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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

by drewpc 6y ago

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 from the envelope. Other budgeting tools like mvelopes.com and YNAB are great for visibility/tracking, but they don't move your money around. The alternative I used prior to finding Simple was having about 10 different checking accounts and manually transferring money every few weeks. I really don't want to go back to that setup after tasting the good life. My pitch to the Simple team, or anyone interested in taking this on, is to take the app and build it on top of Stripe Treasury (https://stripe.com/treasury https://stripe.com/treasury).

genbit 6y ago
you can ask to split paycheck direct deposit into 10 different checking accounts, if you in US at least.
- adamesque 6y ago
  the parent literally typed that they used to do just this, didn't have to anymore thanks to Simple, and didn't want to go back. I'm also a bummed Simple customer and they made it so easy to set up buckets for literally anything with zero overhead, which encouraged a ton of saving from me.
  - skapadia 6y ago
    How long have you been a customer? Do you feel it's changed your habits to the point where you wouldn't need to rely on software to save (other than spreadsheets)? (I totally understand your point about the "zero overhead" - that is really appealing)
    - pedroma 6y ago
      Not the person you're asking, but I've been a Simple user since 2016. When I started, I was diligenty using the savings goals. I had a goal for a car, a house down payment, cell phone upgrade, etc. Eventually as my account and goals grew, I found it to be stupid to leave so much uninvested. I just kept a mental note to keep my balance at around $15-20k, transferred everything else to my brokerage.
skapadia 6y ago
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.
- drewpc 6y ago
  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.
  - fb42 6y ago
    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?
    - frankus 6y ago
      I'm not familiar with how YNAB ingests transaction data, but I seem to remember when I looked at it last that at least some transactions have to be logged manually. If you used Simple pretty much exclusively you wouldn't have to manually enter any transactions, although you might occasionally have to categorize things. The obvious exception would be cash transactions, which I don't believe Simple ever tracked in any detail.
      - fb42 6y ago
        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.
        6y ago
drusepth 6y ago
I've thoroughly enjoyed using Capital One's online banking for pretty much this. I have ~20 different savings accounts that I use for budgeting envelopes (you can have up to 25, I think) and each has their own routing/account numbers so you can set up services to pull directly from them and I set up automation to put $X in them from a "main" income account every 2 weeks, so I don't have to manually move money from account to account unless it's for something out of the ordinary. It effectively lets me set up envelope accounts that get automatically filled each month and automatically withdrawn from as charges happen, which is quite nice (and sounds similar to what Simple was doing?). Dunno if it helps as a straight-up Simple replacement, but it works well for me so I thought I'd give them a shout out.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  What are your “envelopes”/accounts and what do you actually do with them? For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food? I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not really any surprise. My mortgage is x, if I owned on a car it would be y, if I’m out I buy food for the week, etc.
  - drewpc 6y ago
    For example: I have 21 expenses in Simple. They're as small as "Spotify: $16.25/mo" and "1Password: $60/year". As large as mortgage, kid stuff, groceries, annual car registration, car insurance, etc. Plus about 8 savings goals.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      Ok. I get that... but you know Spotify is $16.25/mo. Recurring. Every year you know exactly how much it will be. So I guess I just don’t really get it what that envelope is doing. Maybe making sure you don’t get double charged or price change? But... car Insurance I do get. If you get billed every six months getting that big bill out of nowhere does kind of suck.
breckinloggins 6y ago
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://organicdesign.nz/A_day_in_the_life_of_a_dollar https://organicdesign.nz/A_day_in_the_life_of_a_dollar). After I got a bit tired of gnucash's relatively baroque interface I moved over to https://www.mvelopes.com https://www.mvelopes.com, but I found it expensive, slow, and just not to my taste (it might be better now, this was still over a decade ago). Next, I noticed this newfangled site called Mint.com. I liked it right away and even had a phone conversation with its founder about the envelope budgeting idea. He said he really liked it and would look into it but then of course Mint got acquired by Intuit and we all know what Intuit does to creative product ideas. I still use Mint to track net worth and cash flow but every time I open it I sigh at what could have been. Some years ago I heard about Simple and was incredibly excited that an actual BANK finally grokked what was so obviously awesome about this idea. I signed up right away and for a few months enjoyed budgeting bliss. But I knew it was likely to end in corporate takeover sadness and so I avoided moving my accounts to it. This is a decision I regretted having to make, and regret being right about. Some years ago I got the bug again and spoke to some startups who were trying to democratize the "connect to your bank API" space, which would let folks like me just make a tool ourselves and maybe productize it without having to look for VC funding just to afford the stupid license fees for bank connectivity. I had a few good conversations but no one else seemed anywhere near as excited about it as I was. Fast forward to today: I work at a FAANG company doing interesting stuff and have pretty much abandoned my dream of doing finances this way. I've tried gnucash again. I've tried spreadsheets. I've tried custom personal programs. None of them are really good. You REALLY want your bank to do this. What you want is to tie this to your debit and credit cards and have them all pool from the same "virtual subaccounts". What you want is to be able to have your credit card be declined if you go over budget (with an option to override). What you want is to create a tree of accounts in under a second using your smartphone without having to fill out forms. But you won't get it, it seems. Product idea: A bank. With a a nice API. That's it. I'll take my startup idea equity now.
