July 2011
1 post
Anonymous asked: Howdy,
just wondering if there is a way to change the currency that PearBudget uses? I'm based in the UAE, and while I could forget the $ sign in front of everything, it does make it a bit awkward …
Kind Regards
Paul
just wondering if there is a way to change the currency that PearBudget uses? I'm based in the UAE, and while I could forget the $ sign in front of everything, it does make it a bit awkward …
Kind Regards
Paul
June 2011
1 post
A New Blog!
For a few years now, we’ve been posting blurbs and updates here on Tumblr. Thanks to Ruth (our awesome customer service manager), we’ve made the transition over to a WordPress-powered blog, over at http://blog.pearbudget.com/.
We think having the blog on WordPress will help us write more frequently. We’d love to write more about various issues people encounter when trying to...
April 2011
5 posts
More mobile-friendly categories
We just added a small feature that I wanted to share with you. It’s subtle, but will hopefully make things easier for you if you use PearBudget on your smartphone.
On the normal PearBudget website, your categories on the “Enter a Receipt” page are listed in alphabetical order. That had been the case with the “Enter a Receipt” sections of the mobile interfaces (the...
Checking on Things
Hi, friends. We’ve gotten a note or two about PearBudget not working (after we worked on the servers this morning). If that’s the case for you, could you shoot me an e-mail at charlie@pearbudget.com ? Thanks so much.
Update: As far as we can tell, all issues have been fully resolved. Thanks again!
Some Planned Downtime Tomorrow (Friday, April...
Hi, all! Charlie here.
I just wanted to let you know that PearBudget will be down for about an hour or two tomorrow (Friday, April 15th), from about 8am to about 10am (Eastern). We’re going to be working on the servers a bit.
We’re hoping that the downtime will actually only be about 15 minutes, but these things can sometimes go wonky, and we don’t want you to be counting on...
Get a Free Lifetime Membership to Dave Ramsey's...
We don’t post many links to contests and giveaways, as we know that your time and attention are precious. But we’re big fans of being debt free, of Simple Mom, and of Dave Ramsey, so we wanted to be sure to link to this one … over at Simple Mom, you can win one of five lifetime memberships to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.
In case you don’t know,...
Anonymous asked: I think that an awesome feature to add would be a way to use your budget entries to also balance your checkbook. I know that I can do it the way it is, but it would be great if that was an obvious, user-friendly feature on the site. I haven't found any other tool that does both things simply and cleanly. I like the PearBudget interface, but I don't want to do double-entry to actually...
March 2011
6 posts
Anonymous asked: I have actual receipts for March, then I have the credit card statement that I paid in March (but actual receipts are for February+March). So...the money leaves my bank account when I pay the credit card statement. Question: for March, do I enter the expenditures according to the credit card statement (mostly February transactions), or according to my 'spending', i.e. I buy groceries...
A better, safer, faster way to be online (Firefox)
Hi, friends! Charlie here. Just wanted to make a quick announcement.
I know a number of you use a program called Internet Explorer to get onto the Internet. It has a logo that looks something like this:
Because we care about you, we wanted to let you know about another program that you can use to get onto the internet. It’s called Firefox. (There are a few other good ones, too, but right...
If you’d like to enter to win 6 months of free budgeting with PearBudget, go check out this great post at Living Peacefully Less Stressed. Courtney has a contest with 3 ways to win, going on until 3/28. Good luck!
allruiz asked: Do you support multiple currencies?
Anonymous asked: is there a way to see a list of all my recurring receipts? I sort of forget what i've set up and what I haven't. Thank you!
Coffee and Donuts, On Us
In a little over a week and a half, I (Charlie) will be down in Austin, Texas, to lead a session at the SXSW Interactive conference (my session is on “how do you run a web business and still be a good dad? Alternately, how do you be a good dad and still run a web business?”). It should be a lot of fun.
While I’m there, I’d love to meet up with some of you to have coffee...
February 2011
11 posts
Anonymous asked: seems to be a problem accessing Pear Budget today...is it just me or is anyone else having problems?
The Dance of Marriage
If you liked Charlie’s post at Simple Mom a few days ago, you’ll probably like a new column in the Wall Street Journal, “The Dance of Marriage” (or maybe that’s the first article’s name? Anyway …).
In this first article in the column, the author, Katherine Rosman, introduces a few familiar topics: “When we argue, it’s usually about currency,...
PearBudget Giveaway
If you’re interested in winning a free year’s worth of PearBudget, head over to The Thrifty Wife. Ashley’s got a contest going on through Feb. 28th. Of course, we hope you win!
