

Keep Your Money - blueyedlion
https://medium.com/@CoriMcElwain/80ad2e8ba125

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pmoorcraft
I hate to be that guy, but I must admit that there are a couple of things that
me put off about this app:

Firstly, I completely disagree with this notion that young adults should be
cutting off in coffees and cocktails every so often so that they can buy more
expensive stuff in the long run. If incurring in these small expenditures
every once in a while derives enough value for you to feel that you are
leading a satisfactory lifestyle and as a result make you steer away from the
big, impulsive spends (such as cars and headphones), then why not spend the
extra dollar on a coffee? Even if you it every single day, at the end of the
month you'll only have spent 30$ extra. If you did that every day for 2 years,
you'd still only have spent an extra 730$, which is way cheaper than buying a
new car. The goal for young adults should be financial independence, not to be
able to spend large amounts of money in dispensable goods.

Secondly, I don't see how the fact that the app "doesn’t connect to your bank
account or show depressing red info graphics". After putting in so much effort
in reducing my spending, why should I have to manually input every dollar I
spend into the app?

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blueyedlion
I see where you are coming from in that young adults should be able to spend
money however they choose and if the lifestyle they choose includes coffee
every day and cocktails every weekend then that's fine. Financial independence
is for sure the number one priority.

However what we were noticing was that many people (young adults in
particular) had small hopes and dreams that required some amount of money that
they simply didn't have. People wanted cars so they could easily get to a new
job, a new musical instrument for their favorite hobby, or to take a trip
somewhere they've never had the chance to go before.

It's all about how you want to spend your own money and everyone's priorities
are different.

~~~
pmoorcraft
I understand the concept of the app and can definitely see its value. However,
I'm not a big of a fan of the way it is described in this blog post.

From my personal experience using mint, I usually find that the big spends are
the ones that really cause a dent on my monthly budgets and honestly, from a
personal finance point of view, don't see much value in tracking only the
small day-to-day savings. It is necessary to have a look at the big picture to
contextualize the spending.

I do feel like keep is probably a good tool for staying motivated while
budgeting and getting an instant reward for something that usually doesn't
give an instant reward, but even so the effort necessary to manually input
every single dollar I save into the app just seems like such a commitment. To
me, keep would be really helpful as a complement to the services that do
connect to my bank account (in my case mint), to help me decide wether I can
have the coffee I like such much or if I should stick to the free coffee
available in my office.

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tinkerrr
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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cbhl
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.

~~~
CocaKoala
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.

~~~
blueyedlion
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.

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YuriNiyazov
The right way to have more money is to make more money, not cut out trivial
expenses.

~~~
outericky
That's only partially true, and not really an option for most. Your trivial
expenses are related to the amount of money you have. For most, a $3 coffee or
$14 cocktail go from trivial to significant very quickly.

If you have 10x that amount of money, then your trivial expenses are also 10x
more expensive. It's weekend getaways to Vegas vs a cocktail, $100 steak
dinners vs a cup of coffee.

This app looks to try to teach some sort of understanding and self control in
spending - which is important no matter how much money you think you have.

