Shaine Mata Blog

I very recently cancelled my  +Acorns  account. Despite the excellent app and overall product experience, it is not a fit for my needs. Two problems arise from my experience with Acorns. The first problem was the randomness, which could be fixed by not rounding up. The second problem is that they use modern portfolio theory (which money geeks call MPT). A third issue is not related to Acorns itself, but my own move towards simplification. Randomness The idea of taking spare change and investing it has an allure of simplicity. Surely, you would not miss a few cents here and there, right? Sure, until it adds up to real money. I think my highest 30 day contributions reached around $70. That's real money out of my monthly budget, not just change. While the occasional draft of $5+ from my checking account does not interfere with my spending, I realized that the $70 could be going towards my other accounts or goals. I didn't realize that spare change is real money. Downsi...

I am crushing on my  +Simple  account now that I am gathering my expenses for tax purposes. While Simple is not so useful this year, due to limited use in 2015, it is going to be awesome next year. Simple currently only offers personal accounts, although their Help section mentions that they are considering business accounts in future, which would be even better. The one feature that will make my tax preparation less demanding next year is the ability to tag my expenses. By adding a #business tag to the appropriate income and expenses, I instantly create a filter for my searches. Next year, for example, I would simply search "2016 #business" to get a report listing all my business expenses and income. Then, it is as simple as exporting the list. Done. Another excellent tax feature is the ability to upload invoices to the individual transactions. This is great in that I would have access to the actual invoice should I ever need to verify that the expense is business-rela...