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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#391

Post by akgerber »

bigie35 wrote: post #18
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…

Former C1 employee: I would give Capital One another shot. Their tech and apps are best in class and and built in-house. They also contribute to the open source community (or did).

I was worried when ING Direct was bought by Capital One, but they never introduced any bullshit fees and seriously improved the app and website. So I've remained happy with them.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#392

Post by freeAgent »

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…

I haven’t been a PNC customer in years but as I recall, their “Virtual Wallet” account allowed for similar functionality (not using an envelope concept, but by allocating/reserving money to various recurring expenses so you’d see an adjusted balance after factoring in those upcoming payments). I’m sure the service has changed in the past 5+ years since I used it, but it may be worth checking out. The only reason I left PNC was because I moved to a region where they didn’t have any physical branches.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#393

Post by seppin »

bumpkinjunkie wrote: post #387
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.

Being an online bank is largely unprofitable. You still have to operate the backend of a normal bank (which is costly) and you don't have the physical locations to enable the trust you need to get enough customers.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#395

Post by abdabab »

krisroadruck wrote: post #305
MattGrommes wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've done a bunch of updates to the importing in the last year so it might work better with your institution now. They support Oauth for the bank creds too for those that support it, which is great.

It's still not great. You have to reauth accounts all the time, and I'm constantly getting the little wrench icon telling me they can't pull transactions right now. I've not found a single alternative that will give me a solid overview of all my various accounts as an api that I can build my OWN dashboard off of, otherwise I'd use that. YNAB still gets my money, but reluctantly until then.

How secure is linking your bank account with YNAB?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#396

Post by asciimike »

formercoder wrote: post #308
Jommi wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

Who's offering 2-3%?

IIRC, Yotta Savings (https://www.withyotta.com/) is in this range. HN did the math on Yotta a few months back:

- founder's comments (claims ~3%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786893

- the math (~3.4%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781247

Note that it's likely to go down to get in line with other HYSAs over time (and it's fairly easy for them to change the winning probabilities to hit any interest rate). Currently they're just burning VC cash to get users...

Prizepool (https://getprizepool.com/) is another player in this space, unsure where they're at though (I know we could do the math, I just haven't).

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#397

Post by asciimike »

cshift wrote: post #296
gonehome wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Mint on the other hand is totally useless. That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No. I use Mint and it works quite well for keeping an eye on your financial life at a glance. I don't need some micro-managey software like YNAB (that I'd have to pay for monthly!) to continually increase my wealth and keep debt in check - her…

> That's hyperbole. Having a bird's eye view of every single account, transaction, investments, net worth, etc. is "totally useless"? No.

If you can get it to actually connect to things (I have 2FA on most accounts, and since Mint scrapes the sites and stores passwords in plaintext, it doesn't know how to handle this) and tag everything properly (MCC's vary pretty widely). I think that the promise of Mint is great, but in reality it falls apart as soon as you have more than a few accounts, or start using anything that wasn't originally built in (e.g. 2FA).

That all said, I follow the same general principles: autopay everything in full, invest money first, live within my means (with certain exceptions that are the "budget").

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#398

Post by oneearedrabbit »

abdabab wrote: post #395
krisroadruck wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still not great. You have to reauth accounts all the time, and I'm constantly getting the little wrench icon telling me they can't pull transactions right now. I've not found a single alternative that will give me a solid overview of all my various accounts as an api that I can build my OWN dashboard off of, otherwise I'd use that. YNAB still gets my money, but reluctantly until then.

How secure is linking your bank account with YNAB?

They use Plaid [0] under the hood. As long as you trust it, it's safe.

[0] https://plaid.com/

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#399

Post by asciimike »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #312
Jommi wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Well, since the stock market only goes up [0], just put all your money in TSLA and you'll do better than 2%

[0]: https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/12685424540867502...

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#400

Post by goleary »

I'm a little surprised about the outpouring of love for Simple. I've been a customer for a year or two and have always been super frustrated with the performance of their web & mobile apps, and their customer service.

I only joined and stuck around because the 1% interest rate was better than anything else I could find at the time. Since their rate dropped I transferred all of my money away.

I'm with Yotta & Onefinance today.

Yotta offers >1% interest rate when you calculate it all out. Definitely not anywhere near the 2-3% the people are mentioning in the the comments. They also just recently dropped the # of tickets you get on deposits above $25k which doesn't help.

One finance offers a 1% rate up to $25k & 3% on an account that can be funded by diverting up to 10% of your direct deposits. They also have "Pockets" which I think is similar to what Simple did but tbh I never use any of that stuff...I'm just a rate chaser.

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