Show HN: Keep, an app that helps you love how you spend every dollar
m.trykeep.comBased on my experience at least, YNAB (You Need A Budget -- http://www.youneedabudget.com/) is the best budgeting software out there. It's a lot more complex than this, and unlike something like Mint it does require you to manually enter transactions.
However, it is really the best interface I've found for setting a budget. Probably the best feature is that it can naturally incorporate overspending. If you set your grocery budget to $200 and you spend $250, YNAB isn't just like "yo, reduce your grocery spending." It remembers that you overspent by $50 and encourages you to incorporate that into next month's budget in a flexible way.
Unless you're a multimillionaire, you can probably benefit from using it. In fact, even if you are quite wealthy, plenty of celebrities have demonstrated repeatedly that it's still possible to go broke in just a few years.
>'Based on my experience at least, YNAB (You Need A Budget -- http://www.youneedabudget.com/) is the best budgeting software out there. It's a lot more complex than this, and unlike something like Mint it does require you to manually enter transactions.'
I'm a big fan of YNAB.
Being fully automated would certainly be nice, but grabbing a set of CSVs from my bank once a month is a not a big deal and the software does a reasonable job of matching categories once it has some data.
>'Unless you're a multimillionaire, you can probably benefit from using it.'
I'd imagine so.
What I think makes YNAB really valuable is that is that it's loose enough so as not to become a mess if you aren't consistent and exacting about keeping it up to date.
You're going to get something out of it even if you don't bother to create a specific allowances. Simply going with suggested categories and generating a budget based on prior outflows will provide a useful perspective.
YNAB is amazing. Even when you don't actually need to budget it's incredibly useful to see spending habits, trends, etc.
I used Mint for a number of years, but the automated stuff was constantly wrong and the passive downloads broke all the time after Mint switched away Yodlee's data aggregation.
I adore YNAB. I started using it a couple of years ago when I had no savings and was living paycheck-to-paycheck but was making decent money. Now I have a cushy emergency fund, moving apartments was a breeze, and I'm saving up to buy some land. You do have to stick to their philosophy, but I've found it works really well for me.
My wife and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. If YNAB could automatically grab my bank transactions like Mint, I would be sold. I love their philosophy on budgeting.
The whole point of YNAB (Rule #1 of their program) is that you need to proactively allocate every dollar you have. Every dollar has a job, and then you need to manually enter when that dollar is doing its job so you feel when that money actually gets spent.
I tried for years to use Mint, but it's too passive. Too easy to ignore. With YNAB, every purchase goes in when we make the purchase, and I found it keeps us more honest about our budget estimates and also helps to curtail frivolous spending.
To each his own, of course.
To be most useful, YNAB should know my passive spending, and then harass me about all the dollars I am not reporting. Otherwise, I can just leak money and not talk about it.
I fully agree. It seems a little silly that if you have a busy period at work and forget to pay attention for a few weeks, that's just a black hole (short of going through credit card statements and trying to remember every cash purchase). This happens all the time with Mint, and I can just go back and categorize all the purchases that need doing so, with the only loss being that the cash purchases I forgot about show up as non-specific cash spending (through the initial ATM withdrawal).
Have you just tried it first? I'm not being hard, but I had the same feeling until we did it for the 34 day trial. Frankly, I now love the fact that it doesn't do anything automated in the background, now I actually have to consciously track my spend. Mint just became a passive record of spending. YNAB is active.
7 months into using it my partner & I find YNAB very overcomplicated. Being freelance I don't have a steady income, and I've never managed to make it handle that well. Because the income figure isn't correct it's hard to see what I'm actually spending (if I put my 'lump income' in a category and move money between categories to have 'income' each month, that mucks up the amounts).
I have yet to get it to balance any month too. Some categories (e.g. clothing) we work on an annual budget, so overspending in these categories rolls forward; that doesn't seem to work smoothly.
My partner can't get her head around it at all, which is a bit of a bummer.
What I'd like is a much simpler system based on the old T account (envelope accounts are similar) where each category functions as a virtual account, showing what was spent, inter-category transfers and overall status.
I haven't done full time freelance so feel free to shoot this idea down, but I'm always curious as to why freelancers don't just put their income in a separate, harder-to-access bank account and pay themselves a regular, weekly disbursement from that.
A piece of advice I had from a mentor 15+ years ago when I started my business was to pay yourself something regular. Even if it was a tiny amount like $200/wk, just do that rather than forever be pulling out irregular lump sums when you got paid for a job.
