PearBudget -- awesomely simple expense tracking application
I asked Charlie, the co-creator of PearBudget, to explain why he and his partner Sarah made PearBudget.
At the core of our wanting to make PearBudget was that we wanted simple control over our finances.It's a truly beautiful app. You can try it for 30 days for free; after that it's $3 a month. LinkQuicken and other more advanced accounting programs are overkill for the simple task of tracking your expenses and making a budget. Financial services that automate everything don't compel you to actively reconsider your spending habits. We wanted to be in control, but we didn't want to be overwhelmed. We designed PearBudget to ride that line.
Our background isn't in programming or banking, but in information design — Sarah's a map designer; Charlie's a typesetter and occasional web designer. So our interest in developing a better financial tool had a lot to do with creating a simple presentation of the user's information, and with giving the user a good experience developing and keeping a budget.
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How does this compare with, say, something like mint?
The "11 reasons" on their site don't give me a clear idea of the main functions of the application. How would you describe it to this person who's never really attempted organizing a budget before?
I first read the headline as, "...awesomely simple EXCUSE tracking application.
Which, with the way I follow budgets, amounts to the same thing. :)
This looks like what I've been looking for for years. Quicken has so much unnecessary crud built in , and their policy of "expiring" your software every few years is infuriating.
This tool makes it simple to track what you spend, and then find out where you should spend less to balance your own budget.
Step 1 is to make a list of things you spend money on.
Step 2 is to guesstimate how much you think you spend on each category each month.
Step 3 (the hard part) is to enter your receipts each month for what you actually spend. After doing this you will be able to see why your bank account is always empty, and where you have to stop eating every day in order to save $$.
$3/month? Yikes.
I've been using the same edition of quicken for 7 years. That would have cost me hundreds of dollars for this Pear thing. Don't they know web services have to be free?
One problem with Mint, for the person who asked above, is that you can't enter Cash transactions.
I'm actually curious if there's a service like Pear that doesn't charge you $36/year to use it?
Also, the ability to import my 7 years worth of Quicken transactions would be a big seller in getting me to convert to an online system. Pear doesn't seem to do this.
It is very nice looking. For someone like me who has trouble counting the change in his pockets, it didn't overwhelm me the way Quicken does.
Still, the $36 a year...where do I budget for that?
Nobody's mentioned it yet, so I might as well bring up wesabe.com, which is web based, free, and can import external records and statements.
I hate renting software. Right up there with renting books. There are numerous cheaper alternatives.
It would be nice if I could see the site. Right now I'm at work, which is still on IE6. When I go to the site all I get is a message saying I have to upgrade to IE7 or use Firefox. Fine -- I use Firefox at home. And also fine if you want to require IE7 to use the software. But just to see the site to see if I want to use it? Bad business move.
I just signed up for Mint (thanks hisnameisjimmy) and it is pretty win. Since I don't use cash much anymore, I will take auto/predictive categorization over the ability to easily enter receipts any day of the week. Also, it is free. Also, the site is currently operational :)
Hi, all. Charlie, from PearBudget. Wanted to thank Mark for the post, and wanted to quickly comment to post #1 (and a little to #11), about the difference between PearBudget and Mint.
First, it's not a zero-sum game; it's not like once you sign up with one service, you're committed forever. You can sign up for Mint (or Wesabe, or MoneyCenter, or other free services), and try PearBudget out for free, with very little hassle. Try them out. See how they meet your needs. It's quite possible that one of the other services will be better for you. Ultimately, we want you to find a tool that works best for you, whether that's with PearBudget or with someone else (or with some combination of different tools). Remember ... it's free to try them out.
While most of the other online personal finance tools are trying to be a replacement for Quicken, PearBudget's sole focus is on expense tracking and budgeting. That's it. It's possible you need a full-on home accounting application, with investment tracking, net worth calculations, debt paydown calculators, et al. But all we want PearBudget to do is to give you a simple tool for budgeting and expense tracking. If you're new to personal finance, PearBudget's a good place to start. Also, interestingly, we haven't seen a budgeting tool at any of the other apps that begins to compare with PearBudget's ease of use.
Finally, about the auto-categorization. We've seen in our own use of Mint and other sites (yeah ... we have accounts there), that auto-categorization only works about 75-80% of the time. And we don't know which 20-25% is wrong. So we still have to go through, line by line, and make sure it's accurate. It's easier for us (and most people, it turns out) to handle it all by hand. Even if that seems like a burden, it's not much of one: 15 minutes a week or so. Getting back to what we wrote in that note to Mark, we wanted to be in control of our finances.
Sorry that went on so long. Please feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you have any other questions (charlie [at] pearbudget [dot] com), and I'd be happy to answer them. And, of course, it's easy to create a free account at PearBudget and see how it works. Thanks for reading this, and, again, to Mark for the post.