Budgeting Without Guilt
I mentioned a little while ago that I’m going to be a guest contributor this year at Simple Mom, talking about “money stuff.”
My first post — Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting — is now live. In it, I talk about a few things, like
why a crushing sense of guilt isn’t really helpful when budgeting
what is a budget, anyway?
the Three Circles of Spending
… and more.
...
Thanks for your feedback on the sparkbars! They...
A few days ago, we asked for feedback on the little green lines under the category names, asking if they were something you found useful.
We got a lot of feedback (you can see it here), and it seems like a lot of you really love them. That’s awesome! And we’re so glad to know they’re useful!
I just got a concerned e-mail from a user asking about them, so I wanted to share a...
Anonymous asked: I cannot remember my password b/c and it has been several hours since I was told that I would be receiving an answer via email.
A 2-Second Facebook Survey: those green bars under...
The other day, Sarah and I realized that we don’t actually use the little green bars underneath the category names in PearBudget very much. If you haven’t noticed them before (you wouldn’t be the only one), here they are:
Sarah and I used to use them a fair amount, to see how much we’d spent in the current month, versus how far through the month we were. But recently, we...
Introducing Ruth!
Back in late 2010, I made some noises about how we’d be bringing on some people to help us make PearBudget run a little smoother. I’m so excited to introduce to you our “Employee #1,” Ruth Szpunar!
We pride ourselves on a few things here at PearBudget. At the top of the list is customer service. We know that you have lives you need to live, and that any issues you come...
Anonymous asked: Does PearBudget have a BB app?
Anonymous asked: How is it that one spreadsheet could change my life? After using pear for a few months I began noticing funny discrepancies between my records and those of my financial institution. Needless to say I have a new bank and the start of a new financial future. Thank you PearBudget for helping me control my money!
What to do if you're in way over your head?
A PearBudget user asked a question over at Yahoo! Answers about getting out of debt, and finding resources to help them make sense of the situation they’re in. I posted an answer there, but figured I’d re-post it here, in case it’s helpful to any of you.
Their question:
“Hi! I have set up a budget with pear budget but we really don’t know how to go about spending...
January 2011
19 posts
An Awesome PearBudget Review
Oops! I thought I had posted this a few weeks ago, back when I first wrote it. I’m sorry it never made it out of the drafts folder. Here you go!
I wanted to share a really amazing PearBudget review with all of you. It absolutely nails the value of a budget, and why it’s not the burden people often think it will be:
A budget is not restricting, but actually empowering! Budgeting...
If you’re having an issue with logging in to PearBudget from your iPod Touch or iPhone, could you leave a comment on PearBudget’s Facebook page? We’re trying to troubleshoot an issue a customer’s having, but haven’t seen it before, and aren’t quite sure what’s going on. Thanks!
Tip of the Day! (what do you want to know?)
One of our biggest goals when developing PearBudget was (and is!) to make budgeting simple. And one of the things that makes most budgeting programs complex is that there’s so much stuff on the screen. So we’ve tucked away features and made the interface as simple as possible. So — yay! — there are gems waiting for you to discover them. But — oh no! — if you don’t know...
Anonymous asked: do i enter monthly bills(i.e. utilities, mrtg) in the Receipts section or no?
Anonymous asked: Have you ever thought of making monthly budget categories roll over to the next month if they were not used? Or if you have extra cash at the end of a month, include it as income in the following month?
Anonymous asked: how can we change the amounts in individual budget categories? There doesn't seem to be a way to do that.
Be sure your e-mail address is correct!
Setting up a budget is exciting, I know. Thrill-a-minute, right? It’s important, though, that you come down off the high to make sure you’ve entered your e-mail address correctly when you create your account.
I know you type your e-mail address every single day. Multiple times in a day, even. Despite that, it’s still possible to mistype your e-mail address when creating your...
Searching the FAQs
We’ve added a search box on the PearBudget FAQ page, to hopefully help you find the answers you’re looking for. Just type in your search terms, and the FAQ page will filter out the answers that don’t have the terms you enter. If you feel like testing it out, you can try typing in “donut”.
We’ve also open-sourced the javascript to run the filter. So if you...
How Do I Delete A Category?
I occasionally get a call or an e-mail asking “how do I delete a category in PearBudget”, so I thought I’d share it here. I’ll also look through the PearBudget FAQ page and make sure I’ve got a clear answer there. If you have suggestions for how we can make it clearer, just let us know!
