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Looking for a Quicken Simplifi alternative

By , who built Keep the Diff

Quicken Simplifi is a good app. It connects to your bank and card accounts, sorts the transactions, builds a spending plan that updates as money comes in and goes out, and projects your balances months ahead. Plenty of people who came over from Mint found it the closest thing to what they had lost.

People still leave it, usually for one of three reasons, and each one points somewhere different.

Reason one: the bank connection

Simplifi is built around a live feed from your accounts, provided through outside data partners. When the feed works, it is the whole appeal. When a bank changes its login, a connection needs signing in again, or a few transactions arrive twice, fixing the feed becomes the job.

Some people also simply prefer that no outside company holds ongoing read access to their accounts.

If this is you, look at tools that work with no connection at all. The options are laid out in budget apps that don't connect to your bank. Simplifi does allow manual accounts, so it is worth knowing you can keep it and type things in, though the app is clearly designed around the feed.

Reason two: the price

Simplifi is a paid subscription. Its price is reasonable for what it does. If you only open it once a week to check a number, though, you are paying for a lot of machinery you do not use.

If this is you, a spreadsheet does the core job for free, and free budgeting tools cover most of the rest.

Reason three: more plan than you wanted

A spending plan asks you to think about every bill, every category and every watchlist. That suits people who want to see their whole financial picture. Some people find they were really after something smaller: to spend a little less and save a little more, without managing a plan to get there.

If this is you, the tool you want is one that records the good decisions as they happen and leaves everything else alone.

What Keep the Diff does

Keep the Diff is the answer to reason three, and partly to reason one.

At the moment you decide against a purchase, or decide to spend less, you log two numbers: what you were ready to spend and what you actually spent. The difference is money you kept, and it adds up by week, by month and toward a goal with a photo. After four full weeks the app also shows what your typical week adds up to over a year.

There is no bank connection in the app at all, no account to create, and nothing to reconcile. A week where you log nothing does nothing to the total.

The honest comparison

  • Simplifi shows where all your money goes. Keep the Diff shows only what you chose to keep. If you need the full picture, Simplifi or a manual expense tracker is the right tool.
  • Simplifi forecasts your balances. Keep the Diff forecasts one thing, your savings pace, and only after a month of real entries.
  • Simplifi needs the feed to stay healthy. Keep the Diff needs only what you type.
  • Simplifi is a paid subscription. Logging in Keep the Diff is free, with no ads and no limit. Premium adds history, export, categories, more goals and Recurring Diffs.

Plenty of people use the two side by side: Simplifi for the bills, Keep the Diff for the savings. You can try it in your browser first, or read where the Mint crowd ended up in Mint shut down: where that crowd actually went.

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