- 6y ago
kritiko 6y ago
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?
- drewpc 6y ago
  I hope this answers your questions: 1. I want to move the money around so I don't spend it and I know I have enough to pay my bills. I don't want to see $1,000 and think "I'm going to spend that". Similarly, I don't want to see a charge come through for a bunch of bills that I don't have enough money for. 2. In Simple's app, if you overspend in an expense or goal, it takes it out of your "safe-to-spend" amount (think: your total spending money). It notifies you that you "overspent" so you can move money around in your little envelopes to fix it. 3. In Simple's case, you have one literal checking and up to two literal savings accounts. The expense/goal "envelopes" are virtual buckets in the checking account, not actual accounts with account/routing numbers. In the past, I've used many literal checking/savings accounts for this purpose.
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    I still don't get how it's different in practice than something like the budget feature in Mint? Basically it's pre-allocating the money instead of just watching what you spend and bucketing it as you go. But unless it's actually going to overdraft the account or decline your card somehow when a bucket is empty instead of taking it from the total amount, those are equivalent.
    - frankus 6y ago
      I think the main difference is in the quality of the experience. Their mobile app is a joy to use, and the integration with the actual banking side of things is reliable and instantaneous. Instead of a separate budgeting app and banking app, you can tweak your budgets from the same place that you deposit checks and transfer money to other banks.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
molsongolden 6y ago
> When a charge comes in for that expense Do you categorize the expense or is it automatically categorized to the correct spending envelope? --- Treasury is B2B focused at the moment but there must be another way to do this...
- noahtallen 6y ago
  You can make sure that a recurring transaction is always categorized to the same category and then that the money is taken from that “envelop” based on the category. So my rent payment will always get automatically categorized to rent, and then all transactions in the rent category automatically pull from a specific “envelop”. Envelops are just a UI/helpful budgeting thing; it’s not an actually different account.
remir 6y ago
A couple of days ago, I opened a YNAB account to test it out and had the same reasoning: why can't my bank do all of that envelope budgeting stuff?
- m8s 6y ago
  Just as a heads up, you can email support after your free trial and ask for an extension. They'll pretty much always give it to you. If you're a student, you can send in your student ID and get a year free. YNAB changed my life.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    would love if you shared how it changed your life, I'm always skeptical about these types of things that I end up abandoning after a short time. thanks!
    - iends 6y ago
      Not parent, but my wife and I have been using YNAB for over 5 years, even before they moved to a web app. It’s changed our lives: - We never fight about money because we have already planned for the next month together. - We each get equal amount of no questions asked personal money that the other person cannot criticize how it’s spent. - When we first started using YNAB we realized we were living off credit card float, and spending money we didn’t have until we got the months paycheck. We thought we were doing great just because we would pay our credit card off each month. But we were actually 100% relying on our future paychecks to survive. - My wife lost her job 2 years ago and was out of work for a month due to COVID. The budget gave us an objective view rather than an emotional one. In both cases, we didn’t need to even rely on our emergency fund because of flexible budgeting. - We are able to maximize credit card rewards without being concerned with spending too much. - We are able to easily track our cash equivalent net worth. Most of these things are not YNAB specific, but the software makes things so much easier.
      - bwbmr 6y ago
codazoda 6y ago
Try Ally Bank for this. I use it in a similar way. They used to let you create a bunch of accounts but they now have "buckets" in their accounts. I find it pretty useful either way.
- jdgoesmarching 6y ago
  Only for savings, which is neat but not as useful.
  - pocketgrok 6y ago
    Simple was savings only until pretty recently too so I’m not sure it’d be a deal breaker for most.
    - ptspin 6y ago
      That's incorrect. Simple was checking only until recently. (been a simple customer for about 7 years)
  - codazoda 6y ago
    Interesting, I never noticed buckets were a savings only feature. I've got a checking and a savings account there. To spend money I transfer to checking. There are federal transfer limits on savings accounts though, which could get in the way for some people.
acjohnson55 6y ago
I use Robinhood's banking feature for this (I don't use them as a brokerage, though). It lets me do direct deposit and automatic withrdrawals from a single account, while earning savings account interest. The interest isn't significant at the moment, but it was nice for a few months, before COVID. I use Mint and Personal Capital for monitoring my budget, rather than earmarking funds.
- pedroma 6y ago
  I'm also going to do everything through my brokerage from now on. I realized I didn't use any of the budgeting or goal features anyways. I was using the goals in the beginning, but the rates just kept going down.
- sdan 6y ago
