The PearBudget Blog

Man vs. Debt has a good piece on how to sell stuff on eBay. The author of the piece (it’s a...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:39:36 -0500

Man vs. Debt has a good piece on how to sell stuff on eBay. The author of the piece (it’s a guest post) paid off $15,000 in 9 months (!). Holy cats (!!!!).

If you’re like me, and you think “I should really get with the selling-on-eBay-thing,” it’s a good post to read. Obviously, she had $15,000 worth of stuff that people wanted … I’m not sure I have a tenth of that. But, still. If I could score $1,500 and get rid of stuff that’s cluttering up the house? Double-win.

Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy it. Here’s the link again: How I paid off $15,000 in 9 months by selling my ‘Stuff’ on Ebay.

If you have a recurring receipt (see your recurring receipts) set to run in PearBudget on the 1st of...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:39:59 -0500

If you have a recurring receipt (see your recurring receipts) set to run in PearBudget on the 1st of the month, could you please check your receipts page and delete any duplicate receipts?

Since today was Daylight Savings Time in the US, at 2:00 this morning, the clocks jumped back to 1:00. Every night at 1:00 am, our server runs a bit of code that finds all of the recurring receipts that are to be created that day, then creates a receipt for each of them, and then hibernates until the next time the clock hits 1:00 am. Last night, then, at 1:00 am, our server created the receipts for the recurring receipts that occur on the 1st of the month. Then, an hour later, the clocks turned back to 1:00, and the script woke up again, yawned, said “has it been a full day already? okay!” and created new receipts for each of those categories.

In other words, PearBudget accidentally created TWO receipts for each recurring receipt in the system for November 1st. If you have a recurring receipt for the first of the month (again: pearbudget.com/recurring_receipts), you’ll want to make sure that you delete the duplicated receipts (you can delete each duplicate with the click of a button at pearbudget.com/receipts).

Again, please check your receipts for November, and make sure you don’t have any duplicates. I’m terribly sorry for the hassle this creates.

If you have any questions, as always, we’re an e-mail away: charlie at pearbudget dot com. And, again, I’m sorry for any confusion or frustration this has generated. We’re changing the time the script runs, so this shouldn’t be a problem in the future. Thanks for your understanding.

Enabling the free PearBudget iPhone app

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:55:41 -0400

I’ve been getting a number of e-mails recently from people asking about whether we have an iPhone app or not. In case you’re new to PearBudget and haven’t seen this info before, here’s how to put the PearBudget app on your iPhone (or iPod Touch). It’s a little different from most apps, as you don’t go through the app store to get it:

Go to www.pearbudget.com on your iPhone, and log in to your account.
Once you’ve logged in, click on the “+” sign in the middle of the bottom of the iPhone screen.
You should see some options, one of which says “Add to Home Screen”
On the screen that comes up, confirm that you do want to save it to your home screen (click on the “add” button in the upper-right corner)
On your home screen (the “start screen” that shows all of your apps), you’ll now see a PearBudget icon.

You can now drag that icon to the very first start screen, or stick it in your “home row” (at the bottom of the screen), or put it anywhere you’d like. If you don’t know how to do that, just send me an e-mail (charlie at pearbudget dot com) and I can help you with that.

"Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we..."

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:53:07 -0400

“Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things”

- Elise Boulding (via minimalmac)

Starting from scratch?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:35:13 -0400

On occasion, I get e-mails from users asking: “How do I start my budget over from scratch? How can I wipe the slate clean? Is there any way to keep my old data, but to start a new account?” It’s a good question.

I’m hoping to add a “do over” button into the interface at some point that would automate the following process, but a few other features are a slightly higher priority at the moment (oh, split receipts, you elusive beastie!). So, until then, here’s what you should do if you want to start PearBudget over from scratch.

I’m assuming here that you already have an account (with a subscription) that’s a few months (years?) old, that you want to keep. If you just want to hide a few categories (without deleting them), you can “inactivate” them. Just click on the category’s name to get that category’s pop-up box. Then click on the gray bar at the bottom to get the “advanced controls.” You should see a “make this category inactive” option. But anyway, let’s get back to the question at hand: How to start your budget from scratch.

