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Comment by tinkerrr | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to sound cynical, but this just seems like an over-inflated sense of saving that doesn't reflect reality. Sure, I could add in no Starbucks for the week and feel good about it, but then I don't usually have Starbucks anyway. Now, instead of doing something proactive and saving money, I've tricked my mind into believing I am saving money while I am not, thereby hindering any progress towards real goals that need actual savings, not 'mental accounting gimmicks'.

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Simple Finance took a different approach -- saving bits away every day, and assuming you wouldn't notice anything but the lower day-to-day balance and could adjust accordingly.

Maybe the right answer here is to couple this app with a bank account -- so that when you say you didn't spend $3 on a coffee today, that the $3 ends up in an earmarked savings account (or at least deducted from the "safe-to-spend" balance) for that special something you're saving up for.

Yeah, an easy way to say "No coffee, I'm saving money" and then immediately save that money would be a killer thing for me. I try to minimize minor purchases when I'm saving for something, but I like to have my money compartmentalized; you put a few bucks in an envelope (or functional equivilant) and then when the envelope is full, you buy whatever you've been saving for. If there was an easy way to reduce the friction of moving the money into the envelope, I'd probably be way into that.

The goal is to one day have this app moving money when you choose not to spend on the small things. That would for sure make the act of "saving" more real. For now we just wanted to test the concept of tracking when you don't spend money instead of when you do spend.

I think this is one danger of an app like this... If I was "considering" making a purchase when is it appropriate to say that I should "save" it and when would I have not purchased it anyway?

Either way, I think it is a tool that can be used for good as long as that assumption is understood upfront.

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