The PearBudget Blog

Happy Canada Day! To Celebrate: Toronto PearBudget Meetup!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:46:21 -0400

There’s a very good chance I’ll be in Toronto within the next month. I’d love to meet up with any of you in the area. We can talk about budgeting, eat some Tim Hortons’ (my treat … that’s one less receipt for you to enter!), and generally have a good time. Send me an e-mail (charlie at pearbudget.com) and we’ll work out the details. Thanks!

The Basics Behind a Budget That Works

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:25:00 -0400

The Basics Behind a Budget That Works:

If Real Simple weren’t so focused on getting you to buy stuff to make your life simpler (?!), it might come close to being as good as Simple Mom.

If that last sentence didn’t make sense (I’m only one coffee into the morning), let me rephrase it: SimpleMom.net is an absolutely awesome blog, and if you aren’t reading it, you should be. Ostensibly, it’s easy to lump it into the “mommyblog” grouping of blogs, but it’s about so much more than that, even if you aren’t a mom (or a dad), you should check it out.

Anyway, Simple Mom’s post from today, The Basics Behind a Budget That Works is outstanding. She’s written about budgeting and personal finance before, but this post is her best yet. It’s easily in the top 5 blog posts I’ve ever read about personal finance, and is certainly the best I’ve read on how to get started with budgeting. As much as I love Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar, neither one has really nailed budgeting yet. Simple Mom completely blew it out of the water.

One point she makes that I’ll just highlight, as it’s rare to see someone explicitly state it: if you’re trying to create a perfect, master budget, you’ll almost certainly give up in frustration. Instead, you should be building a series of monthly budgets … each based on the budget from the month before, but each unique to the situations you’ll be facing in the coming month. Nobody ever talks about this, but it’s an important distinction to make. This is, in part, why we don’t let you budget way in advance within PearBudget. The furthest you can go into the future is next month. Because things (priorities, needs, situations) change, if you’ve set up something far into the future, the ground’s liable to shift underneath your feet, leaving you unsteady and ill-prepared. Your own “preparedness” can end up being a big liability.

Anyway, you should check it out: The Basics Behind a Budget That Works.

You have enough.

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:52:59 -0400

You have enough.:

From Derek Sivers:

Companies spend a fortune begging you to want their stuff. I won’t add to that noise.

Retail therapy is the worst kind.

I’d like to get 100 parrots and teach them to say “It won’t make you happy!” — then let them loose in shopping malls, big electronics stores, and car lots.

Then, when people are considering spending thousands of dollars on a giant TV, or going deeply in debt with a new car, a surprising squawk might shock them back to their senses.

The quickest way to double your income is to halve your expenses. Any study of happiness will tell you it’s best to actively appreciate what you’ve got.

Emergency Binder!

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:56:44 -0400

If you happen to have some downtime (like, oh, if you’re waiting for PearBudget to move to its new server), you might take a minute to check out a new (free) project we’ve started up, Emergency Binder!

As you’ve probably guessed, it’s a resource where you can gather important documents, records, and instructions for how to handle an emergency. For example, if a pipe bursts in your home, does everyone know how to shut off the water supply line? If you need to leave your home, do you have a coordinated meetup spot where you can all rendezvous? Do you have the name and contact info for your college-aged child’s Resident Advisor / Landlord / Dean of Students? All of those are things that Emergency Binder! deals with.

Emergency Binder! is young (about a week old), but it’s already got some good stuff. And, as I mentioned, it’s completely free. Check it out!

Moving to a New Server

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:54:43 -0400

A quick note on our downtime: Our hosting provider, Media Temple, is currently in the process of transitioning PearBudget from it’s current “cluster” to a new “cluster” — this should make the site more stable, and faster (although I’m not sure how to interpret “faster” … will it be noticeable to humans? Or just to computers? We’ll find out.).

Anyway, I contacted them to see why the site was down during this transition. They weren’t sure, and noted that, normally, sites are moved from one cluster to another without any downtime. Once the migration is complete, PearBudget should be back online without any problems. If there are any issues, we’ll troubleshoot them.

We’ll keep you updated with the PearBudget server migration. Hopefully, it won’t be long, and we’ll be on a nice, fast, stable machine. Thanks, as always, for your patience.

Great, great, great post from Rachel, at Small Notebook: How to Move in 6 Weeks or 6 Days, and Keep...

Fri, 29 May 2009 06:43:05 -0400

Great, great, great post from Rachel, at Small Notebook: How to Move in 6 Weeks or 6 Days, and Keep Your Sanity. This is something Sarah and I especially need right now, as we’re going to be moving in … oh … 3 weeks, and the urgency of that hasn’t yet hit me. Thanks to Rachel’s post, though, I think it just did.

Had a great recommendation from Kirsty, at Momedy, in her post Easy Peasy Money Management. She...