(optional) Print out your latest month’s Review page, just so you have a record of the most-recently-budgeted numbers.
Change your e-mail address. The idea here is that, in PearBudget, you can only have a single account per e-mail address. So you’ll want to change your e-mail address from “yourname@whatever.com” (obviously: replace “yourname” and “whatever” and “com” to the appropriate terms for your e-mail address) to “old.yourname@whatever.com”. In truth, it doesn’t have to be “old.” at the beginning of the e-mail … it can be whatever you want. But I recommend sticking an “old.” at the beginning, so it’s easier for me (Charlie) to find it for Step 6.

To change your e-mail address, click on your current e-mail address (top-right corner of the PearBudget screen) and you’ll get an account pop-up box. You should see where to change the e-mail address there. Don’t forget to save it!

It doesn’t matter that you don’t actually get e-mail at “old.yourname@whatever.com” … we won’t actually be sending an e-mail there.
Log out of your account. You’ll now be back at the main PearBudget screen.
Run through the wizard again, setting up your categories and values the way you want them.
When you get into the application itself, go ahead and save your account, using your regular e-mail address.
After you do that, e-mail me (charlie at pearbudget dot com), and I’ll transfer your subscription from your old account to your new account.

I know that maybe looks like a lot of steps, but it doesn’t actually take too long. Apart from the “running through the setup wizard,” it shouldn’t take more than a minute or so.

And, as with everything, if you have any questions about how to do any of this, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me.

Thanks!

"Our lives are like a river. They flow through the channel of assumptions and priorities that we set..."

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:42:52 -0400

“Our lives are like a river. They flow through the channel of assumptions and priorities that we set for them. If we begin to alter those assumptions and priorities a little, sometimes the river will fight that change in flow, but most of the time, it’ll happily shift course and find that this new path is even more serene than the old one.”

- Trent

"The shopping mall has become our temple, the credit card our burnt offering … yet, the sacrifice is..."

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:14:56 -0400

“The shopping mall has become our temple, the credit card our burnt offering … yet, the sacrifice is never sufficient for salvation.”

- Schaefer, at The Art of Manliness

Trent has an excellent post on “the local store premium,” the amount over the...

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:52:38 -0400

Trent has an excellent post on “the local store premium,” the amount over the “box-store-minimum” that it costs to support local businesses.

His post really spoke to me, as I’ve seen the town I grew up in (Arlington, VA) go through an absolutely incredible (note: read “incredible” as “hard to believe,” not “good”) shift away from local, indie shops to homogenized chains. Within walking distance from my parents’ house were several really cool thrift stores, an indie coffee house (The Sugar Shack), a really cool indie CD store (GO!), some bookstores, and other great, local places. The only national chain I can remember was a Sears. I’m sure there were a few others, but, really, national chains were not the norm. Today, though, within walking distance are two different Starbucks, a Barnes & Noble, a Crate & Barrel, a Cheesecake Factory, a Whole Foods, an Apple store, a Ben & Jerry’s, and a variety of other national chains. There are still some local stores, and even some new ones popping up. But the feel of the neighborhood has changed. It no longer feels like “Clarendon” … it just feels like “Suburban Planned ‘Community’ #58174.” I still love it, but the characteristics that make it special are slowly chipping away.

I know nostalgia’s cheap entertainment, and it’s easy to paint the past with a rose-colored wash. But it’s also important to recognize, like one of the commenter’s at Trent’s article noted: “you get to decide what kind of a neighbourhood you want.” You can read Trent’s piece here: The “Local Store Premium” – How Much Is It Worth to You?.

Love, love, love hearing from you all: “I want to say how much I love pearbudget.com and the...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:39:42 -0400

Love, love, love hearing from you all:

“I want to say how much I love pearbudget.com and the go cards! I’ve been able to easily keep track of and KEEP a budget! I’ve paid off 3 credit cards in the four months I’ve been using it. Thank you for providing a simple budgeting website!”

— Carrie, from Winter Park, FL

Update: Bug’s fixed. I still recommend Firefox, though. A few users have reported a curious...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:26:00 -0400

Update: Bug’s fixed. I still recommend Firefox, though.

A few users have reported a curious bug. We’re looking into it.

For some reason, users on Internet Explorer 8 are finding that when they go to the PearBudget Review page, the browser doesn’t like it and closes the window on them. That’s all I’ve been able to discern so far, but we’re trying to figure out what’s going on with it. As far as I know, we haven’t changed the code for the Review page in the last week, so I’m guessing that some update to Internet Explorer over the weekend broke it. We’ll figure it out, though.

