Published on

The Mindery Thesis: Simple is Better

by JSH

Simple is Better

Mindery is a dead-simple tool for managing subscriptions.

Mindery is for people who don’t want to deal with budgeting apps or robo-solutions that negotiate with creditors or cancel services on their behalf. We respect those tools; they are great for people who need that.

Mindery empowers people to cancel unwanted subscriptions. Themselves. When they decide to. Directly.

Complexity is Exhausting

If you get bored, irritated, overwhelmed or just plain angry with how complex all your financial transaction information can seem, Mindery is designed for you.

We created Mindery–and kept it simple–because we have used all the leading personal finance/budgeting apps, and we discovered that after the initial effort to connect our bank accounts and understand the firehose of information (subscriptions, plus everything else happening with our money), we quickly grew bored or overwhelmed by that information overload, and we lost interest in spending the energy to keep up with it.

Mindery focus on subscriptions*, and it does take some initial effort to look through your recent transactions to find your subscriptions and tell Mindery about them, but once that exercise is done, the effort to “keep up” with Mindery is no different than getting occasional updates from family and friends.

  • Mindery sends you a text message when the subscriptions you identify are about to renew. Simple.

Personal Agency

Software is a form of automation, and Mindery is software, but too much automation can distance us from what is real. (Social media is designed around that dynamic.)

  • Mindery celebrates personal agency - our hands-on involvement in our subscription choices.

When we want to receive a reminder, we “touch” each subscription, first deciding whether we want to keep it. If we do, we spend a few seconds to create a Mindery record for that subscription.

Whe we receive a Mindery alert about that subscription, we decide again whether we want to continue it.

  • We are in control–not the software or a bunch of faceless drones in a call center.

You are NOT the Product

By now, we all know that “free” services (Google, Facebook/Instagram, X/Twitter, etc.) don’t charge us money because they are gathering our personal information to sell to the highest bidder.

  • In other words, as their customers, we are the product.

That is the extreme version of the “advertising supported” business model. Other free services (like many personal financial apps) have a more specific advertising driven business model. A common example is showing you credit card offers (ads) based on your personal transaction history.

We find all this to be creepy, to put it mildly.

  • When you use Mindery, Mindery is the product–not you.

You pay (a ridiculously low price) for the service, and you receive direct value from the money you pay.

  • No hidden incentives, no advertising, and no bullshit.

Simplicity Welcomes You

If this resonates with you, give us a try. We aren’t for everyone–and that’s the point.


*Mindery can also be used to schedule alerts for important events and other things you would liked to be reminded about, but managing subscriptions is an obvious place to start.