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Simple Bank Is Closing

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Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#461

Post by pfranz »

duhi88 wrote: post #262
kritiko wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for YNAB. For me it's worth it for their auto-import to take a quick look at my spending across accounts at various institutions and to look at larger trends over time. A lot of folks were annoyed when they went to a subscription model, but I think the visibility they provide really does pay for itself.

I tried it. Auto-import never worked reliably. I asked their customer support for help, and they said I should just do it manually. They seemed like a close alternative, but if I'm doing all this work manually, I might as well use a spread sheet for free.

Importing greatly depends how well your bank/credit card plays ball. Most banks don't have any incentive to participate and newer security features like 2fa have made it harder/impossible. I do have one bank that grants application tokens for read-only access. The setup UX wasn't awesome, but I wish that was standard.

Unfortunately, I doubt YNAB can just ask people to move banks. Honestly, that, a web interface, and how speedy ACH payments are processed are kind of my highest priorities and would switch banks just for that. But those are all hard to impossible to assess without opening an account. I had a credit union get very confused when I asked if they had a demo of their web UI before I opened an account. I imagine I was the first to ask.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#462

Post by lxe »

Lots of people in this thread really loving being a Simple customer. I have a "big box" bank and I don't really know if I'm missing out. What should I look for in a bank? What made Simple stand out?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#463

Post by BeetleB »

ska wrote: post #371
BeetleB wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I'm aware of that, which is what I meant: If you do it this way, then you can't do envelope budgeting using subaccounts the way the original commenter said (and I agree with you that you should not do it this way).

Both the methods you propose involve significant work on my part, which to me means "Gnucash doesn't support it." For the first method:

> In this way if you overspend in one, and underspend in another, it all rolls up into the same total.

Arguably, this goes against envelope budgeting. The whole analogy is mirroring the physical world, where an envelope cannot go negative. In my envelopes, if one goes negative, then I need to move money from another envelope into it immediately. In your first scenario, since you're using real accounts, we should not do that (otherwise we lose real spending habits data).

Your second approach is closer, but it's a fair amount of work (or perhaps I misunderstood it). Using my example above, if I go to the store and spend $60 on groceries, $30 on supplies and $10 on misc, how do you propose I put that in Gnucash using those liability accounts?

There's always some way to hack it, but when you actually do it for a while, those hacks become tedious. As I said in another comment, the mechanics of envelope budgeting are easy to code, and I'd like the SW to handle those details for me.

I did play with the built-in budget tool. It's like the typical budget tool in most such SW: No carryover of excess budget - you have to manually track it and update it each month.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#464

Post by BeetleB »

EE84M3i wrote: post #356
BeetleB wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Where do you live where grocery stores accept checks?

Are you in Europe? I hear it's unusual there. In the US virtually every store will accept a check. There are still stores that will not take any card. And some stores that will take a a debit card but not a credit card. But they'll all pretty much take checks.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#465

Post by refurb »

repsilat wrote: post #406
refurb wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the return on paying off a 3.5% mortgage, after interest tax deduction is maybe 2.5% which adjusted for inflation is ~0 to 0.5%.

Inflation affects both in the same way and by the same amount. Ditto taxes, mostly. It's probably best and simplest to compare nominal returns.

Assume an inflation adjusted average return of 3% on your investment and a 20% long-term capital gains you end up with 2.4% return versus 0 to 1% for prepaying a mortgage.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#466

Post by refurb »

sbdbdne wrote: post #414
refurb wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the return on paying off a 3.5% mortgage, after interest tax deduction is maybe 2.5% which adjusted for inflation is ~0 to 0.5%.

You can. Only deduct (married) if you pay more than 10-15k of interest a year? Or am I missing something (itemized deductions is now at 20k limit or so). Edit: and since you need to pay taxes on dividends in bank accounts, you would need something like 3.5-4% interest to match the gains from prepaying the mortgage at 2.75%?

Interest would never match it.

But ignore the interest deduction. Even if you got a 4% return and paid long term capital gains you’d be ahead.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#468

Post by akulbe »

newbie789 wrote: post #456
owenversteeg wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you still have those marks on your record preventing you from opening a checking account, but basically all of the online banks do not check records to open an account (as of today.) So even with wrecked credit, a bad ChexSystems/EWS report etc, you can still get an account. Perhaps this might also be useful for anyone reading this who is in a similar situation today.

I'll be moving to another bank and I'm no longer in a position where I have to worry about stuff that happened back then. It's just kinda sad losing the bank that I've used for basic checking from living under an overpass all the way through home ownership. :(

Are you here in Portland? I'd love to hear your story.

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#469

Post by EE84M3i »

BeetleB wrote: post #464
EE84M3i wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live where grocery stores accept checks?

> Where do you live where grocery stores accept checks? Are you in Europe? I hear it's unusual there. In the US virtually every store will accept a check. There are still stores that will not take any card. And some stores that will take a a debit card but not a credit card. But they'll all pretty much take checks.

I lived in the US for 26 years and never witnessed anyone pay with a check at a grocery store or other similar retail establishment past the mid 2000s. I assumed they were no longer accepted?

Re: Simple Bank Is Closing

#470

Post by leovander »

lgregg wrote: post #434
fb42 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all automatic. You do have to approve and categorize transactions though. But the import is automatic if you’re using a major bank.

not for all major banks, mine (usaa) forces 2fa which broke ynab and made it useable because i don't want to do data entry for every transaction.

I ran into this for alliant. Reach out to YNAB support, they adjust your account supposedly to not use Plaid for instances like MFA being enabled. It wasn't clear if its an all or nothing deal though for all your accounts to use Plaid or not.
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