In the meantime, I haven’t heard of any issues from Firefox, Safari, or Chrome users. So if you’re having any issues with your account, you might check one of them out. Honestly, I’d encourage you to switch over from IE even if you aren’t having isues with it. Firefox is faster, more secure, and more customizable. And everything looks prettier. Download Firefox for free here.

I’ll update this post once we have some info on the IE8 problem.

Update: Bug’s fixed. I still recommend Firefox, though.

Best Pie Chart Ever via ayjay, via Dry Creek Chronicles

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:05:21 -0400

Best Pie Chart Ever

via ayjay, via Dry Creek Chronicles

W.E.A.L.T.H.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:32:25 -0400

I was a little skeptical at first about today’s guest post at Get Rich Slowly (How A Haircut Led to a Handy Acronym), but it ended up being really good.

At the core of it is an acronym (WEALTH), which offers a series of questions to ask before making a purchase:

Want or need? (As you’d expect: Is this purchase necessary?)

Ego? (Is this purchase simply to “keep up with the Joneses” / to feed your ego?)

Add-ons? (Is this purchase self-contained? Or are there multiple add-ons that will end up being necessary for it to function?)

Lifestyle? (Will purchasing this mesh with your current / ideal lifestyle? Or will it diverge in complicating ways?)

Time? (Is this a one-off purchase? Or will you have to buy more of it down the road?)

Happiness? (Will purchasing this really make you happy? Or will it pull you away from other things you’d rather be doing?)

Obviously, it’s not saying that “just because something’s a want, you shouldn’t buy it,” or “just because there are add-ons that you might need to buy down the road, you shouldn’t buy it.” It’s simply saying that as you consider purchases, these are factors you should consider. It’s a good list.

You can read the whole thing here: How A Haircut Led to a Handy Acronym.

A nice frugal tip from Trent, at The Simple Dollar: Start a miscellaneous vegetables box. We cook...

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:27:23 -0400

A nice frugal tip from Trent, at The Simple Dollar:

Start a miscellaneous vegetables box.

We cook a side dish of vegetables with almost every meal we make, and we often have just a few spoonfuls of leftovers. Often, these wind up in the compost bin, but that’s not particularly efficient - I’d rather throw actual waste in the compost bin, not food.

Our solution is a clever one. We just stuck a small resealable container in the freezer. Whenever we have any sort of leftover vegetables, we just spoon those veggies into that container. When the container is full, we boil up some water, add some spices, toss in some diced chicken breasts (and some stock if we’ve got it), then add the vegetables and let it all boil together.

Boom - really inexpensive (and delicious) chicken soup that’s different every time you make it. You can thicken the water/broth with a bit of corn starch to make it more like a stew if you want.

This is a killer way to not waste leftover vegetables, add volume to your freezer, and produce a very delicious and simple meal for pennies.

— Freezer and Fridge Hacks: Seven Ways to Maximize the Value of Your Refrigerator and Freezer

This is kind of last-minute, and a total longshot, but we’re wrapping up a week at the Outer...

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:08:10 -0400

This is kind of last-minute, and a total longshot, but we’re wrapping up a week at the Outer Banks (North Carolina) (specifically, Corolla). If any of you happen to be here, I’d love to take you out for coffee. Or, better yet, for a burrito at Donkey Hotay’s. Lemme know if you happen to be in the area.

Thanks!

The other day I got a great note from a user named Jan. Here’s part of it: I love PearBudget...

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:31:42 -0400

The other day I got a great note from a user named Jan. Here’s part of it:

I love PearBudget and it’s the only thing out there I’ve found that does budgeting like my Dad taught me on paper when I was growing up. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t even tell you how many budgeting programs we’ve tried. You’ve thought of everything and your program allows for many different ways of budgeting. I even purchased a year of Dave Ramsey’s program online and wasn’t impressed at all. Yours is far better than his and works right along with his program as well. Very impressed!!! Thanks again!

Thank you, Jan! We’re so glad PearBudget’s working so well for you!

Just wanted to let you know that PearBudget’s servers might be down for about 30 minutes for...

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:56:35 -0400

Just wanted to let you know that PearBudget’s servers might be down for about 30 minutes for some upgrades and whatnot this coming Friday. The service time will be sometime in the 9 to 11:30 (Pacific time) window on Friday evening.

We’re sorry in advance for any problems this might cause. Thanks for your patience!

Thoughts on the Printed Version of PearBudget?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:26:00 -0400

We’ve gotten a few e-mails with requests that we modify the way that PearBudget prints out, so that it takes up fewer sheets of paper. Since Sarah and I don’t actually print out our budget often, we’d really appreciate input from people who do print their budgets.