I do put it in a separate bank account (a company account), but up to now I take drawings in chunks, maybe every 3 months. To make YNAB easier I am trying to take a chunk once a month, which feels very unusual.
There is also other random income that's not income. In the UK it's common for savings account interest to be paid back into the linked current account. For me that's not income to be spent each month, that's money to be re-invested.
None of this addresses ease of use though - or does no one else (or their partner) find YNAB confusing and difficult?
YNAB can handle irregular income easily, if you're using the YNAB method. Be sure to read https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/variable-inco...
It should be uncomplicated once you grok it. I signed up for their free course. It helped.
That's exactly what I do. Money from my book and consulting goes into a business account, owned by my single-member LLC. I make regular transfers from there to my personal account.
This is the first thing you should do. It also makes questions like "what was incoming and outgoing last month?" very easy. (download csv. done.)
YNAB is dope and pretty cheap now with steam sales. Back in the bad old days it was like $60 but still super worth it(you'll save $60 in a couple days) and they seem like a pretty cool mostly remote etc dev shop.
It requires a win / mac machine? Why?
I thought no one did that anymore ?
You live in a bubble. Most apps I use at work are installed on the machine.
> for work
That's very clearly not what we're talking about here. I wouldn't be surprised if (for personal use, not work) the "bubble" is a more accurate descriptor for those who _do_ need desktop software. The only people I know who use anything on the desktop beyond their browser are software engineers, PC gamers, and people who use niche software, all with a quite-above-average level of computer-savviness.
>>The only people I know who use anything on the desktop beyond their browser are software engineers, PC gamers, and people who use niche software, all with a quite-above-average level of computer-savviness.
Walk through an office building, Work+Excel are still the software of the day in most businesses.
> Walk through an office building
Aaaand that makes it the third time that it's been clarified that this conversation is about personal usage, not office work. Jesus dude...
I'll take your downvote (on this and my earlier comment, in the ten minutes since I've posted this) and lack of a response as an admission of your error. It would be nice if you could express that in a less juvenile way though...
There was a third option until Adobe dropped support for AIR on Linux. YNAB has since been encouraging customers to use Wine.
http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/linux-installa...
I think the point being made is that these days this would normally be provided as a SAAS product, rather than as an actual install to your machine.
One trick I found really helped me curb thoughtless spending in the past was calculating the cost of purchases based not on the sticker price, but on the sticker price + whatever the compounded interest would be for the same amount of money on my mortgage. (At the time our interest rate was 5% with about 27.5 years left on our mortgage, so it effectively doubled the price of everything.) The thought was that if we spent that money vs. putting it on the mortgage, we were essentially locking those dollars in to being charged interest for the life of the loan. It doesn't take into account re-financing, etc., but it was a lot easier not to buy $10 smoothies vs. $5 ones. :-)
Thinking about interest and growth does help put prices in perspective. Using mortgage interest rates doesn't work as well these days, since they've fallen so much, but you can use the standard market growth rates instead: either 7% or 4% depending on whether you take inflation into account.
I love that idea... creates a more accurate picture of exactly how much you could be "saving."
I'm finding the terminology a little strange for this one..
"Helps you love how you spend every dollar"? While I get the gist of what you're saying, it makes my head hurt a little bit.
Am on Android (Moto G) and every time I tapped the goal amount text box, it requested me to "Rotate device to portrait" despite my portrait lock being turned on, so was unable to add a goal amount.
I like the idea of this app but not quite sure it works for me. I need more than a pretty picture to keep me motivated to save! :) Good luck with it though.
Agree completely, this current trend of slapping "love" and "beautiful" on every start up product is watering down the word a little bit. I love my family, not paying rent.
Simple.com's homepage used to say "Beautiful banking, handcrafted in Portland." <gag>
well, the shots on dribble must have looked beautiful and that is what matters no? /s
I liked the terminology. Don't know which one of us is more representative of the target demographic, though.
It's not (necessarily) just marketing fluff. A lot of people view budgeting as "here's what I can't spend money on". It can be easier to stick to a plan when viewed through the lens of getting the maximal enjoyment for the money. There's a lot of people out there who "don't know where it's all going"; the idea is that you consciously decide if you'll be happier spending $100/month on, say, Starbucks or a Beaglebone. Once you know where it's all going, you can decide if you want to spend it on things that might be more enjoyable.