  I do this. I've moved everything from my bank into RH because its far easier to play around with money to both deposit and withdraw. I'm seeing similar trends among my college friends.
- Jommi 6y ago
  You're getting 0.3% APY, which is pretty useless. I would instead try some of the banks that promise you higher APY rn. There are some offering 2-3%
  - formercoder 6y ago
    Who's offering 2-3%?
    - asciimike 6y ago
      IIRC, Yotta Savings (https://www.withyotta.com/ https://www.withyotta.com/) is in this range. HN did the math on Yotta a few months back: - founder's comments (claims ~3%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786893 - the math (~3.4%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781247 Note that it's likely to go down to get in line with other HYSAs over time (and it's fairly easy for them to change the winning probabilities to hit any interest rate). Currently they're just burning VC cash to get users... Prizepool (https://getprizepool.com/ https://getprizepool.com/) is another player in this space, unsure where they're at though (I know we could do the math, I just haven't).
Saris 6y ago
Ally added buckets last year on their savings accounts which is the same kind of idea, just not quite as mature yet.
- pmart123 6y ago
  I take it you have to use debit to pay for everything for this feature to work well or can you integrate your credit card expenses too?
dhruvrrp 6y ago
Have you tried privacy? (https://privacy.com https://privacy.com) seems to be pretty similar to the enveloping you’re talking about.
- qmarchi 6y ago
  Privacy would be an addition on top of the envelope, where only one card can access the envelope. But Simple's UI hid the total value of everything (+ the envelope). Privacy is a proxy, not the destination.
- drewpc 6y ago
  Yep! I use Privacy with almost all of my online transactions and have my Simple account setup as the funding source. That way I don’t give out my debit card number.
baby 6y ago
Two things: - Monzo and Revolut are better products - they discriminate against permanent residents who are not citizens (you can’t use their service) So from my point of view: heh
- eins1234 6y ago
  FWIW, I tried to sign up for Revolut in US and was not able to proceed because I'm a TN Visa holder, and they don't have an option to use foreign passport + I94 to verify status like every other bank I've signed up for does. Contacted support as well and they couldn't do anything about it. Was a pretty disappointing experience for a supposedly forward-thinking bank.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  it’s not really helpful to provide UK banks as an alternative to a US bank
  - SecurityLagoon 6y ago
    Revolut is in the US https://blog.revolut.com/revolut-launch-united-states/ https://blog.revolut.com/revolut-launch-united-states/ Monzo is launching in the US but got held up by the pandemic. https://monzo.com/usa/ https://monzo.com/usa/
    - madeofpalk 6y ago
      Ahh, silly me. I actually knew this, but was still locked into "UK only".
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Revolut is like dealing with a shady loan shark dude that hangs out in an amusement arcade. One day he tells you one story, you can't get hold of him for a while, he sends you texts promising fantastic things and big discounts, then you track him down and the story has changed. Dear HN crowd, don't waste your time and money with the sharks at Revolut, and be doubly wary of working for them.
4d66ba06 6y ago
Check out Qube Money, they seem early stage but functioning. Once you sign up you can request to be in their Facebook beta testers group which is active.
mrspandex 6y ago
I recommend PNC's Virtual Wallet actually. It's not quite as nice as what you're describing here, but the main interface is a calendar which shows upcoming bill payments, scheduled ACH transfers, checks you've written, and your paycheck. It uses that to calculate a free balance before your next paycheck. It also has tools to schedule automatic transfers between accounts (checking/spend, reserve, and savings). Their landing page for the product is absolutely awful: https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/virtual-wallet-overview.html https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/virtual-wallet-overv... You can see screenshots of at least the mobile version on the play store though: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pnc.ecommerce.mobile&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pnc.ecomme...
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  I've tried PNC, it is an absolute disaster in terms of website, app, fees, timeliness, etc. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would open an account with them. What I had heard was that they had excellent customer support, but then they accidentally locked up my entire checking account for weeks and claimed they couldn't do anything, I just had to wait - until I literally contacted the CEO. I have, of course, since closed my account there.
bumpkinjunkie 6y ago
Simple's Safe-to-Spend® feature was ahead of its time and today is still a really unique feature among digital banks (standalone budgeting apps notwithstanding). I wonder if a challenger bank could buy that IP from BBVA.
- seppin 6y ago
  Being an online bank is largely unprofitable. You still have to operate the backend of a normal bank (which is costly) and you don't have the physical locations to enable the trust you need to get enough customers.
- noahtallen 6y ago
  It really is excellent. I’m finding with YNAB, I would micro manage every detail of my money. With safe to spend, I can carve out the major expenses like rent and debt payments automatically. Basically every recurring payment and savings goal. Then you know exactly how much extra you have for miscellaneous expenses. It’s a lot less work, and has basically been on autopilot for a while. I’m worried now that micromanaging a budget would be more stressful and time-intensive.
  - Scoobs 6y ago
    You could do this easily with YNAB as well but only budgeting for the things you list and throwing everything else into a 'spending money' category. But you'd be missing out on a lot of features that YNAB offers if you did this.
freeAgent 6y ago
