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 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.
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.
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!
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 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