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:28:37 -0400

Had a great recommendation from Kirsty, at Momedy, in her post Easy Peasy Money Management. She described PearBudget as “incredibly intuitive, non-intimidating, friendly and easy.”

Thanks for the recommendation, Kirsty!

Preparing Your Information for Disaster

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:25:00 -0400

Preparing Your Information for Disaster:

Trent has, as usual, a terrific post on how to prepare a binder of key information for your family. I’d strongly encourage you to read it, and to put it into practice.

In fact, I’m going to need an accountability partner to make our own family’s binder. Let’s do it together! Interested? Send me a note on Twitter, @charliepark.

5 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Finances, Beginning Now

Fri, 22 May 2009 05:40:00 -0400

5 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Finances, Beginning Now:

A good post on Simple Mom, with a high-level overview of things you can do to get your financial house in order.

The only place where I (personally) diverge from the author is that Sarah and I aren’t on the “all cash” team, as we find we spend more when we’ve got cash on hand, and less when we use a credit/debit card. But I know that a lot of people do find that the cash-only approach is helpful.

You can click on the link in the title of this blog post, or just click here: 5 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Finances, Beginning Now.

FAQ: Just using PearBudget to track expenses?

Wed, 20 May 2009 05:36:43 -0400

Q: Hi Charlie — do you know of anyone that uses your Pear Budget simply to track expenses? I mean not put in any budget — just enter receipts? It seems to confuse me with the budget, then spent, not spent. I might get the hang eventually, but for now would just like to track expenses. Do you think this would work? Thanks.

A: I think that would absolutely work. In fact, that’s a great way to get started with it. It’s only once you have a “baseline” of what’s “normal” that you can begin to adjust your spending based on where you want to go. You could say, for example, that you want to spend no more than $20 a month dining out. But if you’re currently spending $200 a month (that is, if $200 is “normal” for you), it’s going to be VERY hard to adjust down to $20 a month. So tracking expenses without worrying about the planned budget numbers is a fine way to go. If you get to a point where you’re comfortable with what you’re tracking, you can then begin to set goals, and say things like “if we want to set aside that $1,000 for a vacation, we should spend a little less on _________.”

"The 1% of money management software you actually need. The genius of PearBudget is that it focuses..."

Tue, 19 May 2009 21:09:26 -0400

“The 1% of money management software you actually need. The genius of PearBudget is that it focuses on solving one specific problem and it does it better than any other tool out there: it helps you create a simple budget and stick to it.”

- 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget, from the writers of Wise Bread

Win a free year's subscription to PearBudget

Mon, 11 May 2009 09:07:31 -0400

Emily, at Remodeling This Life, is giving away two subscriptions to PearBudget. If you want to win, head over to her blog & check it out: http://www.remodelingthislife.com/2009/05/11/pear-budget-giveaway/.

Thanks, Emily!

A quick note on recurring receipts: The server’s downtime yesterday meant that the code that...

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:53:53 -0400

A quick note on recurring receipts: The server’s downtime yesterday meant that the code that normally creates recurring receipts didn’t run on the morning of the 5th. So if you have a recurring receipt that runs each month on the 5th, you should take a minute to enter it in by hand. We’re working on a tool that’ll allow you to see all of your recurring receipts (across all categories, in one spot), but we don’t have that quite yet. So if you need any help checking your recurring receipts, send us an e-mail, and we’ll help you out.

Thanks!

I just increased the font size, line-height, and contrast on the blog. We hadn’t had any...

Wed, 06 May 2009 06:12:57 -0400

I just increased the font size, line-height, and contrast on the blog. We hadn’t had any complaints about it, but as I read yesterday’s long-ish post, I thought it was a little washed out.

Feedback (good or bad) is always welcome! Send me a tweet @pearbudget or @charliepark.

Let’s think about something happy. These are our little...

Tue, 05 May 2009 22:58:16 -0400

Let’s think about something happy. These are our little girls! Frances (2), Lucy (5), and Kate (2)

It's not you. It's us. Kind of.

Tue, 05 May 2009 22:25:00 -0400

Update: looks like we’re back up. Head on over to your account at pearbudget.com.

If you’ve tried to access your PearBudget account over the last day, you’ll have seen that the server is down. This is an issue at our hosting company, Media Temple. They have a team of engineers working on it, and, presumably, will have it resolved soon. Also, they’ve assured us that they’ll be moving PearBudget to a faster, more stable server as soon as they can.

I want to apologize to all of you who’ve been thwarted as you’ve tried to get to your budget last night and today. I know that it’s often hard to get into “budgeting mode,” and that even small barriers can serve as great excuses to not do it. We’ve tried to make PearBudget into a tool that eliminates those barriers as much as possible. The irony of this situation — that we’re the ones keeping you from budgeting — isn’t lost on us. We’re really sorry that the issues at Media Temple are affecting us, and (more important) that they’re, in turn, affecting you.

