
Show HN: Simple Budgeting - clintonhalpin
https://putz.io
======
DavideNL
A little off-topic, but really wondering; am i the only one annoyed by the
fact that 9 out of 10 apps these days are:

1\. cloud based/harvesting as much data as possible and/or 2\. subscriptions

I prefer apps like for example Omnifocus [1], that give you:

1\. the ability to client-side encrypt your data so your data won't be
sold/misused, and 2\. instead of making profit of selling your data, simply
let you pay a larger amount upfront for it instead. Thus, you also know
exactly what features you're paying for - as opposed to subscriptions...

[1]
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-3/id1346190318?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-3/id1346190318?mt=8)

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Nobody wants to pay upfront. This is antithetical to what customers prefer.

~~~
latexr
You also pay upfront for subscriptions, although there’s usually a trial
_which is also a thing with non-subscription apps_.

~~~
drusepth
You often pay much less upfront for a subscription than you do e.g. purchasing
an app "full price".

You might pay more over the lifetime of your subscription than you would
paying full price for something, but in terms of your parent's comment, that
is why a subscription is seen as preferred over paying for something upfront.

For example, $7/mo is a lot more palatable than buying some software for $80,
especially when you're in the stage of "I don't know if I'll use this or not".

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wgerard
Really cool! I'm also big into playing around with budget apps and seeing what
works.

Few suggestions I have from playing around with it:

1\. It's not clear when I click the "add a budget" what it's for. There's the
top-level "November 1-15" type of budget and then those budgets have
categories, but the terminology could maybe use some work here. The term
"budget" to me is usually synonymous with how you're using "categories" \-
e.g. we have a grocery budget.

2\. I wasn't really expecting the ellipsis button to be a delete. I usually
expect it to be like a context menu. In general it seems like the ellipsis
button does different things in different locations, which is a bit of a bad
pattern IMO.

3\. There's a few spelling errors, e.g. "ammount" in the "add a budget"
overlay

4\. It's a bit weird that when you start a new budget it's immediately in the
red (color-wise, at least). I feel like $0.00 left to spend should still be in
the black.

5\. "Track Spending" is only available for the first budget, but you can
imagine that I might make next week's budget before this week is over, so it's
a bit annoying that there's no "Track Spending" button on the previous
budgets. I realize you can still click into the old budget, but still.

6\. There's no way to edit expenses in the budget if I mistakenly add a wrong
number, or if there is it's very unclear to me.

7\. Negative numbers aren't allowed but you can imagine that this would be
pretty useful for things like rebates or if I get a refund on something
(though this is pretty related to the last item).

Anyway, love the idea for sure! Short-term budgets are pretty helpful and not
something that Mint really provides, so excellent idea.

~~~
clintonhalpin
wgerard, you rule, Thanks for the detailed feedback! I fixed a few things this
morning, mainly being able to delete expenses and typos for now.

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stunt
Thanks for sharing.

The homepage doesn't provide enough information to convince the user to
register.

I saw a registration form without knowing anything about the
service/app/features/prices/benefits.

~~~
BeetleB
Same here.

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incadenza
This seems great, but growing up among Yiddish speakers, this word has a very
different connotation. Just worth being aware of.

~~~
grgbrn
Not just yiddish, it's also common slang in many parts of the US to mean a
very stupid or incompetent person. So yeah, terrible branding IMHO

~~~
namenotrequired
It’s a common swear word in Brazil too

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dano
Suggestions:

\- a default set of categories would be useful

\- I don't always add expenses immediately, so being able to change the date
would useful.

\- the ... in the overview window prompts you to delete a budget! seems
dangerous

\- ditto on another comment, there's no way to edit an expense.

\- It might be interesting to setup Income and then allocate budgets based on
% of income to automatically calculate budget targets.

Nice work.

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symplee
What percentage of people have the discipline to use this app, but lack
financial discipline?

Website: "You want new clothes, an iced coffee, but does it fit your budget?"

Oh the irony if the user were to get ads for new clothes and iced coffee...

