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Comment by grahamburger | Hacker News Reader

This is the first of Google's product cancellations that will affect me personally. My wife and I have been using Google Wallet cards for budgeting - we transfer our spending money to the cards each week to help track our spending. Honestly there's no reason Google Wallet was superior for this - I expect Simple will solve our problems better anyway. Should have seen this coming when they split it off of Android Pay.

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It's a UI layer on top of an old-fashioned bank. It offers worse rates, perks, benefits and service than Ally, Schwab or Fidelity. Good if you want something pretty on the side, I suppose.

I disagree about the service being bad. I've had nothing but positive experiences with Simple's support team.

Also, they offer a JSON feed of my transactions, which isn't something any of my other banks provide.

How do you access these json feeds?

It would be nice if they had OAuth support or a formally documented API, but it's still a good start.

The app is nicer and the barrier to start very low. I started using it when I got rid of Ally. Youre right there are no perks to Google Wallet Card but the perks from Ally and other banks are not very useful for the use described above. Basically, they are putting a tiny amount of money aside and spending it all in the next 30 days.

I havent used the app but Simple sounds pretty good since you can set multiple "goals" (I think they should call them buckets or envelopes or something).

Simple is great but it's a bit confusing when looking at your balances. If you are just using the mobile app it's fine because it hides your stashes but the web app spills the beans when it tells you how much money you really have.

Simple is beautiful for budgeting. Every month I use their "goals" as budgets (Rent, recurring costs, motorcycle, day-to-day, insurance, etc.) and I set aside all the money I'm going to spend in each category for the month - and just mark the transactions from that goal. Makes it very easy to budget. There could be improvements - but this works wonderfully right now.

The only Google products that are guaranteed to stick around for the long term are Search and Gmail, and that's been pretty clear to see for the past decade. There's no good reason to get invested in any of their services with how often they pop up and how soon after they're shut down.

And Android, all of the ad stack, analytics (it gives google a lot of data), chrome, maps, docs, drive (in some form), calendar, app engine, hangouts (part of gmail). There are tons of products that are both successful, and are tied to core things google wants to be good at.

Isn't Google trying to merge Android into ChromeOS?

ChromeOS is open sourced and will still be available for some time, but yeah, they're merging the two. Ubiquity between Android and desktop/laptops would be great.

Also youtube.

The only product really guaranteed to stick around is Search. Things closely wedded to Search (GMail, Android, Maps) are fairly safe bets.

Personally, I'll be happy when they close Google Groups.

Groups is the last resting place of the USENET archive. Deleting it would be a tremendous loss!

I bet that's what they do. Just like Google Video. Maybe throw a "oops we are just archiving it!" in before they finally drop the axe.

Note how it's JS interface makes it difficult to archive now. Is that because HTML fallback on USENET would be too hard for the googlemachine?

The sooner the better.

+1 for Simple!

Tell me more: what's this service about?

It's a bank that only lives on the internet. I am actually surprisingly happy with them as my only bank.

Having been a customer of Charles Schwab for several years at this point, I've never seen the appeal of Simple. I get better interest rates, fantastic customer service, unlimited ATM rebates and a host of brokerage services, all for free.

Fellow Schwab customer here. Unlimited ATM rebates has been great. I was surprised at bow nice it felt to whip out my Schwab card next to the scary little free-standing ATM machine at the cash-only shop with some ridiculous $4.00 ATM fee. Felt like a cheat code.

Try it at a casino. You'll feel like you're robbing the place.

> Felt like a cheat code.

Until the day you use an ATM with a skimmer. Private machines are a dangerous cesspool.

Schwab is fantastic. Their service is top-notch and I'm really glad I'm no longer with Chase. I once accidentally rated an online chat interaction lowly, and received a follow up call by a concerned manager less than a day later.

Lots of love happening for Schwab here - but it's more or less the same with Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, etc - ATM rebates for any ATM, no fees, free checking / checkbooks, etc.

A cheat code is a nice way of describing how refreshing this is in comparison with the standard bank business model of offering some fairly limited basic checking account as a loss leader, then constantly trying to upsell you on every other kind of product / account imaginable, trying the overdraft protection scam on you, ATM fees, checkbook fees, etc, etc.

It's a wonder they can stay in business.

> I get better interest rates, fantastic customer service, unlimited ATM rebates and a host of brokerage services, all for free.

All great points. The customer service in particular is just outstanding. If there was the opposite experience of calling into Comcast support, it'd be calling into Charles Schwab. They know their stuff and are willing and able to patiently explain things well beyond a script. The yearly free financial consult is awesome, too.

Only annoyance is that some of the procedures require printing out a PDF, filling it in, and physically mailing it or faxing it back. Hopefully that'll be less common in the future.

That's interesting, I got an email from them a few months after signing up to be contacted at a Career Fair and they left the {{CLIENT NAME}} placeholder in the email. So I figured they were incompetent :P

The only issue with Schwab is their ridiculous password policy (8 chars). Turning on 2FA on your account is a must with them (they'll happily send you a little hardware token generating dongle if you ask.)

