

ShowHN: I built a piggybank to dripfeed a new MacBook  - 27percent
http://www.dripfeed.co

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jimeh
Okay, please excuse my ignorance if there's something I'm missing here.

I understand the problem when it comes to saving, and the issue of dipping
into savings when you shouldn't. But I really don't see the point in a service
like this, at least not personally.

There's three main issues I have with it:

1\. Why should I let some random company I don't know or trust keep my savings
for me? I would assume you're not a actual bank, so should you go bankrupt
there's no government insurance that'd ensure I don't loose my money. And not
saying you would, but from my point of view, what's there to stop you from
taking the money and run?

2\. A charge of 3%. So to save £100 I'd loose £3. If I was saving for a Retina
MBP of around £2,500 I'd lose £75.

3\. Interest. Ok, sure, banks pay pretty horrible interest, but still, I'm
loosing out of money I would otherwise have gotten. I saw your response about
working on providing interest somehow in the future, but I'm focusing on the
now here :)

When you add it all up, the increased risk of losing all the savings, combined
with the loss of money in the 3% charge and lack of interest, personally I
really see no point in using your service compared to my bank's savings
account.

And ok, it's easy to move money out of my savings account, but it's supposedly
easy moving it out your service too. If you were to change that, there might
just possibly be some point to it compared to a savings account. Except then
you're treading on dangerous legal and/or moral ground if you deny people
access to their money, even if they've previously agreed to the terms.

On a final note, I believe the only valuable feature you have to offer is the
fact that friends can chip in. If I were you, I'd focus on that feature
instead of holding people's cash. Let people set up some kinda campaign page
for their new phone/laptop purchase and let family and friends chip in, wiring
the money back to the user, rather than you holding on to it. Think of it like
a personalized kickstarter mashed with amazon wishlists or something.

<rant>Let little Jimmy Neutron setup a campaign for his wish to get an Xbox
One. He's got £200 cash already, which the campaign reflects, then he sends
the campaign page to his grand parents, uncles, aunts, etc, and maybe they'll
chip in enough so he can get his new console.</rant>

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jrnkntl
How do you handle the legal side of things? Aren't you, in most countries,
considered operating as a bank in this scenario? And therefore tied to a whole
load of regulations?

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27percent
We're aggressively pursuing FCA regulation in the UK since we're pretty
compliant with their policies already. Suffice it to say, we're doing
everything we can, we really don't want to screw this up.

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mbesto
First, sounds like you're solving a major problem that most people have -
sweet!

However, this is my constructive negative feedback - I don't think it will
work because of this one piece here:

 _Pause if you know you 'll have less money this week, deposit a bulk amount
if you'll have more, even let friends and family deposit._

I tried doing this in a rather "manual" fashion by setting up a recurring
monthly deposit into ISAs. The reality is - the freedom to turn it off is a
huge anti-pattern to saving money. You need to make it very difficult to have
the user turn off their dripfeed. Perhaps they have to make a call, or maybe
they get penalized? Either way - I see this as your most important "anti-
feature".

I would also question the commercial model of this - you're going to take a
cut as well as GoCardless. It'll be interesting to see if people are willing
to pay for that. However, what would be interesting (potentially) is to have a
model (similar to financing) where the actual item is purchased through your
platform. This will get complicated, but maybe there is a way to undercut the
traditional micro-financing models that exist today?

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27percent
We're looking into a whole bunch of ways to stop charging fees as soon as we
can - it was kind of the lazy way out for the short term. We're looking into
referral fees, as you suggested, as well as earning interest. We also had an
idea that, since we know what a user is saving for, and roughly how long it'll
take for them to save for it, we could put the item up to tender and hunt down
cheaper deals so the user can save money. Just an idea, but there are so many
interesting things we can try when we have that kind of data.

Re: pause - I totally didn't consider that, and smurfy brought it up too, so
I'm probably going to build out a 'protect me from myself' feature to do just
that

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jlebron2
The "protect me from myself" feature would be great on a per item basis. Say,
for example, I'm setting up a dripfeed for a new phone (nice-to-have) and
another for winter jacket (really need). When setting up the dripfeed for the
winter jacket I would turn on "protect me from myself", since I really need
the jacket, but I wouldn't turn it on for the phone because it is just a nice
to have.

Just an idea.

