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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#351

Post by BeetleB »

cactus2093 wrote: post #335
BeetleB wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the Mint budget feature include rollover for money not spent?

I think so, but I leave it off to try and start from a clean slate and save a the leftover instead if possible. But you can also change the dates of charges, so you can move stuff to next month or the previous month if there was room left over which I find convenient for spreading out big purchases.

Having rollover is a defining aspect of envelope budgeting. I put aside $150/mo for house repairs. I may have multiple repairs a year, or go almost 2 years without repairs. Rollover makes it easy to make sense of this madness. Multiply this by M for M other categories where spending is not regular.

> But you can also change the dates of charges, so you can move stuff to next month or the previous month if there was room left over which I find convenient for spreading out big purchases.

I do not want to alter the actual record of charges - that would cause lots of other problems. And I don't want to manually babysit this. I want to be able to get a balance of my account with all the money set aside subtracted out (regardless of whether it was spent or not).

Envelope budgeting is an incredibly simple algorithm, and I find it quite disheartening that most open source financial software does not support it. YNAB has shown how helpful it is to many, many people. I think Ledger and hledger are the only open source applications I know where one can do this.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#352

Post by waynesonfire »

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 agree, Mint is a joke compared to YNAB. It didn't even come close to addressing my budgeting needs or giving me an insight into my finances.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#353

Post by skygazer »

jakeva wrote: post #238
PascLeRasc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dark Sky got shut down? It works for me, or do you mean something different?

Android app was pulled. API service stopped accepting new applicants. API is scheduled to shut down. (iOS app continues to be updated, but API/functionality maybe rolled into iOS in a future version.)

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#354

Post by jdgoesmarching »

jimmaswell wrote: post #260
kritiko wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For people who have no self control without resorting to playing tricks on themselves I guess. I can't empathize at all, all I need is a spreadsheet at most, but I guess it works for some people.

I struggled with money for a long time before a bunch of “tricks” helped get my life in order. There are a lot of things that affect this in psych literature, including growing up poor and several mental disorders. Congrats that your particular circumstances never made this an issue for you.

Bragging about your lack of empathy doesn’t make you a badass, it just makes you sound like a dick.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#355

Post by BeetleB »

breckinloggins wrote: post #341
BeetleB wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used GnuCash in many years, but when I did, it did not support envelope budgeting.

The way I found to do it is to use the account tree feature to have "virtual subaccounts" under real accounts. That way you'd have something like: - Checking - Food - Housing - Entertainment - Emergency Reserve Your paycheck would go into checking and then you'd "fund" those subaccounts from the top level account. Then, when you reconcile your statements (I did it every day by going online), you "spend" out of the su…

This is doable, but still a bit of a pain:

I pay using different accounts (bank accounts or credit cards). Groceries, in particular, I pay with both checks and cards. Admittedly, this is still a problem with many envelope budgeting SW, but they usually have ways to mitigate this.

The other problem: Say I have two checking accounts A and B, and I pay for groceries with A and car expenses with B. One month I overspend car stuff and my envelope for B is in the negative, and I don't have enough emergency reserve. I take money out of my grocery envelope under A to bring the car envelope in B back to 0.

Now if I did this in GnuCash, it will show a wrong balance in one of my checking accounts (unless I physically transferred money between the two accounts).

Your setup will work if you tend to spend everything from one account. I am curious, though: If you do it this way, doesn't it make reconciling a bit of a pain? Let me explain:

When I go to do groceries, I usually have multiple categories I am purchasing (example below):

1. Groceries = $60

2. Supplies = $30

3. Miscellaneous (catch-all) = $10

I pay with a check of $100. How do you represent this in GnuCash? Will you list 3 separate transactions coming out of each virtual subaccount? If so, do you then not reconcile with your bank statement? Or does GnuCash let you mark it all as one transaction under Checking to make reconciliation easy?

Ledger CLI has good support for "true" virtual accounts, so that the "real" accounts show the real world transactions (it will show up as one transaction from Checking to the Grocery Store), while simultaneously letting you split this into the 3 virtual budget accounts.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#356

Post by EE84M3i »

BeetleB wrote: post #355
breckinloggins wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I found to do it is to use the account tree feature to have "virtual subaccounts" under real accounts. That way you'd have something like: - Checking - Food - Housing - Entertainment - Emergency Reserve Your paycheck would go into checking and then you'd "fund" those subaccounts from the top level account. Then, when you reconcile your statements (I did it every day by going online), you "spend" out of the su…

This is doable, but still a bit of a pain: I pay using different accounts (bank accounts or credit cards). Groceries, in particular, I pay with both checks and cards. Admittedly, this is still a problem with many envelope budgeting SW, but they usually have ways to mitigate this. The other problem: Say I have two checking accounts A and B, and I pay for groceries with A and car expenses with B. One month I overspend…

Where do you live where grocery stores accept checks?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#357

Post by eat_veggies »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #293
baby wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some banks do (monzo and revolut)

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.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#358

Post by 01100011 »

Off topic: What are folks using these days for banking? Is there a good, online bank with a decent savings and checking yield? I've been keeping my 6 month reserve in a checking account for a while because I'm lazy but this article has me considering a switch.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#359

Post by renewiltord »

_ea1k wrote: post #215
renewiltord wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, even though that 10% is net tax 8.5% (vs. the full 6%) it seems like one could refinance it down in future. Still, I don't think most payment terms are flexible enough to make them an indefinite loan (go interest-only).

Depending upon their tax situation, the loan rate may be effectively a little lower due to the tax deduction too, though. And, tbh, 6% is a really high mortgage now. Rates below 3% are common.

Yeah, when I last checked for a mortgage (4 mos ago), I was offered 2.8%

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#360

Post by chipotle_coyote »

quesera wrote: post #210
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #86

I loved Simple for a long time -- I was one of the "beta" customers -- but I switched away from them over a year ago. I'd already been annoyed with them over something seemingly trivial; I go by my middle name and last name, not first and last, and want my credit/debit card to match that, reading "Middle Last". Everyone else allows me to do this and Simple did allow that... until we all had to migrate our accounts fr…

> being told "we can't do that" I've had similar experiences with other institutions. The explanation boiled down to KYC policies and some relationship to newer DHS Real ID regulations. So, what used to be allowed, is no longer. This might be true everywhere.

While I thought that might be the case, I got a credit card after this with my middle and last name. AFAIK, as long as the bank has both your true legal name on file and your preferred name on file, the card can be issued in your preferred name.
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