I haven’t been a PNC customer in years but as I recall, their “Virtual Wallet” account allowed for similar functionality (not using an envelope concept, but by allocating/reserving money to various recurring expenses so you’d see an adjusted balance after factoring in those upcoming payments). I’m sure the service has changed in the past 5+ years since I used it, but it may be worth checking out. The only reason I left PNC was because I moved to a region where they didn’t have any physical branches.
goleary 6y ago
Does Stripe treasury actually enable people to build independent banks? My understanding was that it was a way of enabling companies to offer bank like functionality to their existing users. For instance Uber could give drivers an "Uber" bank account. Not that you could build your own bank on top of it...but perhaps I'm mistaken.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  I think what he's saying is to just have a service that emulates what he described simplebank doing for him with Stripe Treasury and the banks that support it.
- shafyy 6y ago
  No, you're right, you can't build your B2C "bank" on it. Other services exist for that (e.g. https://www.solarisbank.com https://www.solarisbank.com)
kfriede 6y ago
I was forced to ditch Simple after their ridiculous application policies wouldn't allow my spouse to create an account for us to have a joint account. Since doing so, I've signed up for YouNeedABudget (YNAB) [1], and couldn't be happier. Simple was a great service and I'm sad it is calling quits, but I've outgrown it. [1] https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/
- caycep 6y ago
  I'm still trying to decide between Personal Capital vs. YNAB...
  - kccqzy 6y ago
    Personal Capital's budgeting tool is quite weak. It's not comparable with YNAB. I would describe Personal Capital more as an investment tracking tool. The most amazing future is that it looks into holdings of the ETFs and mutual funds to figure out your exposure.
  - rattray 6y ago
    Tried both, found YNAB far better for budgeting.
- czechdeveloper 6y ago
  They used to have pay-once app. Now you have to pay $12 a month and you are stuck in ecosystem that has your data and require payments forever. That is too steep, especially outside of USA. I'll kill my first unnecessary expense by not buying it.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    I’m actually still using the pay-once app. There are hardly any functional changes between that app and the new web-based app.
    - volta87 6y ago
stevehawk 6y ago
Was this maybe a BBVA feature? Azlo did this as well and referred to them as envelopes.
- cultofmetatron 6y ago
  sadly, they are also being shut down!
mtzet 6y ago
What additional benifit does moving money around provide? From my perspective, there is not much difference between money moving around in the banking system vs moving around on your budget sheet, except the banking system might charge overdraft fees if the accounts are mismanaged. Based on that reasoning I've taken the approach to only have as many bank accounts as I need to utilize their services, and to interact with them as little as nessecary.
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  Counter-question: Does your operating system have all its files directly placed in "/"? Why not? Human nature of thinking needs a context, therefore it makes sense to provide folders or categories to get an architectural structure into a huge amount of data that needs to be processed. Additionally, if you need to manage a business account; having multiple accounts to balance the differences and to trace money expenses is common practice. The IRS or German Finanzamt (for example) won't even accept a simple budget sheet that lists all expenses.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    >Counter-question: Does your operating system have all its files directly placed in "/"? Why not? Because my files are not fungible. I understand keeping business transactions separate from personal transactions. But creating lots of little pots of money for different personal expenditures makes no sense to me at all.
    - zhte415 6y ago
      It makes sense to me. I channel 100 per month for the winter heating bill, no need to think about that, it's automatically there. I channel 500 per month for petty cash, don't dive into the rest, it's automatically there. I channel 200 per month for annual insurances, no need to think about that, it's automatically there. Etc. It's a personal direct-debit, like using rules on one's email.
      - 6y ago
DamnYuppie 6y ago
Outside of rent and automated savings I actually just use good old envelopes for all of my other purchases. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721TMDCL/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721TMDCL/ The annoying part is going to the bank once a month to get the cash and then making sure you have the right denominations to easily distribute to each envelope. It took a few months for me to get used to it but my spending went way down.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
I believe Ally does this same thing?
technerd2000 6y ago
I think there is a good simple alternative called Envel. Does the envelope budgeting but works a bit better I believe..
technerd2000 6y ago
There is already a good Simple alternative called Envel.ai I believe. Its based on the same envelope system (hence Envel..) and has a more advanced budgeting engine...
thelettere 6y ago
Sofi money has something called "vaults" they just launched which may be the same thing. May be worth checking out.
quickthrowman 6y ago
Cash is fungible, it doesn’t matter where you put it. You’re also forgoing 1.5% cash back by not using a credit card and paying it off in full every month.
drewpc 6y ago
UPDATE: Qube Money and Envel.ai seem to be the most similar competitors after searching for a bit. Here's an article on Qube Money's website: https://blog.qubemoney.com/leaving-simple-bank-heres-why-qube-money-should-be-your-new-bank/ https://blog.qubemoney.com/leaving-simple-bank-heres-why-qub... In that article, there's a link to a Google Sheet that someone on Reddit created comparing alternatives: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1Etr8dGtviSRpdAjREgBErc47SlqMVjwZDJjHKxX7eOk/htmlview?disco=AAAALEkb6Y0&ts=5ff88bf8&usp=comment_email_document&usp_dm=false&pru=AAABdwb32vw*C9Shx1avRJd7o-YkzJZ0EA https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1Etr8dGtviSRpdAjR...

