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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#241
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

A few questions: -Why do you need to actually move the money around? -What happens if you overspend in an envelope? -Do you actually have different accounts/routing numbers for the envelopes?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#242
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious retort would be to mention the problems with state ownership/control of companies. However maybe you have a model in mind that doesn’t result in control ending up in the hands of the government. If so, I’m curious!

Maybe that model doesn't work, but I wish there was some government oversight preventing huge companies from buying out small competitors just to shut them down entirely. Like Apple did with Dark Sky, Microsoft did with Wunderlist, and Twitter did with Vine. It's really unfortunate that we can't have much small tech.

It seems like that wouldn’t solve the problem, because it would take away some of the incentive to create small tech in the first place!

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#243
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

I've thoroughly enjoyed using Capital One's online banking for pretty much this. I have ~20 different savings accounts that I use for budgeting envelopes (you can have up to 25, I think) and each has their own routing/account numbers so you can set up services to pull directly from them and I set up automation to put $X in them from a "main" income account every 2 weeks, so I don't have to manually move money from ac…

What are your “envelopes”/accounts and what do you actually do with them?

For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food?

I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not really any surprise. My mortgage is x, if I owned on a car it would be y, if I’m out I buy food for the week, etc.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Ally, it's an online-only bank with a good website & app, and great customer service: https://ally.com/

FYI Ally is just a marketing rebrand of GMAC, one of the financial giants involved in the 2008 housing crash. That alone makes me steer clear of them.

Just curious: which financial giants were NOT involved in the 2008 housing crash? Serious question.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#245
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

> When a charge comes in for that expense

Do you categorize the expense or is it automatically categorized to the correct spending envelope?

---

Treasury is B2B focused at the moment but there must be another way to do this...

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#246
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

A couple of days ago, I opened a YNAB account to test it out and had the same reasoning: why can't my bank do all of that envelope budgeting stuff?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#247
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

A few questions: -Why do you need to actually move the money around? -What happens if you overspend in an envelope? -Do you actually have different accounts/routing numbers for the envelopes?

I hope this answers your questions:

1. I want to move the money around so I don't spend it and I know I have enough to pay my bills. I don't want to see $1,000 and think "I'm going to spend that". Similarly, I don't want to see a charge come through for a bunch of bills that I don't have enough money for.

2. In Simple's app, if you overspend in an expense or goal, it takes it out of your "safe-to-spend" amount (think: your total spending money). It notifies you that you "overspent" so you can move money around in your little envelopes to fix it.

3. In Simple's case, you have one literal checking and up to two literal savings accounts. The expense/goal "envelopes" are virtual buckets in the checking account, not actual accounts with account/routing numbers. In the past, I've used many literal checking/savings accounts for this purpose.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#248
post #224

I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls…

Agreed. I've been using envelope budgeting since college and I simply can't fathom why most people don't do it. Actually, I can fathom it: it's because no one has been willing to keep this incredible feature in an easy-to-use product and support that product long enough for people to see the value. In college I used gnucash for this and even wrote a (now very old and somewhat embarrassing) article about it ( https://…

Yes; this. I also have no idea how other people pay any bills without a system like this.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thoroughly enjoyed using Capital One's online banking for pretty much this. I have ~20 different savings accounts that I use for budgeting envelopes (you can have up to 25, I think) and each has their own routing/account numbers so you can set up services to pull directly from them and I set up automation to put $X in them from a "main" income account every 2 weeks, so I don't have to manually move money from ac…

What are your “envelopes”/accounts and what do you actually do with them? For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food? I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not reall…

For example: I have 21 expenses in Simple. They're as small as "Spotify: $16.25/mo" and "1Password: $60/year". As large as mortgage, kid stuff, groceries, annual car registration, car insurance, etc. Plus about 8 savings goals.
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