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jack-r-abbit
I can see how this might be useful for some people. Personally, I have my
savings account on line and they allow me to just make any number of "sub
accounts" that I want. So I have used that before to create sub-accounts to
save for specific things. I then set up automatic transfers from my checking
to that savings account. The most successful one was a "new car" fund. Once my
old car was paid off, I continued to make the same payment amount to the "new
car" fund. It helped me maintain my habit of making a car payment while
helping me save for the down payment. Worked like a charm.

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goodluckpete
As a person who is not a great money saver, this seems like a great tool that
I will most likely use. Just a note, the text on my PC using chrome is nearly
unreadable, the font renders strangely, not sure how to describe it.

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27percent
Hmm, I'll take a look into that, it may just be the webfont I'm using
rendering strangely. Perhaps it's time I sign up for TypeKit

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junto
The site looks nice, however I'm slightly puzzled. What do I gain from
Dripfeed over the current standing order that transfers a fixed amount per
month from my current account to my savings account?

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27percent
Very good question: Banks generally don't award much interest for small, short
savings, they're really geared towards saving for cars and houses, not small
goals.

We, on the other hand, are designed to help you save for the small things in a
much nicer way, and we're working on ways to make your money work in ways that
banks really just don't care about.

Case in point - in the next few weeks, we're rolling out a feature that finds
cheaper offers for the item you're already saving for (since we know what
you're saving for and roughly how long it'll take to save for it), we can
leverage the fact that you're saving for something to encourage a supplier to
offer the product cheaper in return for the money right now. That's just one
of the ideas we're working on right now.

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NKCSS
Why would a manufacturer do that? I understand it's profitable from your end,
but if the customer is already saving up for an item and has obviously decided
it wants to pay the price it's reserved, why would the manufacturer want to
lower the price? It would be like shooting yourself in the foot...

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lightbritefight
Things change, as do circumstances. I may be saving for a $600 phone, but
after a couple of months, I opt to buy something else with that money instead.
Now the original vendor has nothing. If a vendor makes a profit on the device
after $300, it behooves them to offer it to me at $520 to ensure they have
that $220 profit.

A bird in hand is better than two in the bush.

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27percent
That and the fact that we can offer the sale up to different suppliers, giving
them the change to win a sale from another supplier

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smurfy
I think its a really good idea. It would be cool if you could have an on/off
switch to make pausing more difficult. For instance, I know that for myself,
as soon as I wanted to spend that money I was saving, I would just pause the
service. But if I could make it harder to do that (I.E. make it so I have to
do several prompts to pause it, answer some math problem or something that
would take me more than 5 seconds to open an app and hit pause), I would
certainly turn that on for myself.

Just bouncing an idea out.

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27percent
Good point, I went into building it with total ease of use in mind, maybe I
should build a 'protect me from myself' feature into the settings :P

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smurfy
You could set up security questions for yourself. Like you have to input an
answer to "Why do I want this MacBook", and, "Why is this MacBook more
important than a latte this morning".

Lol

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jack-r-abbit
Take the old Windows approach. "Do you want to pause?" "Are you sure?" "Are
you really sure?" "Are you really, really sure?" (repeat this a few dozen
times)

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joshstrange
This is a neat idea but the fee (3%) is disappointing (but expected). It
reminds me a little bit of how Simple is doing "savings". If you haven't heard
of Simple[0] it's a new-ish bank (build on Bancorp) that has awesome customer
service and some really useful tools to help you save. If anyone wants an
invite send me an email (In my bio) with your email address so I can send you
one.

[0] [https://simple.com](https://simple.com)

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computerbob
This sounds pretty cool. I do not see if it costs anything to do. Am I charged
processing fees? Pay per month to dripfeed? EDIT: I found the FAQ link.
[https://www.dripfeed.co/faq](https://www.dripfeed.co/faq). Looks like it is
3%

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dominic_cocch
The site looks great, and I think a lot of people would want something like
this. You've mentioned in other comments that you're hoping to get some kind
of interest going. That, with what you've already got, is enough for me to
signup.

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27percent
Feedback and suggestions would be massively appreciated by the way!

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randall
Europe only, I'm assuming?

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27percent
Right now, yes I'm afraid! But never fear, we're rolling out to the US and
other markets as fast as we possibly can

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jrmg
Does this pay no interest?

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27percent
Right now, no. I know that sucks, but we're looking into ways to leverage
savings to earn more interest than a bank would typically give you for a
small, short-term goal. Part of the reason I started working on Dripfeed was
because my interest rate went down to about 0.08%, which is effectively
nothing on say a £500 phone.

