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Show HN: Penny, an easy way to track your spending
- cs0 11y agoAre you looking to expand into the UK any time soon? I would be interested in using it.
- dontmitch 11y agoWe wish. A couple things that are stopping us: the transaction aggregator that we use (Plaid) doesn't support international banks, and the UK/EU in particular have stringent regulations on connecting to a bank account from a third party service.
- abritishguy 11y agoCheck out https://getmondo.co.uk/docs/ https://getmondo.co.uk/docs/
- largote 11y agoWhy would I migrate from Mint to this?
- jonaf 11y agoBecause Mint has been horribly broken and useless from the day Intuit bought it. Currently I use an excel spreadsheet in lieu of my now-inactive Mint account. Because even nothing is better than mint.
- cookiecaper 11y agoI had the same issues with Mint, it was always broken, always giving back unreadable account errors, always missing stuff in searches, never applying tags properly (and no mass tag update, argh). Check out PocketSmith. It may not have every feature I want, but at least it actually works. There is a nominal monthly fee associated with it, but well worth it if you want to actually use an online money analysis tool to do anything.
- cloakandswagger 11y agoOdd, I hear this complaint all the time but have never personally experienced it. Mint has always worked for me, even with a bunch of esoteric 401k and other accounts from no-name banks.
- dontmitch 11y agoMitch here, one of the co-founders. I don't want to throw Mint under the bus: I used it for ~6 years before starting to work on Penny and it's a great tool for people that enjoy spreadsheets and crunching numbers (myself included). That said, it can be pretty intimidating to just to about everyone else. Penny requires a lot less effort on your part, since the number crunching is all done behind the scenes to generate cool insights. To answer the specific question of why _you_ might switch: Mint hasn't really improved beyond the addition of more ads in the past four to five years. It's painfully slow (at least for me) and still has not learned that my gym membership is not software.
- curun1r 11y agoMy main concern in using sites like this is that they'll leak my banking credentials. Mint uses Intuit's service for communicating with financial institutions, which is also used for Quickbooks and TurboTax. Credentials are encrypted and housed in a datacenter owned by Intuit. The Mint application only ever stores a token representing the account and uses the service to pull transactions from a read-only service. While I'm still uneasy about this setup, the isolation of the systems combined with the scale and the resources devoted to keeping it secure provide some piece of mind. Can you talk about the measures that you use to protect banking credentials so that I might feel similarly safe about giving them to your service?
- dontmitch 11y agoThere are actually three major players in the transaction aggregation space: Intuit, Yodlee, and Plaid. We use Plaid, but it works the same as Intuit. In fact, Plaid has a partnership with Intuit to backfill support for bank accounts. We never store any credentials on our system, and our access is read only. I can go on for days about why I think our system is more secure than, say, Chase[0], but if you trust Mint's practices it's probably sufficient to say that we use an almost identical system. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_JPMorgan_Chase_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_JPMorgan_Chase_data_breac...
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- therobot24 11y agothis was posted not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9942202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9942202 Though i can't tell if anything has changed since the last posting
- david_p 11y agoLooks useful and neat, but remember kids: if you're not paying for it, you're the product. Some of their competition: http://linxo.com http://linxo.com (used it for 5 years now), http://bankin.com http://bankin.com (used once, preferred linxo).
- Sujan 11y agoFascinating that they are both French only... For the German market there are https://www.centralway.com/ https://www.centralway.com/ and http://www.epost.de/privatkunden/epostapp/banking-app-kontopilot.html http://www.epost.de/privatkunden/epostapp/banking-app-kontop...
- david_p 11y agoI guess that's because I'm french myself and selected services that work in my country :)
- dontmitch 11y agoFair point. Right now we're not making any money off of users. Down the line, we'd like to explore freemium features or perhaps a subscription model. We don't want to or plan to sell your data. And for completeness: in the US the competition includes Level Money and BillGuard.
- dvcc 11y agoAlthough it looks great, I still have no idea if it supports different types of accounts (loans, banks, etc.) or even if it supports my bank. Looking around I don't see a list of supported accounts or account types. Is it hidden somewhere?
- Sujan 11y agoI had it easier: "Penny is currently only available in the United States" on the app store already made it clear that it's not for me ;)
- peterfile 11y agoAre you serious!? Every Paragraph in their Privacy section reads like: "We totally won't collect your data; and definetly won't store them, BUT we kind of do something similar and you just have to accept that" Nobody should ever use this BS!
- rekshaw 11y agoplease roll out to EU. Thanks
- onion2k 11y agoDoes it know what category to put something in if I use cash? From my experience tracking what I spend, it's those transactions that I actually need to keep track of if I'm going to spend money more sensibly. All of the headline, automated bills that get paid monthly are easy to manage. It's the little transactions of a few bucks here and there that add up to that "Where the hell did this month's wages go?!" feeling. If there isn't a good way to track cash transactions then it's not likely to change the way I handle my money, and consequently it wouldn't be very useful for me.
