Ask HN: Review my debt tracking app, Piggy Back

The site looks nice and I get the idea, I think the only problem is that I would see this as way to formal with my friends and family. If I pick up dinner with friends, or if I pay his part of the cab fare.. he just buys me dinner or a beer later. This seems too cold and formal for most uses.<p>Now for something like parents lending to their kids it would make more sense, or formal loans between friends (which is usually a bad idea)

Piggy Back was built to solve the problem of constantly owing or being owed by friends and family. It simply keeps a running balance of the debts between people.<p>The plans are to make it easier and easier to create these debts by leveraging email and Twitter.<p>Let me know what you think!

Here are a few ideas. The debit/credit terminology is too formal. Use something like "I owe" and "I am owed".<p>I can see myself using this if it was more closely focused on helping me track who I owe money. The confirmation system you have is too formal.<p>How about this. I can record who I owe money, or record who owes me money. If I owe John money, I can optionally choose to send him a note (email) as a friendly reminder. Maybe integrate with Facebook so he can choose from a list of his friends. No need to remember an email address. I can also have it send me reminders to my facebook account or email.

Have you seen billmonk.com? This is what I use currently to keep track of tabs with roommates. BillMonk was bought by OgoPay in 2007 though and since then they haven't changed a thing on the site.

I'm wondering why you have a Twitter login instead of a Facebook connect button, since most friends and family are probably going to be on Facebook, not Twitter.

There is an even simpler remedy to this: Don't give or lend money if you can't afford to lose it. Similarly, don't borrow money if you can't pay it back.<p>I just buy friends/family a beer, or food/items with the likely event that it will be reciprocated down the road. Even if it doesn't balance, they're not my client and I don't ever intend to bill my friends. At least, that's not how I roll.<p>Edit: I think maybe I need to clarify. I think this is a serious problem they may need to address with their app. I don't think I am a one off person, I am sure people have similar principles as me. What I am saying is that I can't see myself using this app to add a friend only to say "Hey, you owe me $8.95, please pay up"; the landing page does not convince me otherwise.

Back in my roommates days we used shared google spreadsheet with few formulas setup. It worked perfectly for us.