On the deleting of categories, there are two options. One option COMPLETELY...
Anonymous asked: Does PearBudget have a mobile interface?
Anonymous asked: so I saw how to do this for an iphone app, what about android??
Anonymous asked: afternoon,
i'm looking for a system that will actually move money for me, which means it'll have access to my bank accounts. do you do that?
thanks!
i'm looking for a system that will actually move money for me, which means it'll have access to my bank accounts. do you do that?
thanks!
Anonymous asked: Hello, I'd really like to start using your excellent program, but am wondering if there's any way to increase the number of categories for fixed and irregular expenses? I have a lot more than the default number of categories. Thank you
Anonymous asked: Have you though of a cool feature that would be "Time to Add Your Receipts!" as daily auto message sent to e-mail with link?
Holy cats! Tumblr apparently doesn’t tell you by e-mail that people have asked you questions. Just saw for the first time that a bunch of you have asked questions here and have been waiting for answers. So sorry about that!
We’ll start replying to them, but if you need a faster response, feel free to e-mail (charlie@pearbudget.com) or send us a message on Twitter (@pearbudget).
How Does Editing This Month's Plan Affect Past...
We’ve gotten a few questions in the vein of “if I change this month’s planned spending amount, will it change past months? What about future months?” Just in case this is something you‘ve been wondering about, here’s how we answered it in an e-mail this morning:
Each month is its own special snowflake, built off the previous month’s plan. Editing a month...
And speaking of the iPhone app ...
Yesterday we mentioned how to put PearBudget on your iPhone. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a neat trick and I wanted to mention it again for anyone new to PearBudget.
If you’re on an iPhone and you’re entering tags in for your receipts, the comma is on a different keyboard from the normal letters. But the period is on the same keyboard. So if you’re entering...
About That iPhone App ...
We know that the normal flow of getting an iPhone app is that you go to the iPhone App Store, search for the app, and then download it. So, since ours is a little out-of-the-ordinary, it might not be as direct a process. So we wanted to give a quick visual guide to getting the PearBudget app on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Step 1: The “+” button
The first thing you’ll do is to...
Writing About Money for Simple Mom
I’m excited to share some news with all of you. The amazing blogger Tsh Oxenreider, over at Simple Mom, has asked me to join a few other writers as contributors to Simple Mom in 2011. I’m excited about this opportunity — Simple Mom is one of my favorite blogs, and I’m hoping my pieces will make it even better.
Specifically, I’ll be writing about money management for...
December 2010
5 posts
Update: We were able to get the site up not too long after we posted this. (We don’t want you thinking the site’s still down!)
Many of you have probably already seen a few tweets from us about some downtime we’re having today. I wanted to post a quick note here for those of you who aren’t following @PearBudget on Twitter.
We’ve been working on optimizing the...
Pricing Changes for PearBudget
Just a quick announcement regarding PearBudget pricing. These types of notes are never fun to write. I’ll start off with the good news, then.
If you currently have an account with PearBudget, your subscription price will not be changing! You signed on at a certain price point ($3/month or $30/year), and we are going to honor that price point forever. Yay! Think of it as an early-adopter...
Skype with us
We know that, sometimes, e-mail doesn’t cut it.
A few days ago, I gave you my cell number, to call if you have questions that are best served by phone. There are also times when being able to share your screen in real-time is important, or when you might otherwise need to do a video chat.
So … if you ever need to contact us by Skype, you can do that now. Our username is, simply,...
Setting up 2011 (part 2)
The other day, we mentioned that we’d roll out a page for you to use to set up 2011.
We’ve got it in place, at pearbudget.com/set_up_2011.
You’ll see a table with:
each of your irregular categories
the amount you spent on each category last year
the average you spent per month (and how many months that category was active)
a column where you can enter what you expect to...
November 2010
8 posts
804.814.2064
That’s my number. (804) 814-2064. It’s my cell. Like, the number Sarah uses to tell me to pick up bread when I’m in town. It’s also, now, the number you can use to reach me.
I want to make sure that if you have questions, or if there’s anything else I can help you with, that you’ll give me a call.
I’ll be posting this on the actual site at some point...
Transitioning to 2011 (info soon!)
We’ve gotten a few e-mails from people asking about transitioning from 2010 to 2011. Lots of really good questions.
can I start 2011 with a clean slate?
will my balances carry over
what if I have categories I only needed in 2010, but not in 2011?
We’re working on some code to make this transition really easy. Our hope is that you’ll be able to just visit a page, check off a...