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When I was a kid without a bank account, a 401K or other investments to worry about, I used to put my money in envelopes: one for a new bike; one for a video ga

When I was a kid without a bank account, a 401K or other investments to worry about, I used to put my money in envelopes: one for a new bike; one for a video game, etc. I could glance at my cash and know exactly what was safe to spend without performing mental math. Simple's Safe to Spend feature is the digital equivalent. I can aside money for rent and emergencies in digital envelopes. I never thought personal finance was fun and easy until I began using Simple. It changed the way I think about money.

bentcorner 13y ago
I'm not a Simple customer but the way I do this at my fuddy-duddy bank is having a separate "spending" account and a "bills" account (two checking accounts). Every week I "pay" myself into the spending account from the bills account (spending is basically food + gas + shopping). Paycheck goes into the bills account which at the start of the month has enough to cover all expected bills for the remainder of that month.
HelloMcFly 13y ago
Sounds similar to YouNeedABudget. It's switched the way I think in a very similar way.
Nicholas_C 13y ago
The problem is I use credit cards for reward points and I only pay them off once a month. It sounds like you can only get budget reports for money you've spent on your Simple card. Correct me if I'm wrong. This wouldn't be too helpful to me. The budget tool would be awesome if it encompassed all my cards.
lftl 13y ago
I really want a nice envelope budgeting debit card, but for my purposes Simple wasn't it. Most notably, if you mark a transaction as coming from a specific goal, and the amount of the transaction is more than the goal, the goal gets set at $0, and there's no way to determine what the balance was before you marked the transaction. You can unmark the transaction, but at that point you'll actually have more in your goal than you did previously. Basically I want Simple but with a richer transaction history. It doesn't have to be as cumbersome as a full double-entry account system, but it needs to have roughly a similar level of account history.

bentcorner 13y ago

I'm not a Simple customer but the way I do this at my fuddy-duddy bank is having a separate "spending" account and a "bills" account (two checking accounts). Every week I "pay" myself into the spending account from the bills account (spending is basically food + gas + shopping). Paycheck goes into the bills account which at the start of the month has enough to cover all expected bills for the remainder of that month.

HelloMcFly 13y ago

Sounds similar to YouNeedABudget. It's switched the way I think in a very similar way.

Nicholas_C 13y ago

The problem is I use credit cards for reward points and I only pay them off once a month. It sounds like you can only get budget reports for money you've spent on your Simple card. Correct me if I'm wrong. This wouldn't be too helpful to me. The budget tool would be awesome if it encompassed all my cards.

lftl 13y ago

I really want a nice envelope budgeting debit card, but for my purposes Simple wasn't it. Most notably, if you mark a transaction as coming from a specific goal, and the amount of the transaction is more than the goal, the goal gets set at $0, and there's no way to determine what the balance was before you marked the transaction. You can unmark the transaction, but at that point you'll actually have more in your goal than you did previously. Basically I want Simple but with a richer transaction history. It doesn't have to be as cumbersome as a full double-entry account system, but it needs to have roughly a similar level of account history.