It's a bank startup which doesn't have physical locations. They're partnered with Bancorp, so your account is backed by FDIC, and they have a large number of ATMs. You can read more here https://www.simple.com/

> It's a bank startup which doesn't have physical locations

There's got to be more to it than that, right? There are lots of internet-only banks. I use Ally.

http://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/10-online-banks-2015/

Ally's interest rates are tempting, but the fact that it's just GMAC with some new makeup is very off putting.

Simple is "just Bancorp" which you could probably say equal things about.

As I understand it, Bancorp is just contracted by Simple to hold the funds and interface with the banking system. All of the policies, support and user-facing parts are handled by Simple itself.

Ally, on the other hand, literally is GMAC.

Actually it's the other way around. Simple is the public facing interface that is beholden to all of the policies and inconveniences of Bancorp. Don't get me wrong I love the service but full disclosure it's Bancorp with makeup. Now I have had instances where they where Bancorp was closed for a holiday and my direct deposit didn't get processed and I had bills that were going to hit that I needed access to my funds and they were very helpful and happy to do a temporary credit to my account to make sure that I got what I needed.

I could say horrible things about them. Like when I was in school and my student loan disbursement came on a Bancorp debit card, and they charged me money to withdraw funds. Yup, if I wanted to buy books with my student loan disbursement, I got charged bank fees on money I got from a loan and paid interest on, and had absolutely no choice in the matter.

Yeah it was my school's decision, but that doesn't excuse Bancorp from offering a product that is designed specifically to cheat people out of their money.

I switched to Ally for checking & savings a year ago, and I absolutely love it. Best mobile & web UX I've seen from a bank, best interest rates out there, ATM fee reimbursements, and easy mobile check deposit.

Their finances seem relatively healthy: http://www.bankrate.com/rates/safe-sound/memorandums-memos.a...

This, plus a pretty unique system for allocating cash around. Perhaps it's psychological, but I've been with them for about 3 months and have started burrowing out of a years-long financial hole in pretty short order.

Basically, imagine the envelope budgeting system as an actual part of your account, combined with a daily savings option. Assuming that you enter your bills in correctly (and it's, erm.. dead simple), you know immediately how much cash you have is safe to spend.

Great CS as well. Actual humans who speak English and who can solve your problems.

Can't recommend them enough.

You can see that people are pretty split about Simple being a good idea. I can tell you that the one thing they offer me over any other online bank is their budgeting tools.

I'll specify a certain amount like 500 or 1000 dollars to be set aside by any date. It will move over small amounts daily without you noticing. In reality, the money is all in the same account but mentally I do way better with this scheme. I've built an emergency, a car repair fund, saved for AC for my home, and more without seeing a huge loss in my daily balance. It helped me learn to budget and save and that's the value they provide.

If you already are an amazing budgeter, no need to sign up.

-1 for Simple. Not refunding ATM fees is ridiculous for a bank that has no physical ATMs. Also, things like this: "Your Simple Visa® Card will not function on August 6th from 2:00 - 9:00 am EST"

These ATMs have no fees, it looks like: https://www.simple.com/atms

They have ATMs everywhere. And newsflash traditional banks cards do the same thing, they are just less transparent about it.

My bank pays me back for all ATM fees, even ones in other countries.

(I use Schwab, mostly because my "equity awards" were there and I don't need a physical bank.)

Haven't had to pay a ATM fee at my "traditional bank" in years.

Even when customers do not get refunds on fees, banks are usually very clear about it.

I bank with Ally, who refund my ATM fees no matter where I go. I don't see why I would switch to Simple.

Caution: there is a $10 limit on ATM fee reimbursements iirc.

Relevant discussion on Reddit pf

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/3ck2rr/all...

Yes, I'm aware of that, thanks. I haven't yet ever come up against that limit, thankfully.

Is there something like Simple for non-US residents, living in US?

It took some getting used to, but I've really liked using Simple. I can now very easily always answer the following question: "how much money can I spend right now?"

Same here. It's more an annoyance and a function of my laziness but inconvenient nonetheless.

I rarely need to get cash out of a machine but when I do, I transfer some cash to my Wallet Card and hit the ATM. Thankfully all I really need to do is spend a lunch hour heading over to my credit union to get a plastic card but the Wallet Card was much more convenient and allowed me to grab the funds from various accounts.

I have a Simple account as well but stopped using it when I needed a new card and couldn't prove I'd moved since they wanted a few (printed) bills with my new address but unfortunately none of these are in my name so I couldn't fulfill their request. Maybe it's time to revisit that situation and try to work something out again.

No joint accounts with Simple, so it's cumbersome to share a card.

True. My wife and I each have a separate Simple account, and we've never had separate checking accounts before. That would have been a problem except for the fact that Simple provides instant transfers to other simple accounts. So my wife manages roughly half of our budget and I manage the other half, and if we ever need to move money across accounts, we can do it instantly.

Serve looks much better

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