Simple
Simple is online banking with superhuman customer service and tools to help you easily budget and save, right inside your account.
What is Simple?
Simple is one of the first mobile banking apps that has helped customers budget and save since 2012. Budget and save with no hidden bank fees, with balances in Protected Goals Accounts earning a competitive interest rate.
Every aspect of a Simple checking account is optimized for branchless online banking, budgeting, and saving, so you can track spending and manage your money wherever you happen to be. Simple is personal finance made easy.
Without setting foot in a branch (or a bank stuffed into an ill-fitting mobile app), you have access to:
- Built-in budgeting and saving tools
- Visa® Debit Card
- Photo Check Deposit
- FDIC-Insurance up to the legal limit
- Direct Deposit
- External Account Linking
- Instant Transfers to Other Simple Customers
- Third-Party Payment services like Square, Venmo, and Paypal
- Block your card online if it's been lost or stolen
Simple Goals Use Goals for saving money: Stash away money for the unexpected, or automate saving for things you want. From a trip to Italy to a new bike. Open a separate Protected Goals Account to keep money tucked away from spending while earning a competitive interest rate.
Simple Expenses Set up your Expenses one time and going forward, we'll do the rest. When you pay your rent, your Expense is already saving money for next month's bill. Yep, it's our job now. (You can even split Expenses with a partner when using a Shared Account).
Safe-to-Spend Spend money spontaneously, without derailing your budget or bills (or doing the math on the spot...). We take your account balance, subtract your Expenses and Goals, and tell you exactly how much money you have left over to spend on whatever you want. (Buy the shoes!)
And much more…
This bank is being dissolved into its parent company on May 8th. Details on their website.https://www.simple.com/
Simple Screenshots
Simple Features
Comments and Reviews
Category
Business & CommerceRecent user activities on Simple
Danilo_Venom added Simple as alternative(s) to Countingup
Sklavit added Simple as alternative(s) to The Credit Thing
sr00 added Simple as alternative(s) to Conotoxia
I've held an account with Simple since July 2014. That was back when they were still partnered with Bancorp Bank. A lot has changed since then.
If you are looking for something that provides a way for you to budget your money by following the envelope system. Simple is something you should consider. I argue it is better than something like YNAB because when you budget something in the Simple interface, it is directly applied to your money. When you swipe your card, you immediately get a notification and you can have it auto-assign transactions based on their transaction types. If you want to be able to set up some automation where you know how much a bill is every month and about how much you earn in your paycheck. Then you can do so based on pay periods and simple budgeting rules. Now if you want a joint account with these features as well as immediate transfers to other people who also use Simple. Then Simple is what you should use.
Today I have 28 Expenses (normally recurring bills or transactions). My paycheck comes in and that money gets sorted into the various expenses and goals. After that, I go buy groceries and if the transaction didn't get assigned or get assigned to the correct expense I can do so before I leave the store. This business has greatly helped me manage my finances on a level I just could not achieve with YNAB or Actual budget software. All because the budgets I designed were not close enough to my money. There is no reconciling of budget with bank because budget and bank are the same thing.
So, what are the drawbacks?
There are a few. Every feature they have come out with is helpful, but slightly off.
Moving money to and from Expenses, Goals, or Safe to Spend does not show up in the activity log. This makes debugging your automation difficult. It's hard to see where the money got moved to or if you accidentally sent a large chunk of money into the wrong expense or goal.
If you have over-budgeted your paycheck it is difficult to see which expenses are now off track. Meaning, if I need $100 a month for something and I was only able to put in $45 for the first paycheck. Simple will try to make up the difference on the next pay period with $55 instead of the normal $50. This can be detrimental if you are tight on money. (I'd recommend doing the transferring manually until you understand the automation better)
Expenses or Goals don't have a way for you to only fund up to a certain amount. Leading to bleeding/bloating of those envelopes. Meaning if your bill ranges between $25 - $50 but you don't want the total deposited amount to exceed $50. You can't. The expense will slowly fill up with unspent money that you will have to keep on top of and transfer to another goal that may need it more.
No split transactions. There are a lot of times I go to the store and buy clothing and groceries. For me, those are two different expenses. For me to satisfy my budget, I have to move money from my clothing expense into my grocery expense for it to be accurate. However, my activity feed does not accurately represent the change (per point 1)
When I first joined their support was responsive and candid. They were personal and would help resolve issues. Maybe even have conversations with you about suggestions. Today, it takes several days to hear back. They don't read your messages and often paste in canned responses from their FAQ.
There are some other drawbacks that I don't encounter but I can see them being a pain. You can follow them on social media and see what people are wanting to be changed or added. So I won't go into those.
Besides the drawbacks I love simple. The automation feature they added sometime last year. This made my life much easier especially after becoming very comfortable with my budget. People that I have recommended Simple to have come back to me excited saying this is one of the best things they have decided to do and it's been exciting to wait for payday and watch the money get put into its proper envelope.
[Edited by User4133612, December 30]
Super disappointed that Simple is now shutting down. Many, are very frustrated since Simple was one of a kind and it's been difficult to find a suitable alternative. Monzo looks promising but needs to be offered in the US. All other alternatives currently are feature short. Here is a very large comparison between different banks and expected features. https://not-so-simple.com/
Reply written ago
Great customer support, ZERO fees/minimums and my favorite feature BY FAR is their mobile check deposit hold times (or lack thereof). Deposit a check in the app by 5 p.m. EST and funds are available for use at 3 a.m. EST that next day! *Only that quick on business days (Monday-Friday) and $2,000 USD check deposit limit or day. A+++