Even with the promises of the faster and more stable server, we’re again looking into other hosting options. One of the issues in moving to a new hosting company is that we don’t have a dedicated system administrator on-hand. Honestly, I think describing me (Charlie) as a “programmer” is a bit generous. Most of the hosting companies we’d be considering are built for companies who have sysadmins who know how to manage and control the servers. I’m always up for learning new skills; I’m also realistic about my limitations. Also, the more time I spend sysadmining, the less time I have to do customer service, and the less time I have to develop new features. But if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.

Back to the meat of it. I’m posting updates, as I have them, on our Twitter stream, @pearbudget. And if you feel like sending @mediatemple a note about how this is inconveniencing you, well … I don’t think that’d hurt.

In the meantime, please feel free to e-mail me (charlie@pearbudget.com), or to send me a tweet (either @pearbudget or @charliepark) if you have any questions, and I’ll do my best to get back to you as quickly as possible.

iPhone Version of PearBudget?

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:43:21 -0400

We get this question every day or two, and it’s really my fault for not making it more clear on the front page at pearbudget.com. “Do you have plans to develop a version of PearBudget for the iPhone?”

Actually, we already have an iPhone version of PearBudget — pearbudget.com! We wanted to make using PearBudget on your iPhone as simple as possible, so there’s no app to install, nothing to download: Just visit PearBudget.com on your iPhone. PearBudget will figure out that you’re on an iPhone, and it’ll automatically serve up an iPhone-optimized version of the site!

If you want to add a PearBudget icon to your iPhone’s home screen, you can certainly do that (we provide a “web clip” (that’s the technical name of the little iPhone icons) for PearBudget, so you can just grab that and stick it on your home screen … if you don’t know how to do that, send me an e-mail, at charlie@pearbudget.com, and I’ll show you how to do it).

For those of you on a mobile-but-not-iPhone-phone, we also have a mobile version of PearBudget, at pearbudget.com/m.

Have fun!

We started up the “Budgeting Tip of the Day” again at Twitter (twitter.com/pearbudget)....

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:00:04 -0400

We started up the “Budgeting Tip of the Day” again at Twitter (twitter.com/pearbudget). Just in case you missed it.

In related news, if you’re following us on Twitter, and we aren’t following you, and you aren’t a spammer, send us an @pearbudget message and let us know, and we’ll follow you back.

An interesting post over at Get Rich Slowly: How to Create Your Own Target-Date Mutual Fund....

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:55:01 -0400

An interesting post over at Get Rich Slowly: How to Create Your Own Target-Date Mutual Fund. I’m not totally convinced that the author’s grocery store metaphor is apt, but I think his point warrants thinking about: When you allow an investment firm to bundle up a package of stocks and bonds that you buy, there’s the potential for problems — the investment firm essentially gets to decide what their profit’s going to be, and there’s not necessarily a guarantee that you’re going to get the best stocks / bonds (best for you, that is) in your mix.

That being said, there’s a tremendous benefit to signing up with a target-date fund, in that it gets you started. As long as you have the minimum amount to get started, it takes hardly any time at all to just get going. If you have to evaluate the various stocks and bonds you’d like to purchase, it’s all-too-easy to just sit on the decision and to never get around to it. Just get going, and if you decide the pre-built target-date fund isn’t right for you, change it. But, again, just get started.

Again, here’s the post at Get Rich Slowly: How to Create Your Own Target-Date Mutual Fund.

How to Handle Two-Week Pay Cycles?

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:16:35 -0400

I just received an e-mail from a user asking about how to handle a two-week pay cycle. Here’s an excerpt from my note back to her.

Generally, our recommendation for two-week pay cycles is that you take your biweekly paycheck amount, double it, and use that amount as your monthly income amount. The downside to that is that you have a bit less money in your budget. The upside is twofold, though: A) it’s a lot simpler to make a spending plan; B) twice a year, you get an extra paycheck. What we recommend you do with that bonus paycheck is that you put it either towards paying off debt (credit card debt, school loans, etc.), or towards some savings goal (a new car, your retirement fund, down payment on a house, etc.).

I know it’s hard enough to budget with the money that you’re already accounting for, and to drop it down (even by 1/26th) can be difficult. But I think it does make it a lot simpler, and that extra paycheck is awfully nice, too.

This advice isn’t specific to PearBudget. Regardless of the method you’re using to budget, I think simplifying it is a crucial component. Trying to do the math of 26 paychecks in 12 months (or 13 paychecks in 6 months), and figuring out how much to allocate to any given month, and balancing that with the actual amount that came in … well … yikes. Certainly, you can make it work. But I think simplifying it makes it a lot easier. And, as we all know, the less painful something is, the more likely you are to actually do it.