by drewpc 6y ago

genbit 6y ago

you can ask to split paycheck direct deposit into 10 different checking accounts, if you in US at least.

adamesque 6y ago
the parent literally typed that they used to do just this, didn't have to anymore thanks to Simple, and didn't want to go back. I'm also a bummed Simple customer and they made it so easy to set up buckets for literally anything with zero overhead, which encouraged a ton of saving from me.
- skapadia 6y ago
  How long have you been a customer? Do you feel it's changed your habits to the point where you wouldn't need to rely on software to save (other than spreadsheets)? (I totally understand your point about the "zero overhead" - that is really appealing)
  - pedroma 6y ago
    Not the person you're asking, but I've been a Simple user since 2016. When I started, I was diligenty using the savings goals. I had a goal for a car, a house down payment, cell phone upgrade, etc. Eventually as my account and goals grew, I found it to be stupid to leave so much uninvested. I just kept a mental note to keep my balance at around $15-20k, transferred everything else to my brokerage.

skapadia 6y ago

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.

drewpc 6y ago
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.
- fb42 6y ago
  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?
  - frankus 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with how YNAB ingests transaction data, but I seem to remember when I looked at it last that at least some transactions have to be logged manually. If you used Simple pretty much exclusively you wouldn't have to manually enter any transactions, although you might occasionally have to categorize things. The obvious exception would be cash transactions, which I don't believe Simple ever tracked in any detail.
    - fb42 6y ago
      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.
      - 6y ago

drusepth 6y ago

I've thoroughly enjoyed using Capital One's online banking for pretty much this. I have ~20 different savings accounts that I use for budgeting envelopes (you can have up to 25, I think) and each has their own routing/account numbers so you can set up services to pull directly from them and I set up automation to put $X in them from a "main" income account every 2 weeks, so I don't have to manually move money from account to account unless it's for something out of the ordinary. It effectively lets me set up envelope accounts that get automatically filled each month and automatically withdrawn from as charges happen, which is quite nice (and sounds similar to what Simple was doing?). Dunno if it helps as a straight-up Simple replacement, but it works well for me so I thought I'd give them a shout out.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
What are your “envelopes”/accounts and what do you actually do with them? For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food? I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not really any surprise. My mortgage is x, if I owned on a car it would be y, if I’m out I buy food for the week, etc.
- drewpc 6y ago
  For example: I have 21 expenses in Simple. They're as small as "Spotify: $16.25/mo" and "1Password: $60/year". As large as mortgage, kid stuff, groceries, annual car registration, car insurance, etc. Plus about 8 savings goals.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    Ok. I get that... but you know Spotify is $16.25/mo. Recurring. Every year you know exactly how much it will be. So I guess I just don’t really get it what that envelope is doing. Maybe making sure you don’t get double charged or price change? But... car Insurance I do get. If you get billed every six months getting that big bill out of nowhere does kind of suck.

breckinloggins 6y ago

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://organicdesign.nz/A_day_in_the_life_of_a_dollar https://organicdesign.nz/A_day_in_the_life_of_a_dollar). After I got a bit tired of gnucash's relatively baroque interface I moved over to https://www.mvelopes.com https://www.mvelopes.com, but I found it expensive, slow, and just not to my taste (it might be better now, this was still over a decade ago). Next, I noticed this newfangled site called Mint.com. I liked it right away and even had a phone conversation with its founder about the envelope budgeting idea. He said he really liked it and would look into it but then of course Mint got acquired by Intuit and we all know what Intuit does to creative product ideas. I still use Mint to track net worth and cash flow but every time I open it I sigh at what could have been. Some years ago I heard about Simple and was incredibly excited that an actual BANK finally grokked what was so obviously awesome about this idea. I signed up right away and for a few months enjoyed budgeting bliss. But I knew it was likely to end in corporate takeover sadness and so I avoided moving my accounts to it. This is a decision I regretted having to make, and regret being right about. Some years ago I got the bug again and spoke to some startups who were trying to democratize the "connect to your bank API" space, which would let folks like me just make a tool ourselves and maybe productize it without having to look for VC funding just to afford the stupid license fees for bank connectivity. I had a few good conversations but no one else seemed anywhere near as excited about it as I was. Fast forward to today: I work at a FAANG company doing interesting stuff and have pretty much abandoned my dream of doing finances this way. I've tried gnucash again. I've tried spreadsheets. I've tried custom personal programs. None of them are really good. You REALLY want your bank to do this. What you want is to tie this to your debit and credit cards and have them all pool from the same "virtual subaccounts". What you want is to be able to have your credit card be declined if you go over budget (with an option to override). What you want is to create a tree of accounts in under a second using your smartphone without having to fill out forms. But you won't get it, it seems. Product idea: A bank. With a a nice API. That's it. I'll take my startup idea equity now.

