Why are so many people applauding their customer service? You can't even call them after 3pm PT.
It used to be amazing. You could start a real time text chat even in the middle of the night, and they were so helpful, professional and friendly, and followed up when they said they would. It was shocking and wonderful.
I'd agree with both sides of this. I was a customer for years and anytime I had an issue they'd respond very quickly. However, getting my wife to get an account approved so we could have the shared/joint account feature was impossible and they would never explain why.
I originally liked Simple but hit some rather unsavory bugs like getting a notification there was an error with a transfer that later went through (around 30-40 minutes later when their job queue apparently caught up) and bugs where a transaction would show as pending and cleared at the same time (there was this weird 4 hour window when I got paid)
Either way... I ended up splitting between Ally and Discover. Paychecks go into Discover and a scheduled transfer (the sum of all budgets) goes to Ally along with a separate savings transfer. The end result is Discover is "safe to spend" but there's less granularity in the buckets/envelopes
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’m great with money and I used to use a spreadsheet but Simple is so much nicer because it’s highly automated.
It’s a well made, convenient tool. Insulting people because they use tools is idiotic.
Plus 1 to Alliant. Their savings rate is top-notch and their apps are pretty good.
-1 to alliant. Had pretty bad experience signing up, they opened the account then closed them, had multiple errors in their website, support wasn't helpful at all.
That was a couple years ago, maybe i should try again
I loved Simple, but had to move back to a traditional bank when I got married. Lack of joint accounts was the major problem, but it also turns out being able to write your own checks instantly has some real advantages (over waiting for 1+ weeks for delivery). I did love the good things about it though, and def sad to see it wind down.
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…
It's refreshing to hear someone write well about some technology that has improved their lives. :)
Yeah. It just made me think how nice “software memorial services” could be for people to express gratitude for these endeavors.
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…
Agreed. I've been using envelope budgeting since college and I simply can't fathom why most people don't do it. Actually, I can fathom it: it's because no one has been willing to keep this incredible feature in an easy-to-use product and support that product long enough for people to see the value. In college I used gnucash for this and even wrote a (now very old and somewhat embarrassing) article about it ( https://…
If you take control of your finances in other ways, this system just isn't necessary. Set up automatic bill pay, set up recurring deposits into savings and investment accounts, use credit cards with the best rewards to pay for things (set to be fully paid off automatically every month), and then spend within your means so you don't live paycheck to paycheck. I suppose that last one is the thing that envelope budgeting/mental accounting is attempting to solve, but the problem is that it isn't actually solving the root cause. Spending smarter or at least not spending frivolously can free you from managing 25 different spending categories every day/week/month.
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…
There really needs to be consumer protections against software-EOL due to mergers/acquisitions, or google just killing things for no reason.
Any commercial software based service like this needs to be a contract with consumer society.
I'm a happy Schwab customer. Their app isn't what you would call simple, but you can do almost all your investing and banking there (I say almost because I own some physical assets) and they refund ATM withdrawal fees.
I'm also moving to Schwab mostly because my previous and current employer have stocks linked to that platform. TBH seems good enough for my use case (long term investing, mostly ETF)
You’re lucky! Schwab is fantastic, and I use it for all my personal banking and brokerage, but most employer 401ks have been through fidelity and others.