Thanks for the feedback. The perspective you articulate is exactly what we're trying to do with money management. A lot of people feel pretty bummed when they think about managing their money, and consequently avoid thinking about it and realizing that they could derive more short and long term satisfaction with the ways they spend their money. We think that a positive, visceral experience can help people reframe their relationship with their money and ultimately derive more satisfaction--aka, "love"--the way they are spending their money.
There's a lot in this comment, so I'd like to explicitly second the bug report in here.
In Chrome on Android, it's impossible to complete the goal amount, so it's impossible to continue.
I had the same bug on Nexus 5. I like the psychology behind the app and would use it, but I fear it will become boring and I will quit. Maybe gamify it a bit more.
We are looking into that aspect of the app and will likely add some mild forms of gamification to make it more engaging over time. If you don't mind sharing, did you have anything particular in mind?
Off the top of my head:
- sub-goals ("you have already saved x% towards paying of your debts")
- smaller awards (Amount: "$5 saved", Frequency: "3 taps a day award", Time: "you saved something every day this week")
- a ranking (not sure how that would work)
This would not only provide incentive to save, but it would also increase usage, which makes the app harder to forgot/uninstall.
Good luck!
PS: On your website, add a subscribe via e-mail box. Then you can capture people (like me) who would be interested to sign up when you build a native app.
Thanks for the bug report, we are looking into it.
Not a good choice for a name. Google Keep has been around for a while and does something similar: organization.
Immediately what I thought of as well, I use Google Keep for everything notetaking / todo etc and would really have a hard time adopting this.
I love it! A big part of my financial philosophy is based on a similar thought exercise:
Before you make an impulsive decision, imagine a stranger walks up to you. In one hand, he has the thing you're about to buy. In the other hand, he has the amount of money you are about to spend. He will give you one or the other for free with absolutely no catch. Which one do you take?
Besides that, I like the "hold to add cash" interface and I like that it's a mobile web platform (although I hope an Android widget is in the works). Hopefully they can get their server problems ironed out soon.
Why do you like that it's a mobile web platform?
I love the sentiment!
I'll try this out when I have more time later, but I think it's worth noting that, of course, saving is only part of the equation. There is so much you can (and should) do to reduce expenses outside of the mundane day-to-day, as well! For great advice on pursuing financial independence or betterment, much of which has changed my life and habits, see: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ "Financial Freedom Through Badassity"
I read that blog yesterday as it was mentioned on a different thread. It seems most of his advice is don't buy anything you literally don't need to survive. What's the point of living if you can't enjoy your life? You'll be a rich corpse, who cares?
What am I missing?
I think the point is that your middle-class life is an "exploding volcano of wastefulness" and you can make a lot of decisions that reduce your expenses without sacrificing much, if any, quality of life. For example, living closer to work and riding a bike or walking instead of driving a car everywhere—makes you fitter, happier, and saves you cash.
Sure, he takes it to an extreme not all could stomach, but there is practical advice in there for almost anyone in my opinion.
Yeah, Mr. Mustache himself may carry it to extremes that most people wouldn't want. But it seems he himself and his family are actually happier than they were when they were spending more. Plus they're retired (or semi-retired) and they have no money worries.
I think the optimal spending for most people -- i.e., the amount of spending that would maximize happiness -- is far lower than the amount that most people actually spend (in large part b/c people work at jobs they don't love to earn money to buy stuff they don't need). Much of it is wasted on mindless luxury that people come to believe is necessary and that doesn't really increase happiness because of hedonic adaptation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation Here's Mr. Money Mustache's piece on hedonic adaptation: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic-ad...
And MMM considers himself to be fairly "non extreme" compared to other big names in the space(Early Retirement Extreme being the most prominent contrast...that guy was harrrrrdcore)
I haven't read the blog, but I wonder how it compares to the philosphy of the book "Your Money or Your Life". In that book, it talks about a fulfillment curve in which the least pleasure is to be found in having too little (poverty, deprivation) and in having/spending too much. Optimization is to be found in having (spending) "enough" but not too much.[1] The book walks you through tracking your spending and then at the end of the month, deciding whether each category's spending was above or below what you think it should be in terms of the enjoyment you got out of it. It then walks you through how to cut back on what you're overspending on with the ultimate goal of getting into better a financial position, up to and including early retirement.