- dkyc 11y agoThis looks great, really good UX/UI from a first glance. My bank has a pretty modern banking app, so some of the features (like spending graphs) are familiar to me (though not as pretty as in Penny). Two things that I dislike with my banking app: - No real differentiation between fixed, monthly cost and variable expenses. It would be nice if the automatically separated monthly expenses and one-time expenses. - Lots of "-$100 Cash" transactions whenever I use an ATM. This is my main concern actually. It's really hard to have some sort of insight about my finances without seeing the biggest part of my non-expenditure spending: The stuff I pay for in cash. Especially since it distorts the monthly overviews: If I retrieve $500 from my bank account on July 31st, it's not helpful to add that to my July spending, since 90% of that money will probably be spent in August. This is really a data-entry/UX problem, no API will solve this. One thing that I would suggest: Make an extension that makes it really simple to "scan" receipts. Just one glance of the camera, some OCR and the data is in there. If it's simple enough, it may become part of my "muscle memory" to scan receipts with the app whenever I buy something, so I get meaningful analysis results. (By the way, if you want to build something like that, check out this API: https://scanbot.io/de/sdk.html https://scanbot.io/de/sdk.html - great product & company, I'm not affiliated in any way)
- zrail 11y agoSimple method: don't pay cash. At this point the only thing I use cash for is the occasional Powerball ticket.
- dkyc 11y agoI try to, but there is all kinds of scenarios where I revert back to cash: I have to have cash in my wallet anyway for things like parking tickets, so sometimes when I'm in a rush I use it. Or for example when I purchase something via card, and split the cost later on with somebody. He pays me back in cash, and it's back in my wallet.
- zo1 11y agoDo you know what their SDK pricing is like?
- cookiecaper 11y agoI'm not really into the simulated live chat interface. It'd be a lot easier to click a button that said "Your spending" than to type out "Please show me my monthly spending Mr. Robot" (or to type out anything, especially on a phone).
- dontmitch 11y agoThere's actually not a lot of typing involved since the responses are pre-populated for you. You can see an example of what that looks like on the marketing page.
- largote 11y agoThis relies on you actually remembering the text commands though, as opposed to just seeing the different buttons and taping whichever one you care about.
- cookiecaper 11y agoIt's kind of like a human-friendly CLI, so I can appreciate that, but I agree that there should at least be clickable defaults.
- dontmitch 11y agoSorry for not being more clear: the responses are just buttons that you click. For the majority of any conversation, there's no typing involved.
- cosinetau 11y ago"and you hereby appoint Penny as your true and lawful attorney-in-fact and agent, with full power of substitution and resubstitution, for you and in your name, place and stead, in any and all capacities, to access third party internet sites, servers or documents, retrieve information, and use your accounts, passwords, and other information" Lol, no.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoThis. BTW, is anyone aware of a legalese parser and translator? Because I think it would be a hit.
- dvcc 11y agoThere is https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/, although it is manual work rather than automated.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoYeah, that's a great service, but I think something automated would solve the scaling problem. It feels like a much easier problem to solve than general-purpose natural language processing because - my impression is that - so much legalese is stock phrases and boilerplate. Even something that would tell me what "true and lawful attorney-in-fact" would be a start! IANAL, obviously.
- hardwaresofton 11y agoI think this might (should?) be standard phrasing for any app that accesses another company's API on your behalf... We may not think of it this way, but this seems like correct legalese for any sort of assistant app, whether it takes your username and password, or you give it an API key.
- dontmitch 11y agoThat was our understanding too. One thing to clarify: it's just me and one other guy (imalex) working on this, although we're hoping to hire another person soon. We're not trying to screw anyone over with the privacy policy. We just don't know anything about legalese, so we relied on existing terminology.
- bvanslyke 11y ago"Where did my money go" budgeting has never worked for me. I've been way more successful with planning ahead every $ of income as I get it and then manually tracking expenses. Budgeting had to become an actual activity for me, and not just something done automatically by a webapp. I'm a huge shill for YNAB[0]. The software is really nice but basically it's a glorified (paid) spreadsheet. My fiance and I agree that the methodology it forces you to use, though, has easily saved us thousands so far. [0]http://youneedabudget.com http://youneedabudget.com - they recently upgraded to a subscription based web app but I'm still using the classic version that's a one time purchase: http://classic.youneedabudget.com http://classic.youneedabudget.com
- kdamken 11y agoI couldn't agree more - I tried mint for a while and I basically did nothing with it besides checking my transactions. YNAB completely changed how I view my money. Now when I go to buy something, I don't just go spend. I see how much I have in that category, and if it's not enough, I either move money to it from another category, or not buy it. It's been very helpful for me in my goal of saving more than 50% of my take home pay.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- HerpDerpLerp 11y agoShame it has gone subscription only :( I hate ongoing charges for that sort of thing.
- kdamken 11y agoYea I've been on the fence about trying that out, especially since it's missing some key features (reporting, the calculator). At least YNAB4 is supported til the end of 2016, gives them time to get the new one fixed up.
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- jwineinger 11y ago"Bank-grade security" What does that mean to you? Just an SSL cert of XXXX-bits?
