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Comment by joshspankit | Hacker News Reader

I’m not saying this to argue against your points: I’m a fan of Tangerine bank and have been continually and loudly telling them to remove the balances on the account overview screen as it now triggers “burning a hole in my pocket” psychology.

I only mean to say at least a few fans are actively asking for things to be removed, simplified, and (thoughtfully) refined.

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You're asking a bank to remove visible account balances from a dashboard view?

I think it’s a valid request. I wish Apple’s iMessage App would allow hiding or moving conversations to folders to remove from sight. I may have an emotional or upsetting text with someone that I don’t necessarily want to see every time I open the app, but also don’t want to delete it. Or may need to use my phone in a presentation etc, and not want to show certain messages.

However adding an option to remove it as adding a feature, not taking one away.

The app was not complete without that feature. In the ideal state of the app, it was not something you could take away.

Or so I can reason around that logic anyhow.

Aha, I see why there’s been pushback.

To be more clear: I only want to see the balances from specific accounts. The two chequing accounts in this case.

I don’t want to see the savings account that has a slowly (and automatically) increasing balance because then I subconsciously count that as “too much” and think things like “I could spend a little and it wouldn’t make a big difference”.

To be fair, I’m also working hard at shifting my brain after a lifetime of ‘paycheque to paycheque’ patterns and it’s not enjoying the shift.

Really off-topic here, but for savings accounts that are going to tick up over time and don’t need to be available within 24 hours, you can open a savings account with a different bank that has better savings interest rates and set up an automatic or manual transfer to that savings every month. You can shop around for the best interest rates, but I’ve seen Ally be consistently better than anything I have locally.

The benefit of having it in a separate bank is that it hugely increases friction when you start thinking about spending it, since you have to move it back to your primary first. You can mostly forget about the specific numbers in it as well since it isn’t visible in your primary bank dashboard.

No that’s an excellent idea. I was doing this for a bit with my “old” bank and thinking that Tangerine was the only good no-fee bank with the best interest rates so I had not reappraised that lately.

I just looked and there are other options available. I think this might be the excuse for me to go to Wealthsimple and start taking a more active role in making that money do some work.

Conversely, I'd consider an account overview without a balance to be useless. That's what an overview is for. shrug

Sorry, I realize I was not bringing in enough background to explain why it mattered.

You’re right for sure, and I do find benefit in the account overview, it’s just that I only want to see the “spending” accounts, and not the long-term savings accounts.

Much like it might change your financial choices if your bank overview also showed your available credit (instead of the balance owing) and a realtime update of home equity.

Yeah ING lets you see the balance without having to log in, and sometimes it's great to just check how it's going

Can't really tell if this is sarcasm or not...

Understandable. I am saying it genuinely.

The replies I made to other users will hopefully clear it up.

If “burning a hole in my pocket” psychology is a struggle for you, a better banking overview screen will not set you free, but YNAB will:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/

(Not affiliated, just a happy customer that finally broke decades of bad financial habits due to this app and its attendant personal finance philosophy.)

After skimming past recommendations for YNAB I looked it over just now, and because of Tangerine’s multiple accounts (max is about 15) as well as the money-transfer automation, I’ve actually been using the same principles just within my bank tools.

That’s why I was frustrated when they changed from a summary of chequing account balances to a full “dashboard” that showed all accounts.

Up until then I was doing awesome avoiding the “I’m flush with cash” triggers because I was only seeing my actual spending money and not the bills account, the rent account, and the various proactive savings accounts.

Essentially I had all the benefits of YNAB principles because of the tools Tangerine provided

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