Simple Bank Is Closing • Hacker News Board

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#381

Post by therealrootuser » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

__david__ wrote: post #100

jasonpeacock wrote: post #60

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.

Well, there are some nuances you're skating over here.

Remember that GMAC Bank (the direct banking company) and GMAC ResCap (the mortgage/real-estate company) were two different entities owned by the industrial loan company GMAC. GMAC Bank was spun off as Ally Bank. Ally Bank (until 2014) was not even in the mortgage business.

I can tell you that as an actual customer of (the now former) GMAC Bank, I didn't feel like I got short changed in any way. They had good interest rates, and I'm glad they survived through hook, crook, and some TARP money (which was ultimately paid back with interest).

Just my perspective, it doesn't affect me in any way who you bank with.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#382

Post by tomjakubowski » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

byproxy wrote: post #363

EpicEng wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is offerring 2%-3% when the fed rate is at zero. You're about a year behind relity.

https://www.hmbradley.com/ currently does, with the caveat that you have to save at least 20% of your direct deposits.

Interesting. Seems like you could work around the caveat by splitting your paycheck's direct deposit allocation between your checking account bank and HM Bradley, so that from their perspective you're saving 100% of your direct deposit.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#383

Post by bumpkinjunkie » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

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%

Varo Bank offers 2.8% on up to $10k in your savings account if you get direct deposit and use your card 5x/mo. Not the rich features of Simple, YNAB, or even Virtual Wallet...but when they earn next to nothing for interest, that's how those features get paid for (they need your cheap deposits).

https://www.varomoney.com/savings-account/

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#384

Post by samelawrence » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #289

skapadia wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get myself to pay for services like YNAB or mvelopes.com I could see someone wanting to pay for a year or two until they've established the habit of disciplined saving. But to perpetually pay a service to present a (useful) facade over your money doesn't seem right if it's not also instilling habits in you that don't depend on software.

YNAB is excellent - its design forces people to budget properly. It also lets you track all expenses and let’s you keep lifestyle inflation in check. I’ve found it well worth it (and I’m pretty responsible financially). Mint on the other hand is totally useless.

I tried YNAB, but didn't fall in love with it. I currently use Mint, which I'm familiar with and have used for years, but I don't like Intuit. I now pay for Lunch Money and am gradually using it more and more. I'd like to switch over properly at some point to a service that isn't using my data for ads.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#385

Post by iends » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #318

m8s wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Not parent, but my wife and I have been using YNAB for over 5 years, even before they moved to a web app. It’s changed our lives:

- We never fight about money because we have already planned for the next month together.

- We each get equal amount of no questions asked personal money that the other person cannot criticize how it’s spent.

- When we first started using YNAB we realized we were living off credit card float, and spending money we didn’t have until we got the months paycheck. We thought we were doing great just because we would pay our credit card off each month. But we were actually 100% relying on our future paychecks to survive.

- My wife lost her job 2 years ago and was out of work for a month due to COVID. The budget gave us an objective view rather than an emotional one. In both cases, we didn’t need to even rely on our emergency fund because of flexible budgeting.

- We are able to maximize credit card rewards without being concerned with spending too much.

- We are able to easily track our cash equivalent net worth.

Most of these things are not YNAB specific, but the software makes things so much easier.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#386

Post by bumpkinjunkie » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

eat_veggies wrote: post #357

monsieurbanana wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss monzo so much :( I moved out of the UK and sadly never found a real alternative. I had a simple workflow that made me happy: I had two budgets, one for fixed spenses such as rent and phone, another for everything else (food, taxi, entertainment, whatever). I'd divide my "everything else" budget by 30 and tell monzo to move everyday that amount into the credit card account. So basically... A daily budget. It wa…

I think Monzo is making moves to expand into the US. There's a waitlist (you might be bumped up if you were a UK customer?). I got one but didn't end up using it very often.

They were, but then they hit funding issues in spring 2020 and appear to be scaling back their US expansion.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/monzo-to-shutter-las-vegas...

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#387

Post by bumpkinjunkie » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

drewpc wrote: 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…

Simple's Safe-to-Spend® feature was ahead of its time and today is still a really unique feature among digital banks (standalone budgeting apps notwithstanding). I wonder if a challenger bank could buy that IP from BBVA.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#388

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

joppy wrote: post #377

bluedevil2k wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice. A 30 year mortgage is like 2.8% right now, after taxes maybe 1.8%. The stock market over any 18 year time period (after taxes) will return higher than 1.8%. Adding to that, liquidity - having money in the bank provides flexibility, having equity in the house is nearly inflexible.

It could be because I’m Australian or perhaps I’m just unfamiliar with mortgages - how does tax affect the effective loan rate?

Mortgage interest on your primary residence is tax deductible.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#389

Post by immad » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

tylermenezes wrote: post #367

immad wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am the ceo of Mercury) We do have an export feature. Let me know what its missing (email in bio). Also, what did you think was misleading? We try to be fairly straightforward and transparent with everything we offer.

Exporting -- unless I'm missing something, it's only possible to export a CSV for transactions matching a filter. For better or worse, QBO etc formats are the standard for importing a statement to reconcile and there's extra friction each month to import a CSV. Misleading -- Tea Room (for us) does almost nothing which was advertised: - Treasury was marketed to be available to everyone who isn't taxed as a sole propri…

Thanks for the details Tyler.

Exporting - From my understanding the CSV format matches the QB specification. Are you saying that it matching the filters is an issue or that the format is incorrect.

Treasury for nonprofits - We only just launched Treasury (in December) and nonprofits are a relatively small part of our business so this hadn't come up during our alpha. I am going to investigate why our clearing house does not support nonpfotis, and make sure the restrictions is clearly stated.

Tea Room Deals/Perks - We recently launched this https://mercury.com/perks. Did you see this already and it doesn't match what you want or did you miss it?

Tea - We were revamping the tea packaging so it might be on pause right now. But we do really ship some pretty nice tea normally :).

The other thing that you get with tea room is free domestic + international wires.

Anyway, I can see why your experience was disappointing. I really appreciate the feedback and hopefully we can improve to deliver something better in the future.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#390

Post by immad » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

texasbigdata wrote: post #309

immad wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a QB export compatible file. It's an export button on the top of our transactions page and has date, description, amount, status, bank description, reference and notes as column. I don't think we have specific documentation of that feature, but I am happy to demo it. Our api documentation is here: mercury.com/api. I am sure there is something specific Tyler was talking about. Would love to learn what it is so…

He specifically said Netsuite and not Quickbooks but to be fair thank you for responding and clarifying with detail.

The parent mentioned QBX statement, which is a Quickbooks format. Its a fairly standard format used across different accounting software.