- bvanslyke 11y agoMaybe your password gets converted to its numeric phone keypad equivalent :V http://colin.keigher.ca/2016/01/bank-of-montreal-has-horrible-password.html http://colin.keigher.ca/2016/01/bank-of-montreal-has-horribl...
- CaptSpify 11y agoConsidering banks are notoriously insecure, this doesn't instill any confidence in an app that wants access to all of my personal finances
- rdl 11y agoThe utter lack of information about who is behind this ("Industry Veterans" -- who?) makes me exceedingly reluctant to trust this. It's an iPhone app, so there's a minimal level of DUNS/screening/etc., but enh.
- donretag 11y agoI rather use a website over my phone to track my expenses. Having an app is great, but a website is the topmost priority to have.
- amackera 11y agoLove the idea. I wish I could use it (I'm Canadian).
- grawlinson 11y agoI'm from New Zealand and every time I see something new that I'd be interested in using, it's always US-exclusive. The same applies for software, hardware, clothing and a lot of other things now that I think about it.
- oniMaker 11y agoThis must be for those people who cannot manage their email, operate a calendar, or create a spreadsheet. I hope the HN audience hasn't degraded to the point of being incapable of handling their personal finances without needing the help of a cutesy avatar painted over a faceless algorithm owned by people who are excited at the prospect of exploiting your financial data to the fullest.
- enraged_camel 11y ago>>I hope the HN audience hasn't degraded to the point of being incapable of handling their personal finances without needing the help of a cutesy avatar painted over a faceless algorithm owned by people who are excited at the prospect of exploiting your financial data to the fullest. Maybe not, but it definitely has degraded to the point where people like you spitefully shit on other people's hard work.
- oniMaker 11y agoGrow up.
- dang 11y agoPlease don't react to a bad comment by posting an attack that only makes the thread worse. Instead, flag it (by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag').
- enraged_camel 11y agoI can't flag comments that are immediate responses to mine, unfortunately.
- dang 11y agoAh yes that's true. But in that case you should just leave it to other users to take care of, or (if the comment is egregious) let us know about it at hn@ycombinator.com.
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- morb 11y agoUnfortunate naming. There's also a ledger-like CLI finance app using the name Penny. And I honestly thought that's what the submission was about. http://massysett.github.io/penny/ http://massysett.github.io/penny/
- HerpDerpLerp 11y agoI wish all banks would have a read only feed of my data that I could give to apps like this. (Though as I am in the EU there are actually very few that do the integration (if any))
- tdkl 11y agoFriendly chat bot facade, data collection/analysis in the background. Aral Balkan couldn't be more spot on : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upu0gwGi4FE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upu0gwGi4FE
- tryitnow 11y agoI just signed up for this. It looks pretty cool. Can this connect to Venmo? Square cash? Or similar systems? That would be neat.
- jbob2000 11y agoThe unfortunate thing about apps like these is that if you are wise enough to use it, you are wise enough to not need it. Totally anecdotal, but the people I know who have trouble managing money are just completely unaware of it. Money goes in and money goes out, and they only do something if someone calls them or sends them a letter. As soon as you show these people the numbers, they get it. It clicks for them. Mint and Penny both suffer from the same thing those "hire a maid" apps suffer from; Once I've made the initial contact, I have no reason to continue to use the service, I can just contact the maid directly. Same thing with Mint/Penny; Once I am shown my finances, I have an awareness of my financial situation and don't need the service any more. What will drive me to continually use this service, beyond my initial few weeks? You can only analyze my finances so much before there is nothing left to tell me. And then you will get to the point that Mint is at, where you start offering me credit cards and credit reports and mortgages, because that's the only thing left to do in this space.
- fibbery 11y agoI totally disagree about Mint. I have accounts across so many different services (bank, credit cards, loans, investments) and it saves me so much time because I only have to log in one place and I can see the full picture of my finances. I also like the trends feature so I can breakdown spending into different categories. Plenty of financial services have stats on their sites, but mint unifies all of them.
- jbob2000 11y agoAh, fair enough! That is not an issue for me, all of my accounts, cards, and investments are with one bank. Perhaps I have downplayed the importance of these services because of that.
- cookiecaper 11y agoI'd be careful with this. Mint is often out of date or broken for me. Don't accept it as the authoritative source on your balances.
- imalex 11y ago
- j_s 11y agoAnother personal finance app soft-launched by an HN-er last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9095519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9095519 http://family-fortune.ridgebit.com/ http://family-fortune.ridgebit.com/
- jasdeepsingh 11y agoAny chance when this shall be available outside of the US App Store?
- ionised 11y agoI tried using the Wallet app from Budget Bakers for a while and failed miserably. The app seemed fine but I could never consistently remember to enter all my puchases into it right away. After a few days or even a week or more of forgetting I would struggle to remember exactly what I spent and where, especially from generic ATM withdrawals listed on my bank statement. The app became useless for me because of that. I really want a budgeting solution that works for me but haven't found one yet, beyond just making an Excel spreadsheet of monthly incomings/outgoings and then using that to work out what my remaining 'fun' money is.