal finances without needing the help of a cutesy avatar painted over a faceless algorithm owned by people who are excited at the prospect of exploiting your financial data to the fullest.

>>I hope the HN audience hasn't degraded to the point of being incapable of handling their personal finances without needing the help of a cutesy avatar painted over a faceless algorithm owned by people who are excited at the prospect of exploiting your financial data to the fullest. Maybe not, but it definitely has degraded to the point where people like you spitefully shit on other people's hard work.

Please don't react to a bad comment by posting an attack that only makes the thread worse. Instead, flag it (by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag').

Re: Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending

#70

Post by Vraxx »

HerpDerpLerp wrote: post #41
kdamken wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more - I tried mint for a while and I basically did nothing with it besides checking my transactions. YNAB completely changed how I view my money. Now when I go to buy something, I don't just go spend. I see how much I have in that category, and if it's not enough, I either move money to it from another category, or not buy it. It's been very helpful for me in my goal of saving more than 50% of my ta…

Shame it has gone subscription only :( I hate ongoing charges for that sort of thing.

Wow, this news was crushing. I was on the fence about getting ynab for a couple of months now and I was going to get it sometime this week. Coincidentally the trial of ynab made me detest subscription models more than I already did and then they became a subscription model! This is really saddening.. Are there any good replacements that you are aware of (since I do know that ynab is essentially a glorified spreadsheet, but I do like their methodology).
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