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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#371

Post by ska »

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…

Gnucash allows split transactions, so your case is not a problem. So your check of $100 out of your checking account gets split into 3 different places, e.g. expense accounts.

Your actual representation of chequing accounts should really represent the bank account,so you shouldn't do what you describe (that lead to a wrong balance), your actual budgeting is done elsewhere.

If you weren't doing envelope budgeting, you might just mark things into expense accounts, so they keep a running track of what you've spent.

I haven't used it for a while so may get details a bit mixed, but the gist of it is right, If you want to do envelope style budgeting, you have a few possibilities. One is to do regular expense accounts but change your reporting period to say 1 month, and you use the report tools to see what is happening. In this way if you overspend in one, and underspend in another, it all rolls up into the same total. Another way would be more explicit, you would allocate a liability account 1st of each month for each "envelope" and then spend against that. You could freely transfer between these, and you can carry over etc. This would give you an up to date view easily. There are other schemes, depends what you want to make easy and what you make hard.

By the way I'm pretty sure I remember gnucash has a built in budget tool also, but I've never used it; might be close enough to what you want to be the least effort.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#372

Post by Karunamon »

LucasBrandt wrote: post #97
mikey_p wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been really pleased with Capital One overall. The only thing that I wish could be resolved is that it can't be synced with You Need a Budget automatically.

If that syncing is done through Plaid (or maybe even if not), it might be fixed now. I use a similar product, Lunch Money, and syncing didn't work for a long time but within the past month it became possible.

It was indeed plaid, Capital One was doing some kind of BS blocking that was preventing any app that uses Plaid from being able to sync data from there.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#373

Post by Karunamon »

tadfisher wrote: post #332
orange_tee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot blame the founders. They worked hard and risked a lot and were successful so they want to cash out. Here's a radical idea. Maybe if countries care so much about keeping markets competitive, they could buy out late-stage startups to allow them to keep operating independently.

In our case, Simple was at the end of its runway and desperately needed a buyer after our primary angel backed out. BBVA was there at literally the last second (as in, we may not have been able to make the next payroll). So yeah, it wasn't really about the founders wanting to cash out; they desperately wanted to keep the idea going.

Backed out.. as in, Bancorp dumped you? I had the completely wrong idea about that, then.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#374

Post by Karunamon »

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.

My roommate is a USAA account holder. They are a bank that is willing to tell PayPal to pound sand when necessary, and they gain a ton of respect for that.

Unfortunately though, they have some kind of inane limitation on debit cards that don't let you have more than a certain number of pending transactions. And given that you generally won't know and never can control when a place that runs your card actually captures, it's led to some nasty surprises.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#375

Post by ramraj07 »

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.

Wait what's the catch? It's insured and still able to give so much interest? Even CDs don't give anywhere close

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#376

Post by 1shooner »

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 have both, and since adopting YNAB, my Simple budgets have been redundant and abandoned. Simple offered nothing that YNAB doesn;t, other than direct actions on your account (transfers, etc). That was far outweighed by YNAB's ability to manage multiple accounts, in particular their credit card balance & payment management.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#377

Post by joppy »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #285
kipple wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your mortgage interest rate, have you considered continuing the 18 years and investing your extra cash in index funds? Market returns ~10% over 20 years, so if your mortgage is 6% or less it's in your best 'interest' to continue.

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?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#378

Post by jimmaswell »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #300
jimmaswell wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can't empathize with your lack of empathy. All I need is to try to put myself in someone's else shoes to feel empathy, going through what they're going through is not required.

I understand it like I understand some people are allergic to fish, but I can't directly empathize with them either because I've never had an allergic reaction. You knew what I meant.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#379

Post by mdciotti »

jsjohnst wrote: post #301

While it was never my primary bank, I’ve been a Simple customer since it was in beta and still known as Bank Simple. I’ve searched my email, checked the announcements in the app, and checked the website, but there’s no mention of them closing. You can even still apply for accounts online. Talk about mismanagement!

I had to check my spam to find the notice, after hearing about it from a friend first!

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#380

Post by closeparen »

Karunamon wrote: post #368
closeparen wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked Simple’s UI and budgeting tools a lot, especially the “safe to spend” thing, but I don’t think running everything directly from a checking account is wise. It’s really better to have a credit card that you pay off every month, with solid fraud protection and rewards, and touch your debit card as little as possible. Simple’s snazzy software is not too useful when you do that. I ended up using a traditional che…

Agreed in principle, but unless your credit is great, getting a card with enough of a limit to let you do this is almost impossible.

Wow. My credit card limit has been about 2x monthly income since I started working.
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