Show HN: Penny – simpler than Mint

https://www.pennyapp.io

by dontmitch • 11 years ago

12 11 11 years ago

therobot243• 11 years ago

from the ...3..pictures it looks alright i guess, but when you're managing someone's finances it's probably in your best interest to put a significant more content on how you do that exactly

dontmitch3• 11 years ago

anything in particular you wanted to know? I can answer things here and or incorporate them into the website later.

For context: totally agree with your point. we tried to avoid overwhelming visitors since they're notoriously hard to keep engaged, but the marketing page was just a first pass at best.

therobot243• 11 years ago

Well the first thing that comes to mind is that you have two images of someone talking to Penny, but only one of how i would view and manage my finances. The biggest draw to mint is the clear and layered organization. It's faster and easier for me to look at my recent aggregated payments then it would be to 'ask penny' if i paid. So really I'd love to see more of how a user would use/interact with the app other than talking to penny.

Edit: wanted to add that the layout does look very clean and nice, and if it was a calendar app or something i'd probably download it and try it out, but am very hesitant to jump to a new space when it comes to my finances

Daegalus• 11 years ago

Disclaimer: I am friends with the developers, and have been using since early alpha/beta builds.

I just gotta say, that for my uses, Penny has already replaced Mint. I used Mint as a big picture view of my finances, and the ability to search through my transaction history and so on. But the other majority of the features in Mint, went unused by me. Also the constant advertising of financial services, and other things got annoying. I tried to use the Budgets, but those aren't well laid out.

Queue Penny, and I think i got most of what I want, and features that Mint doesn't have, which is figuring out which of my transactions are recurring, and allowing me to get a total of all recurring transactions as a lump sum. That was a major feature I loved from BillGuard that I don't need to log into that for. Simple and easy to access information of all my bank account and CC balances, very nice graphs and breakdowns of my spending in a few clicks. And a solid history of my transactions.

It does what I need it to do it, with less fuss and more focus. And I am sure this product will get better with more feedback and use.

tsheaff• 11 years ago

As an early user of Penny's beta, I've found it quite helpful. My Mint usage trailed off a few years ago for some of the reasons you guys mention -- too much work to manually categorize, and manual budgeting is too often inaccurate or spikey based on just one transaction or season (e.g. Christmas or summer vacation)

Penny solves a lot of this by making the categorization way simpler (only 4 categories) which maps much closer to my own mental model of things. The SMS-style UI is a pretty brilliant way to get an "in"

Penny is also pretty hilarious. Lots of great copy writing going on!

ripaujla• 11 years ago

Seems interesting but would like more information on how app works and security

dontmitch3• 11 years ago

We've heard similar feedback on the security front before, so we'll get to work on adding more clarity around that.

Can you enumerate what else you'd like to know about how the app works?

gillis• 11 years ago

When is Penny coming to Canada?

nargz503• 11 years ago

I'm a huge Mint user. I have a pretty good system for budgeting, I check it almost everyday, etc. I've been using Penny for the past couple weeks though and am getting quite hooked on the product. Simpler, less intimidating, less stressful, and the sheer delight of interacting with a friend vs a chastising red line is wonderful. I was skeptical of the five buckets initially (given my detailed Mint categorization) but realize that that's really all I need. I'm excited to see where this goes!

Show HN: Penny – simpler than Mint

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