Your issue brings up a very important distinction between Monero and Bitcoin Core. Namely, the daemon (aka the part that syncs the Monero blockchain) and the wallet (aka the part that tracks your balance) are separate things for Monero.

To use simplewallet, you need to connect it to a fully synced daemon. It is your the best interest from a privacy standpoint to use your own daemon, but simplewallet can connect to remote daemons without losing any security.

If your really need to see your balance before your daemon is synced, you could connect to a remote node (How do I connect monero-wallet-cli to a remote node?). Note than in doing so, you give up some privacy to the operator of that node.

Your issue brings up a very important distinction between Monero and Bitcoin Core. Namely, the daemon (aka the part that syncs the Monero blockchain) and the wallet (aka the part that tracks your balance) are separate things for Monero.

To use simplewallet, you need to connect it to a fully synced daemon. It is your the best interest from a privacy standpoint to use your own daemon, but simplewallet can connect to remote daemons without losing any security.

If your really need to see your balance before your daemon is synced, you could connect to a remote node (How do I connect monero-wallet-cli to a remote node?). Note than in doing so, you give up some privacy to the operator of that node.

Your issue brings up a very important distinction between Monero and Bitcoin Core. Namely, the daemon (aka the part that syncs the Monero blockchain) and the wallet (aka the part that tracks your balance) are separate things for Monero.

To use simplewallet, you need to connect it to a fully synced daemon. It is your the best interest from a privacy standpoint to use your own daemon, but simplewallet can connect to remote daemons without losing any security.

If your really need to see your balance before your daemon is synced, you could connect to a remote node (ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/4jloss/nodemonerohashcom_public_remote_node_for_your/). Note than in doing so, you give up some privacy to the operator of that node.

Your issue brings up a very important distinction between Monero and Bitcoin Core. Namely, the daemon (aka the part that syncs the Monero blockchain) and the wallet (aka the part that tracks your balance) are separate things for Monero.

To use simplewallet, you need to connect it to a fully synced daemon. It is your the best interest from a privacy standpoint to use your own daemon, but simplewallet can connect to remote daemons without losing any security.

If your really need to see your balance before your daemon is synced, you could connect to a remote node (How do I connect monero-wallet-cli to a remote node?). Note than in doing so, you give up some privacy to the operator of that node.