[1] http://newroadmap.pbworks.com/w/page/10458661/The%20Fulfillm... "'Enough' is appreciating and fully enjoying what money brings into our lives, yet never purchasing anything that isn't needed and wanted."
So I just googled "fulfillment curve" and one of the top results was from a mr money mustache forum post: http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/antimustachian-wall-of-sham...
The way he writes it as "fulfillment curve" being in contrast with "MMM" makes me think you have a point.
I read that blog yesterday as it was mentioned on a different thread. It seems most of his advice is don't buy anything you literally don't need to survive. What's the point of living if you can't enjoy your life? You'll be a rich corpse, who cares?
What am I missing?
I think you're missing that the most gratifing things in live are not shoppable. Learning stuff, producing stuff. Seeing your kids grow. It's the difference between strawberries from the supermarket and strawberries you raised and harvested yourself. The feeling of sleeping the first night in a bed you made with your own hands.
Or, another example I just observed looking out the window: Here in Germany people often seem to think they need special clothing for the most mundane activities. They want to go cycling, first thing they do is go to a store and buy cycling clothes. It's ridiculous. As if you are able to ride longer or faster in pink polyester shorts with stripes. I think that's what that blog is about. Shopping is a distraction from real life.
edit: typo.
> It seems most of his advice is don't buy anything you literally don't need to survive. What's the point of living if you can't enjoy your life?
I think therein lies the main fallacy he argues so much against, do you need to buy crap to enjoy your life?
He gets to spend all the time he wants with his kid, or doing anything else really, how much is that worth?
Think I posted it.
MMM is like religion... take 10% of it to heart and you'll likely find something of use... throw the other 90% out.
The main sentiment behind MMM has always seemed to be "get a really high paying job and work your ass off for a few years". It doesn't really work if you are stuck in an average wage, with few prospects and no jobs to apply for.
this is true. It is certainly more plausible for the average HN reader than the average person in the world though.
Especially because I'm pretty sure he is/was a software engineer, who happened to ride the crest of two real estate bubbles.
he was(and so was his wife). AND they were canadian so free/cheap school graduating right around 2000 before moving south of the border, they defs got lucky(and definitely worked hard)
I love MMM... his blog has created some inspiration for this app!
$ telnet m.trykeep.com 80
Trying 54.87.165.213...
telnet: connect to address 54.87.165.213: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote hostI opened this on my iPad expecting to find an app store link at their m.trykeep.com. I did not find one, instead I found a web page that kept asking me to touch and interact with it, but that barely wanted to react. I had to tap and hold 7 times to get the first "example" to work, and then closed it and gave up after 5 attempts on the second.
I could not find it in the app store either, so is this a browser based solution? If so, I highly recommend getting the touch sensitivity worked out on chrome on the browser.
I do realize this may be load based from your servers getting hit and so if I remember I will try again later.
Also, I get the impression this might require requires server connectivity, if it does then you're excluding so many people without data plans.
I like the idea, just couldn't get the execution to actually work for me in a way I'd consider using it.
We haven't built a native app just yet but we're thinking in that direction. If you have a chance to try it again open it up in safari or chrome on your phone. Thanks for being patient!
Thanks for the feedback! Eventually we would build this natively, but we wanted to get something out quick and dirty via mobile web just to see if theres any interest/value for users.
I think it's great. I love the simplicity and the UI. A lot of times we over complicate things. This is a great example of getting back to basics. I'd argue that this is not budgeting software, nor should it be. Instead, it's a way for users to stop and think about what they are buying and ask themselves if they really need to make the purchase.
I know someone who buys two drinks at Starbucks every day. To them, this was about $7/per day. No big deal. I quickly did the math and showed her the result, $2555 per year. Sometimes, perspective is a huge motivator.
Also, nice job on the design and web based app. I'm happy that I simply needed to navigate to a URL on my phone. I didn't have to install another app, grant permissions etc. etc..
Great work! Good luck!
Pretty neat. I'm also working on a side project in the same vein. The key to improving spending behavior in my own household has been to focus on and evaluate decisions. http://www.spendlight.com/
My approach is a bit broader in that I find it useful to record both the good and bad decisions with a view toward improvement.
I also prompt users for a bit of self-evaluation. When you goof, you are asked something like "What could you have done without in order to stay within your limits?" When you do well, you are asked something like "What was the key to making wise choices today?"
I'm not a big fan of the input mechanism. It's novel and fun, but I'd bet that the fun wears out quickly.