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TomK32
Extra points if you spill that coffee on your new clothes

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danalloway
I have an addiction to trying out budgeting apps the moment I find a new one.
It's like the search for the Holy Grail or something. I know that an app by
itself isn't going to magically make budgeting a success, instead I see these
them as sort of a financial sidekick, something that helps me out get out of
my own way just enough so we can save the day (literally ).

The description is accurate. Putz is the simplest of budget trackers.
Categories / Expenses and a progress bar. Nice. Fun to play with but won't
unseat my current toolset.

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poirier
What's your current toolset?

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danalloway
Combination spreadsheet and YNAB.

~~~
TomK32
> Combination spreadsheet

I'm curious about that, never heard of it. Can you elaborate or if you have a
spreadsheet to share, my address is thomas@budget-fox.com (yes, I'm working on
a household budget app)

How do you measure "success" in your budgeting? Is it a short-term monthly
basis or a longer one?

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captn3m0
A simple Privacy Policy would be appreciated, since this counts as a financial
application for many.

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sfotm
I've gone through a few applications/services like this - YNAB, Mint, and a
handful of Mac App Store applications that tried to accomplish more or less
the same thing. They all requested some sort of subscription or hit me with
ads every chance they got. Auto-import features usually end up being lack-
luster for me as well, forcing me to log in every time or something along
those lines.

I've come to realize that for the gainfully employed, above-average computer
user, Excel/Numbers/LibreOffce (but mostly Excel because of PivotTables) is
probably the way to go for a few reasons:

\- You're looking for a post-mortem/retrospective on your spending as a way to
adjust habits accordingly, not a way to pay off huge debts (YNAB is actually
quite good for this latter part, but that's not what I'm looking to do)

\- You don't want some program's buggy workflows getting in your way when the
data is /right there/ and basically just a table of CSV values

\- You want custom reports, charts, and other things

\- It's just really not that hard. Any bank will allow you to export financial
data in CSV or a similar format.

I just export my data every month and do a post-mortem. Easy enough. No extra
cost.

~~~
DLarsen
Are you the primary spender in your household or is it a team effort? I've
found that what helps me may not help her due to different upbringings and
mindsets about money.

I agree with you that the CSV the primary valuable artifact. Most of the pie
charts and such don't add any value. The real opportunity to improve lies in
the thought process I face at each individual spending decision.

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TomK32
Let me be frank here: The app is too simple, unpolished and I don't think
you've used it for yourself long enough. Here's my list of complaints, please
know that I'm working on a similar app with a lot more features:

* no way to copy a budget (it's the same categories every month!) * colour scheme isn't that great (lack of contrast, but that might be me) * only $, no € or ¥. currency is a text-field! * no date on the stuff I spent, sure I could use the Note field but it's cool enough * can't "end" a budget prematurely. sure, there's "custom" but no big phat arrow pointing me at the same default which is "1st of this month to the end of this month". * can't do negative amounts. yes, I'd like to do that * having upcoming or past budgets feels weird, the blue (why blue?) "Track spending" button only shows for the oldest one. * no reports at all

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raphinou
Expense tracking seems to be a trend recently! I myself use HelloExpense [1]
(just a happy user) and I recently developed a small tool to analyse my
expenses. It handles a simple csv format (from the hello expense export, but
could be generalised). I thought I might share it in this thread. If people
are interested, I put a demo at [https://expenses-
analysis.herokuapp.com/](https://expenses-analysis.herokuapp.com/)

About your website: I would have liked to get info without registering. The
explanation is short, and the only links are to sign up or sign in.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpen...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloexpense&hl=en)

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zackify
Reminds me of
[https://www.simple.com/features/expenses](https://www.simple.com/features/expenses)

~~~
glial
I recently started using this and love it. It may sound silly, but I've found
that the most effective way to stick to my budget is using a checking account
for expenses that is separate from my direct-deposit account. Simple tells you
how much money you have left (that isn't earmarked for something else), and
that's it.

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deanclatworthy
Good job on shipping something but I have to say that this space is soon going
to be owned by the banking services who have the data on the category of your
spending. And most importantly, requires no data input from myself.

Revolut already does it, so does my bank.

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rglover
Great name.

