February 2009
32 posts
“Things cannot love you back.”
– Trent’s latest truthkernel. Man, I love his stuff. This quote is so short as to be self-obvious and of little real help. But his post drops some deeper science on the theme.
January 2009
36 posts
Budgeting tip of the day: When buying groceries,... →
Budgeting tip of the day: Round your utility bills... →
Budgeting tip of the day: If you were *forced* to... →
I’ve linked to Get Rich Slowly before. Just yesterday, in fact. But I’m doing it again.
JD is good people. I’ve “known” him for several years, from days past when I was more involved on MetaFilter. So in the years since then, he’s built up an impressive blog empire at Get Rich Slowly. His blog is close to having had 1,000,000 visitors, and he’d love to...
Budgeting tip of the day: Write down your... →
Doing Your First Budget: A great post from Pete at Bible Money Matters, on the process of (and reason for) setting up a budget. He covers a lot of stuff, including mapping out your cashflow, understanding what makes up a “zero-based budget” (the approach we recommend), and tracking your spending. The only quibble I have with it is that I think monthly meetings are a little too...
Budgeting tip of the day: The more you throw away,... →
It’s okay to go overbudget sometimes. Life happens! The problem is when you do it frequently, without knowing it.
You know we have multiple versions of PearBudget, right?
In addition to the GoCards we mentioned the other day (here), we also have an iPhone version and a mobile version.
You get to the iPhone version by visiting the regular PearBudget address from your iPhone. You get to the mobile version by going to pearbudget.com/m.
Somebody mentioned a wish for a mobile version on Twitter, so I...
Don’t necessarily buy the cheapest option. Consider lifespan — replacing cheap stuff that breaks gets expensive.
Have an established *time*, an established *place*, and an established *process* for looking at your finances.
You know we’re on Twitter, right? You can check us out at twitter.com/pearbudget.
I mention this for two reasons. The first is that we’d love to follow you, ’cause we like knowing what you people are up to.
The second reason is that I just came across twtip.com, and thought it was a pretty cool idea. So I looked to see if anyone had any budgeting tips they were sharing. Anything?...
PearBudget, reviewed
Lynnae, over at beingfrugal.net has written up a simply wonderful review of PearBudget. What’s especially nice is that she’s reviewed a number of different budgeting tools — both web-based and ones that live on your computer — and she still concludes that “it is the simplest budgeting software I have ever reviewed.” She also notes:
“I think Pear Budget is the perfect...
A reporter at USA Today is looking for mindful spenders:
For a story on how the economic downturn has affected spending, I’m interested in hearing from people who have started to “shop their closets” and also individuals who host or participate in clothing swaps.
If that sounds like you, and you want to chat with her, drop us a line (charlie at pearbudget dot com).
http://smallnotebook.org/ →
We like this blog a lot. If you’re looking for blogs on simplicity, frugality, and intentional living, add this one to your list.
PearBudget GoCards
Those of you with an iPhone probably know that we have an iPhone interface for PearBudget. What most of you probably don’t know is that, last summer some time, we released a PearBudget plugin for the hPDA (hipster PDA), which we called “GoCards.” We didn’t do a lot of fanfare around that particular feature launch, and, accordingly, hardly anybody knows about it.
But if...
We just got word that our server’s going to have some downtime tonight for maintenance. I wish we could have given you more advance notice, but we just found out ourselves. It won’t affect your data, so feel free to visit PearBudget and enter in your receipts like normal … but if you have trouble accessing the site, come back a little later.
Thanks!
If you used to use PearBudget (but stopped using it for a while), and you’re signing up again for the new year, and you can’t save your account because “your e-mail address has already been used” with a previous account, just send me an e-mail (charlie@pearbudget.com) and I can get you set up.
Thanks!
From the “PearBudget users are the coolest” department:
“So far I love it and it has only been an hour. I have wanted something like this forever. YEAH!”
“A lot of people think that budgeting means that you spend less money. Our philosophy for 2009 is that we want you to spend more money … but only on the stuff that really matters. We spend way more than we should on the stuff that doesn’t really matter, and that prevents us from reaching our goals. We all have different goals — for some it’s paying down debt; for some it’s saving up for a...
You deserve more of a fleshing-out of this idea than I’m going to give right now, but I wanted to at least share this, since it was on my mind.
Over at FlowingData, Nathan has a piece up (One Death is a Tragedy; a Million is a Statistic [that’s a quote from Stalin, by the way]) on how, when we look at masses of data, we can lose sight of the individual components that make up that...
Great post (nothing unusual there) from Seth Godin, on goals: The thing about goals.
Having goals is a pain in the neck.
If you don’t have a goal … then you can just do your best. You can take what comes. You can reprioritize on a regular basis. If you don’t have a goal, you never have to worry about missing it. If you don’t have a goal you don’t need nearly as...
Another PearBudget Giveaway
We’ve been fans of Rocks In My Dryer for a while now, and we’re super-excited to be a part of her latest giveaway: A Happy New Year Contest!
She’s soliciting New Years’ resolutions (or anti-resolutions!), in haiku format. And the winner is going to get a bunch of cool stuff, including both a year’s subscription to PearBudget, and a carton of Little Debbie snack...
A Quick Heads-Up
If you use the pop-up calendar to enter your receipts, and you’re entering in December’s receipts, recognize that it defaults to the current year. We’re getting a few receipts entered in as being from December of this year, as opposed to December of last year.
We’re trying to think through elegant ways of resolving this, but keep an eye on the year of the receipts...
Question: I used PearBudget in 2008, and I’m going to use it for 2009 as well. But I’d like to start with a clean slate. That is, I don’t want my irregular categories to carry money over from 2008 to 2009. Is this possible to get rid of that information to start fresh in ’09?
Answer: Absolutely! Here’s the best way to do this: Open up a tab of your browser and go to...
“I just finished redoing my pear budget, and feeling one step closer to financial...”
– Twitter / Money Girl
Our house policy for entering receipts: No new episodes of 30 Rock or The Office (on Hulu) until all receipts have been entered.
Why do you hate debt?
A blog that I’ve come to like more and more over the last few weeks is Frugal Dad. There’s a good chance you’ve seen his blog before (I linked to it a few days ago, no?), but if not, I wanted to point it out.
Of particular note is a post from today, Why Do You Hate Debt?, where he compiles a list of answers that his Twitter followers gave in response to that question.
Two of...
The ‘Get Your Finances Off to a Good Start’... →
Kelly, at Almost Frugal, is giving away a year’s subscription of PearBudget. Go check it out and enter! Of course, we hope you win!
Oh. The other day I mentioned needing to pass along a message to those of you who signed up in 2008. Here it is: We set the 2009 “goal for the year” to default to $0, so you’ll want to consider what you want your goal to be for the year, and to change the amount. You can make that change by clicking on each irregular category’s name, and adjusting the value in the pop-up...
planted by streams: Organized →
Three days in, and Jennifer’s staying on top of her budgeting. Yay, Jennifer!
Question: I just signed up for PearBudget and I put one of the categories in the monthly expenses that I meant to put with the irregular expenses. How do I switch it?
Answer: From either the Plan page or the Review page, you should be able to see your list of categories. If you click on the category you want to change, you’ll get a pop-up box with more information. At the bottom of the...
You people are too kind. Here’s a note we just got from Singapore:
HI guys,
I’ve been experimenting with google docs as my budget tracker for a while now and I either:
Have to to keep modifying my spreadsheet to tweak the contents. Or
I’m never happy with the layout and design cos it’s so UGLY.
I’ve never bought a subscription service. Everything I need...