6y ago

kritiko 6y ago

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?

drewpc 6y ago
I hope this answers your questions: 1. I want to move the money around so I don't spend it and I know I have enough to pay my bills. I don't want to see $1,000 and think "I'm going to spend that". Similarly, I don't want to see a charge come through for a bunch of bills that I don't have enough money for. 2. In Simple's app, if you overspend in an expense or goal, it takes it out of your "safe-to-spend" amount (think: your total spending money). It notifies you that you "overspent" so you can move money around in your little envelopes to fix it. 3. In Simple's case, you have one literal checking and up to two literal savings accounts. The expense/goal "envelopes" are virtual buckets in the checking account, not actual accounts with account/routing numbers. In the past, I've used many literal checking/savings accounts for this purpose.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  I still don't get how it's different in practice than something like the budget feature in Mint? Basically it's pre-allocating the money instead of just watching what you spend and bucketing it as you go. But unless it's actually going to overdraft the account or decline your card somehow when a bucket is empty instead of taking it from the total amount, those are equivalent.
  - frankus 6y ago
    I think the main difference is in the quality of the experience. Their mobile app is a joy to use, and the integration with the actual banking side of things is reliable and instantaneous. Instead of a separate budgeting app and banking app, you can tweak your budgets from the same place that you deposit checks and transfer money to other banks.
  - BeetleB 6y ago

molsongolden 6y ago

> When a charge comes in for that expense Do you categorize the expense or is it automatically categorized to the correct spending envelope? --- Treasury is B2B focused at the moment but there must be another way to do this...

noahtallen 6y ago
You can make sure that a recurring transaction is always categorized to the same category and then that the money is taken from that “envelop” based on the category. So my rent payment will always get automatically categorized to rent, and then all transactions in the rent category automatically pull from a specific “envelop”. Envelops are just a UI/helpful budgeting thing; it’s not an actually different account.

remir 6y ago

A couple of days ago, I opened a YNAB account to test it out and had the same reasoning: why can't my bank do all of that envelope budgeting stuff?

m8s 6y ago
Just as a heads up, you can email support after your free trial and ask for an extension. They'll pretty much always give it to you. If you're a student, you can send in your student ID and get a year free. YNAB changed my life.
- sizzle 6y ago
  would love if you shared how it changed your life, I'm always skeptical about these types of things that I end up abandoning after a short time. thanks!
  - iends 6y ago
    Not parent, but my wife and I have been using YNAB for over 5 years, even before they moved to a web app. It’s changed our lives: - We never fight about money because we have already planned for the next month together. - We each get equal amount of no questions asked personal money that the other person cannot criticize how it’s spent. - When we first started using YNAB we realized we were living off credit card float, and spending money we didn’t have until we got the months paycheck. We thought we were doing great just because we would pay our credit card off each month. But we were actually 100% relying on our future paychecks to survive. - My wife lost her job 2 years ago and was out of work for a month due to COVID. The budget gave us an objective view rather than an emotional one. In both cases, we didn’t need to even rely on our emergency fund because of flexible budgeting. - We are able to maximize credit card rewards without being concerned with spending too much. - We are able to easily track our cash equivalent net worth. Most of these things are not YNAB specific, but the software makes things so much easier.
    - bwbmr 6y ago

codazoda 6y ago

Try Ally Bank for this. I use it in a similar way. They used to let you create a bunch of accounts but they now have "buckets" in their accounts. I find it pretty useful either way.

jdgoesmarching 6y ago
Only for savings, which is neat but not as useful.
- pocketgrok 6y ago
  Simple was savings only until pretty recently too so I’m not sure it’d be a deal breaker for most.
  - ptspin 6y ago
    That's incorrect. Simple was checking only until recently. (been a simple customer for about 7 years)
- codazoda 6y ago
  Interesting, I never noticed buckets were a savings only feature. I've got a checking and a savings account there. To spend money I transfer to checking. There are federal transfer limits on savings accounts though, which could get in the way for some people.

acjohnson55 6y ago

I use Robinhood's banking feature for this (I don't use them as a brokerage, though). It lets me do direct deposit and automatic withrdrawals from a single account, while earning savings account interest. The interest isn't significant at the moment, but it was nice for a few months, before COVID. I use Mint and Personal Capital for monitoring my budget, rather than earmarking funds.

pedroma 6y ago
I'm also going to do everything through my brokerage from now on. I realized I didn't use any of the budgeting or goal features anyways. I was using the goals in the beginning, but the rates just kept going down.
sdan 6y ago
I do this. I've moved everything from my bank into RH because its far easier to play around with money to both deposit and withdraw. I'm seeing similar trends among my college friends.
Jommi 6y ago
You're getting 0.3% APY, which is pretty useless. I would instead try some of the banks that promise you higher APY rn. There are some offering 2-3%
- formercoder 6y ago
  Who's offering 2-3%?
  - asciimike 6y ago
    IIRC, Yotta Savings (https://www.withyotta.com/ https://www.withyotta.com/) is in this range. HN did the math on Yotta a few months back: - founder's comments (claims ~3%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786893 - the math (~3.4%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781247 Note that it's likely to go down to get in line with other HYSAs over time (and it's fairly easy for them to change the winning probabilities to hit any interest rate). Currently they're just burning VC cash to get users... Prizepool (https://getprizepool.com/ https://getprizepool.com/) is another player in this space, unsure where they're at though (I know we could do the math, I just haven't).

