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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#311

Post by alexhutcheson »

jdpedrie wrote: post #163
uses wrote: post #16

I've been a Simple customer since launch, and have used it as my primary bank since ING Direct was turned into Capital One. It's mildly depressing to be reminded once again that the dream of startup founders these days isn't to build something, but to sell something... specifically to a bigger company. Which will inevitably delete the thing, once it serves its use. Which is to provide presence in some kind of defensi…

If you're a veteran or the child of a veteran, highly recommend USAA. Tech is fairly good (they had online deposit years before anyone else I was aware of) and the service is unbeatable.

USAA is almost unbeatable for insurance, but I think Navy Federal has a much better banking experience.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#312

Post by bonestamp2 »

Jommi wrote: post #299
acjohnson55 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Robinhood's banking feature for this (I don't use them as a brokerage, though). It lets me do direct deposit and automatic withrdrawals from a single account, while earning savings account interest. The interest isn't significant at the moment, but it was nice for a few months, before COVID. I use Mint and Personal Capital for monitoring my budget, rather than earmarking funds.

You're getting 0.3% APY, which is pretty useless. I would instead try some of the banks that promise you higher APY rn. There are some offering 2-3%

I don't know of anyone offering 2% right now, but for historic purposes here is an article about some great rates above 2% over a year ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/savings-accounts-besides-all...

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#313

Post by CGamesPlay »

cactus2093 wrote: post #281
bichiliad wrote: post #172

A while ago, I had a landlord who withdrew rent directly from my bank account[1] and who kept charging me rent after I had left. They also refused to return the money to me and insisted I file an ACH dispute through my bank, Simple. I was responsible for rent for me and my roomate, so being double charged rent for a month meant I was suddenly short two peoples' worth of rent. Simple was super, super good about the wh…

> Always use a 3rd party or pay manually Not sure what you mean by a 3rd party, but just a reminder that every check you spend contains all the info anybody needs to pull out arbitrary amounts of money from your account over ACH in the future. So if you've ever "payed manually" with a check, even if you've never set up automatic rent payments, your landlord could still do the same thing if they wanted to. I find it i…

> So if you've ever "payed manually" with a check, even if you've never set up automatic rent payments, your landlord could still do the same thing if they wanted to.

Well, that would be committing wire fraud. If I agree to automatic payments at least the landlord has an excuse that I had consented to such recurring payments.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#315

Post by bsima »

joaoreynolds wrote: post #187

Simple was a game-changer for our personal finances. We tried Mint but it was too much work. When I look for "alternatives to Simple" all I find are other online banks. What I want though is the budgeting part. Monthly expense allocation + safe to spend. Anybody here know of a good alternative to this?

YNAB is a good starting place youneedabudget.com

hledger.org and ledger-cli.org if you want more control

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#316

Post by frankus »

fb42 wrote: post #268
drewpc wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. In a world before I found Simple, a spreadsheet with all of my monthly expenses and totals for each account transfer I needed to do was good enough. I can't get myself to see the additional value of mvelopes.com. Simple, however, was a game changer for me. Sad.

What’s the main difference between Simple and YNAB? I’m a YNAB user but have never used Simple. You say that you can’t see the extra value of mvelopes (and I assume YNAB) but if you don’t have Simple then why is YNAB not good enough?

I'm not familiar with how YNAB ingests transaction data, but I seem to remember when I looked at it last that at least some transactions have to be logged manually.

If you used Simple pretty much exclusively you wouldn't have to manually enter any transactions, although you might occasionally have to categorize things.

The obvious exception would be cash transactions, which I don't believe Simple ever tracked in any detail.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#317

Post by timgilbert »

jdpedrie wrote: post #163
uses wrote: post #16

I've been a Simple customer since launch, and have used it as my primary bank since ING Direct was turned into Capital One. It's mildly depressing to be reminded once again that the dream of startup founders these days isn't to build something, but to sell something... specifically to a bigger company. Which will inevitably delete the thing, once it serves its use. Which is to provide presence in some kind of defensi…

If you're a veteran or the child of a veteran, highly recommend USAA. Tech is fairly good (they had online deposit years before anyone else I was aware of) and the service is unbeatable.

Any US citizen can get a USAA checking account, and it's quite usable with a decent Android app and the ability to easily transfer money around from different banks. Some of their other services, like car loans, are only available to members of the military, though.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#318

Post by sizzle »

m8s wrote: post #269
remir wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just as a heads up, you can email support after your free trial and ask for an extension. They'll pretty much always give it to you. If you're a student, you can send in your student ID and get a year free. YNAB changed my life.

would love if you shared how it changed your life, I'm always skeptical about these types of things that I end up abandoning after a short time. thanks!

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#319

Post by cjohnkim »

cweagans wrote: post #84

I don't know how many Simple employees are in this thread. I'm very sad to hear this news, and I'm sure you were too. Just want you to know that you all made a really meaningful difference in the lives of at least my wife and I. Before I switched to Simple, I had a really hard time budgeting for things/planning for expenses, and was frequently toeing the line of overdrawing my account. I was essentially financially i…

<3

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#320

Post by frankus »

cactus2093 wrote: post #272
drewpc wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still don't get how it's different in practice than something like the budget feature in Mint? Basically it's pre-allocating the money instead of just watching what you spend and bucketing it as you go. But unless it's actually going to overdraft the account or decline your card somehow when a bucket is empty instead of taking it from the total amount, those are equivalent.

I think the main difference is in the quality of the experience. Their mobile app is a joy to use, and the integration with the actual banking side of things is reliable and instantaneous.

Instead of a separate budgeting app and banking app, you can tweak your budgets from the same place that you deposit checks and transfer money to other banks.

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