Do you like it the way it is now? Would you like the print to be smaller, so more of your budget can fit on a single page? Do you have any other preferences for the printed version?

If you have any thoughts, it’d be awesome if you could e-mail them to us, at charlie@pearbudget.com. Or, if you’d prefer to answer this right here on the blog, you can do that in the field below. So: what are your thoughts on the printed version of PearBudget?

That Old College Try

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:01:37 -0400

As you probably know, we’ve built PearBudget to be friendly to people who’ve never mapped out their finances before. And this fall, hundreds of thousands of people who’ve never mapped out their finances before will be heading off to college. For the first time in their lives, they’ll be cooking for themselves, doing their own laundry, keeping their own schedule, and beginning to live independently from their parents. It’s a lot to learn.

As part of learning to live on their own, one of the best sets of skills they can develop is to learn how to plan their spending for the month, how to track their expenses, and then how to evaluate how they did (and to modify it the next month). PearBudget is an ideal way to hone those skills. And just as the first few shirts they iron will probably be wrinkled, and the first few meals they cook might be burned a little, it might take them a little bit of time to get a handle on their spending. That’s okay. That’s how it goes for everyone.

Anyway, the point of this post: If you know anyone who is going off to school this fall, we’d really appreciate it if you’d mention PearBudget to them and to their parents. With all of the other madness of getting packed up and off to school, budgeting is probably low on the list of their priorities. Hearing from you about PearBudget might help them move forward on it, and to take those first faltering steps towards good personal financial management.

Thanks, friends!

Before I post this, I want to be clear: good financial management isn’t simply about depriving...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:32:14 -0400

Before I post this, I want to be clear: good financial management isn’t simply about depriving yourself of things you want to get. It’s about being intentional with the way you spend your money. But, at times, you can intentionally set up challenges for yourself. So. Now that that’s out there …

Big congrats to Rachel and Doug (Rachel blogs at the marvelous Small Notebook), on the completion of their “No Spend Month.” Really impressive.

You can read her wrap-up of the month here: No Spend Month Update: The Final Day, but I especially like this bit, where she talks about how they wanted to celebrate the end of the month:

Should we go out for coffee? No, the coffee at home tasted better. Did I want a milkshake? No, I had a better smoothie at home. See, that’s the problem with No Spend Month. It makes going out and spending money not seem like quite as much fun, because the money doesn’t go very far.

Stopping spending is like going without sugar. It’s kind of hard at first. Have you ever given up a soda habit? I really like root beer, but there have been seasons when I’ve stopped drinking it. Later if I treat myself to a root beer in a tall frosted glass, it never tastes as great as I hoped. It’s too sweet. Yes, it still tastes good, but it’s not as satisfying as it once was.

It’s been a while since we mentioned the GoCards here. In case that’s a new term for...

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:46:01 -0400

It’s been a while since we mentioned the GoCards here. In case that’s a new term for you, your Gocard is a printable 3x5 card with your budget categories, and how much you have available for the month. It’s kind of like the pared-down iPhone version of PearBudget for people without iPhones. (If you know the “hipster PDA,” it’s based off of that idea.) Anyway …

We’d been hearing from some of you that you had too many categories to fit on your GoCards. While, in general, we think it’s a good idea to try and keep your budget categories simple, we can understand that you sometimes need to have a lot of categories. So we added a new feature, and you can now select, for each category, whether you want it on your GoCard or not. (As far as features go, this isn’t a huge one, but I’d been telling a few of you I’d announce it on the blog once the feature was live, so … here you go!)

By default, all of your categories are “on” your GoCard, but if you want to turn them off, just head to the Plan or Review page, click on the category you want to take off your GoCard, and open up the “advanced controls” (that gray bar at the bottom of the pop-up). You should then see the button to click to remove it. (We’ll hopefully be refining this process down the road, so you can control it all from the GoCard page. For now, though, we wanted to get the basic feature out there so you could start using it.)

Speaking of the category pop-up box … in case you hadn’t seen it yet, that’s also where you can now make your categories “inactive,” and they won’t show up on your Plan / Review pages (but if you spend money on them / budget for them in a given month, they’ll show up again … but just for that month). That way, you don’t have to delete unused categories just to get them out of the way.

We have a few more features (including one or two big ones) in the pipeline, but we always love hearing from you with more ways we can make PearBudget better. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!