Saris 6y ago

Ally added buckets last year on their savings accounts which is the same kind of idea, just not quite as mature yet.

pmart123 6y ago
I take it you have to use debit to pay for everything for this feature to work well or can you integrate your credit card expenses too?

dhruvrrp 6y ago

Have you tried privacy? (https://privacy.com https://privacy.com) seems to be pretty similar to the enveloping you’re talking about.

qmarchi 6y ago
Privacy would be an addition on top of the envelope, where only one card can access the envelope. But Simple's UI hid the total value of everything (+ the envelope). Privacy is a proxy, not the destination.
drewpc 6y ago
Yep! I use Privacy with almost all of my online transactions and have my Simple account setup as the funding source. That way I don’t give out my debit card number.

baby 6y ago

Two things: - Monzo and Revolut are better products - they discriminate against permanent residents who are not citizens (you can’t use their service) So from my point of view: heh

eins1234 6y ago
FWIW, I tried to sign up for Revolut in US and was not able to proceed because I'm a TN Visa holder, and they don't have an option to use foreign passport + I94 to verify status like every other bank I've signed up for does. Contacted support as well and they couldn't do anything about it. Was a pretty disappointing experience for a supposedly forward-thinking bank.
madeofpalk 6y ago
it’s not really helpful to provide UK banks as an alternative to a US bank
- SecurityLagoon 6y ago
  Revolut is in the US https://blog.revolut.com/revolut-launch-united-states/ https://blog.revolut.com/revolut-launch-united-states/ Monzo is launching in the US but got held up by the pandemic. https://monzo.com/usa/ https://monzo.com/usa/
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    Ahh, silly me. I actually knew this, but was still locked into "UK only".
angry_octet 6y ago
Revolut is like dealing with a shady loan shark dude that hangs out in an amusement arcade. One day he tells you one story, you can't get hold of him for a while, he sends you texts promising fantastic things and big discounts, then you track him down and the story has changed. Dear HN crowd, don't waste your time and money with the sharks at Revolut, and be doubly wary of working for them.

4d66ba06 6y ago

Check out Qube Money, they seem early stage but functioning. Once you sign up you can request to be in their Facebook beta testers group which is active.

mrspandex 6y ago

I recommend PNC's Virtual Wallet actually. It's not quite as nice as what you're describing here, but the main interface is a calendar which shows upcoming bill payments, scheduled ACH transfers, checks you've written, and your paycheck. It uses that to calculate a free balance before your next paycheck. It also has tools to schedule automatic transfers between accounts (checking/spend, reserve, and savings). Their landing page for the product is absolutely awful: https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/virtual-wallet-overview.html https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/virtual-wallet-overv... You can see screenshots of at least the mobile version on the play store though: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pnc.ecommerce.mobile&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pnc.ecomme...

owenversteeg 6y ago
I've tried PNC, it is an absolute disaster in terms of website, app, fees, timeliness, etc. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would open an account with them. What I had heard was that they had excellent customer support, but then they accidentally locked up my entire checking account for weeks and claimed they couldn't do anything, I just had to wait - until I literally contacted the CEO. I have, of course, since closed my account there.

bumpkinjunkie 6y ago

Simple's Safe-to-Spend® feature was ahead of its time and today is still a really unique feature among digital banks (standalone budgeting apps notwithstanding). I wonder if a challenger bank could buy that IP from BBVA.

seppin 6y ago
Being an online bank is largely unprofitable. You still have to operate the backend of a normal bank (which is costly) and you don't have the physical locations to enable the trust you need to get enough customers.
noahtallen 6y ago
It really is excellent. I’m finding with YNAB, I would micro manage every detail of my money. With safe to spend, I can carve out the major expenses like rent and debt payments automatically. Basically every recurring payment and savings goal. Then you know exactly how much extra you have for miscellaneous expenses. It’s a lot less work, and has basically been on autopilot for a while. I’m worried now that micromanaging a budget would be more stressful and time-intensive.
- Scoobs 6y ago
  You could do this easily with YNAB as well but only budgeting for the things you list and throwing everything else into a 'spending money' category. But you'd be missing out on a lot of features that YNAB offers if you did this.

freeAgent 6y ago

I haven’t been a PNC customer in years but as I recall, their “Virtual Wallet” account allowed for similar functionality (not using an envelope concept, but by allocating/reserving money to various recurring expenses so you’d see an adjusted balance after factoring in those upcoming payments). I’m sure the service has changed in the past 5+ years since I used it, but it may be worth checking out. The only reason I left PNC was because I moved to a region where they didn’t have any physical branches.