I've made something to track spending on a weekly basis. I've found that most budget apps are too heavy, and most run on a monthly cycle. I can easily calculate rough figures for fixed income and expenses, I just need something to track spending money. Doing a budget by week is much easier to track and plan, and makes it easier to answer the question "Can I afford this?". Anyway, here is the Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewoven...
And the mobile app: https://budgetapp.azurewebsites.net/
The app is clever, but as somebody with long-time interest in personal finance, I feel the premise is a bit on the wrong side. Avoiding bad buys doesn't mean the same sum is now somehow free to spend. You need to both avoid bad buys and have a sane budget with money allocated for your needs and wants - which should come out of real money you earn, not imaginary money you "saved" when not buying what you didn't need anyway.
Otherwise it reminds me a joke about a man who brags to his wife that he saved money by running after the bus instead of taking it and paying the fare. The wife says - next time run after a taxi, you'd save more! Unfortunately, savings don't work exactly like that.
I really really like it. I see the value and have signed up and added to my homescreen. Truly a great interface compared to typing out numbers.
Also I really want to turn this into an iOS app! There's some cool stuff you can do with it natively, like add a buzz + sound when you save a buck, which sure would feel satisfying (ever used the task management app Clear?). Let me know if you wanna go that way and I'd be happy to put a weekend towards it.
Awesome, I'm glad to hear you've found value in Keep! We're thinking about making it native and will be sure to let you know if/when we do.
A direct input would be nice. It took me five seconds to keep eight dollars by holding, but it could have taken only one second with direct input. Any particular reason that it's limited to this mechanic?
Also, it seems to be stuck on the eight dollar screen. It keeps asking me to hold to $8, but never shows me a new photo. This is the stock Note 3 browser.
EDIT: Now I can't even get it to register $3. Perhaps we are hugging the site too hard.
hmmm... We've been optimizing for safari and chrome. Maybe give it a try in one of those?
Yup. Chrome worked well. Nice work!
FYI, it looks like the mobile site has some issues in IE on Windows Phone. The white text is a bit hard to read with the background image [1], and refreshing the page results in this [2]. Looking forward to trying it out though!
I also had the problem that when I selected an input box, the keyboard would open and the app would think that I had flipped the phone. It then showed me the black screen prompting me to flip it back which caused the browser to lose focus of the now nonexistant input box causing the keyboard to collapse again.
Thanks for the feedback, we'll push some fixes for the orientation bug tonight
This is a cool idea. My bank recently introduced a similar feature in their mobile app. You can move a small amount of money from your current account to your savings account in a couple of clicks (no need to log in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xjelPXqWo
Awesome video, thanks for sharing! Looks like we aren't the first ones to build something for saving in the moment.
I really like this idea for more than just money. I think having a habit like this to get rewarded to focus on long term goals over short term rewards would be awesome to have.
It will be interesting to see if they can create a reward system good enough to be effective.
I think its very clever. I really like how your example takes me through the steps first, then asks to sign me up for an account.
Much better than asking to create an account first, then walk me through the app.
Thanks for the feedback! As you use the app, please let us know if there is anything we could do to make it better for you.
it's really annoying that you wont allow me to open m.trykeep.com on my desktop.. without even telling me why I can't .. simply redirecting to the not-mobile page where I was before is asking the end-user to go away, like I did
For anyone who doesn't want to pull out their phone, reduce the width of your browser to about the size of a smartphone and then click the link.
On windows phone, keeping on holding opens a right-click menu and I cant go ahead.
Do all of those services process emails w/ your online purchases?
mint.com, while not really innovating...at all...anymore... is still pretty nice for tracking your various accounts, including investments and debts (student loans, etc)
The email address is @intuit.com, so I'm guessing it's related to mint.
http://moments.intuitlabs.com/
You would be correct.
Yep, this is a side project that a couple of us are working on but it has no integrations with the Mint product.
nexus 4: goal amount: this will cost put cursor in field keyboard opens window registers as landscape due to width/height problem keyboard closes repeat.
This is a really neat piece of interaction design.
Thanks for the feedback! What about this works for you? What could be even better?
non-mobile link: http://trykeep.com/
is the link dead?
It doesn't seem to be. Are you running into an error?
Wow. You've taken a key insight and created something that directly hits the emotions of your users. You're engaging their feelings, passions, and desires. It will be nice to see how your website, communications, and even your product evolves!