goleary 6y ago

Does Stripe treasury actually enable people to build independent banks? My understanding was that it was a way of enabling companies to offer bank like functionality to their existing users. For instance Uber could give drivers an "Uber" bank account. Not that you could build your own bank on top of it...but perhaps I'm mistaken.

stu2b50 6y ago
I think what he's saying is to just have a service that emulates what he described simplebank doing for him with Stripe Treasury and the banks that support it.
shafyy 6y ago
No, you're right, you can't build your B2C "bank" on it. Other services exist for that (e.g. https://www.solarisbank.com https://www.solarisbank.com)

kfriede 6y ago

I was forced to ditch Simple after their ridiculous application policies wouldn't allow my spouse to create an account for us to have a joint account. Since doing so, I've signed up for YouNeedABudget (YNAB) [1], and couldn't be happier. Simple was a great service and I'm sad it is calling quits, but I've outgrown it. [1] https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/

caycep 6y ago
I'm still trying to decide between Personal Capital vs. YNAB...
- kccqzy 6y ago
  Personal Capital's budgeting tool is quite weak. It's not comparable with YNAB. I would describe Personal Capital more as an investment tracking tool. The most amazing future is that it looks into holdings of the ETFs and mutual funds to figure out your exposure.
- rattray 6y ago
  Tried both, found YNAB far better for budgeting.
czechdeveloper 6y ago
They used to have pay-once app. Now you have to pay $12 a month and you are stuck in ecosystem that has your data and require payments forever. That is too steep, especially outside of USA. I'll kill my first unnecessary expense by not buying it.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  I’m actually still using the pay-once app. There are hardly any functional changes between that app and the new web-based app.
  - volta87 6y ago

stevehawk 6y ago

Was this maybe a BBVA feature? Azlo did this as well and referred to them as envelopes.

cultofmetatron 6y ago
sadly, they are also being shut down!

mtzet 6y ago

What additional benifit does moving money around provide? From my perspective, there is not much difference between money moving around in the banking system vs moving around on your budget sheet, except the banking system might charge overdraft fees if the accounts are mismanaged. Based on that reasoning I've taken the approach to only have as many bank accounts as I need to utilize their services, and to interact with them as little as nessecary.

cookiengineer 6y ago
Counter-question: Does your operating system have all its files directly placed in "/"? Why not? Human nature of thinking needs a context, therefore it makes sense to provide folders or categories to get an architectural structure into a huge amount of data that needs to be processed. Additionally, if you need to manage a business account; having multiple accounts to balance the differences and to trace money expenses is common practice. The IRS or German Finanzamt (for example) won't even accept a simple budget sheet that lists all expenses.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  >Counter-question: Does your operating system have all its files directly placed in "/"? Why not? Because my files are not fungible. I understand keeping business transactions separate from personal transactions. But creating lots of little pots of money for different personal expenditures makes no sense to me at all.
  - zhte415 6y ago
    It makes sense to me. I channel 100 per month for the winter heating bill, no need to think about that, it's automatically there. I channel 500 per month for petty cash, don't dive into the rest, it's automatically there. I channel 200 per month for annual insurances, no need to think about that, it's automatically there. Etc. It's a personal direct-debit, like using rules on one's email.
    - 6y ago

DamnYuppie 6y ago

Outside of rent and automated savings I actually just use good old envelopes for all of my other purchases. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721TMDCL/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721TMDCL/ The annoying part is going to the bank once a month to get the cash and then making sure you have the right denominations to easily distribute to each envelope. It took a few months for me to get used to it but my spending went way down.

Taylor_OD 6y ago

I believe Ally does this same thing?

technerd2000 6y ago

I think there is a good simple alternative called Envel. Does the envelope budgeting but works a bit better I believe..

technerd2000 6y ago

There is already a good Simple alternative called Envel.ai I believe. Its based on the same envelope system (hence Envel..) and has a more advanced budgeting engine...

thelettere 6y ago

Sofi money has something called "vaults" they just launched which may be the same thing. May be worth checking out.

quickthrowman 6y ago

Cash is fungible, it doesn’t matter where you put it. You’re also forgoing 1.5% cash back by not using a credit card and paying it off in full every month.

drewpc 6y ago

UPDATE: Qube Money and Envel.ai seem to be the most similar competitors after searching for a bit. Here's an article on Qube Money's website: https://blog.qubemoney.com/leaving-simple-bank-heres-why-qube-money-should-be-your-new-bank/ https://blog.qubemoney.com/leaving-simple-bank-heres-why-qub... In that article, there's a link to a Google Sheet that someone on Reddit created comparing alternatives: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1Etr8dGtviSRpdAjREgBErc47SlqMVjwZDJjHKxX7eOk/htmlview?disco=AAAALEkb6Y0&ts=5ff88bf8&usp=comment_email_document&usp_dm=false&pru=AAABdwb32vw*C9Shx1avRJd7o-YkzJZ0EA https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1Etr8dGtviSRpdAjR...