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PearBudget got a nice write-up!

PearBudget got a nice write-up over at The Cottage Home, a really sweet blog about cooking, sewing, parenting, and other elements of domestic life. Here’s what Lindsay said in her post Budgeting Made Simple:

It’s amazing how much more conscientious I am about spending when I know I am going to have to enter it into PearBudget. I actually really like it – it’s like we are taking control of the money – it’s not controlling us.

Thanks, Lindsay! We really appreciate you mentioning us. And your cottage garden pizza looks incredible! Invite us over next time?

Good article from Leo of Zen Habits

Leo, of Zen Habits, has a really good article/interview/guest-post-thingy at the Wage Slave Escape Manual: The 7 secrets of shedding debt & becoming a money Zen master. I’m not a big fan of the article’s title, and I fundamentally disagree with any article’s claim that “knowing these {number} secrets will make personal finance easy for you”, this is really a great piece, with solid advice.

One tip he goes over that Sarah and I do ourselves is that we pay bills as soon as they arrive. To be honest, we’re not organized enough to put bills off and then pay them later (but still getting them in before they’re due). By paying them as soon as they come in, we can be sure that we don’t run the risk of missing a payment.

Anyway, the post is here. It’s good. Check it out!

In NYC? Let’s get coffee!

Hey, friends!

I’m in New York City for a few days, and would love to connect, buy you coffee, see how you use PearBudget, and get your input on how we can make PearBudget better.

I’m on the Upper West Side at the moment, but can meander anywhere in Manhattan to meet up. Just e-mail me: charlie@pearbudget.com.

Thanks!

PearBudget Forums!

I’m really excited to announce that we have brand-new PearBudget forums! The address is pretty easy to remember: http://pearbudgetforums.com. I know they’ll be a little slow at first, but I’d really love for you to go, create an account, and post a message.

Have a question about budgeting? There’s a board for it! Find a bug in the software? There’s a board for it!

If message boards aren’t your thing, no worries. We still LOVE getting e-mails from you, and, in fact, prefer getting direct e-mails for anything sensitive about your PearBudget account or your subscription. But if you have a general question, please try posting it to the boards! None of us is as smart as all of us!

The boards are still in a bit of a transitional state at the moment, so if you have any issues with them … well … there’s a board for that, too! Post a comment, and let us know what’s up!

I’ll see you on the forums!

Some money trivia for you

Some money trivia for you: The first year the dollar sign ($) was stamped on United States coinage was 2007! (source)

Tabbing to the Dropdown Field on a Mac

I’ve gotten a few e-mails from people who say something like the following: “I use PearBudget at home (on a PC) and at work (on a Mac). At home (on the PC), I can use the Tab key on my keyboard to tab over to the ‘category’ dropdown. At work, though, my Tab key skips over the ‘category’ dropdown, and goes right to the ‘notes/tags’ box. What’s up with that? Why can’t I use the Tab key to select my receipt’s category?”

It’s a good question. This is actually a Mac issue (not a PearBudget issue), but it’s easily fixable.

For some reason, Macs default to not selecting dropdown / select boxes. I’m not sure why. To fix it, do this:

  1. Go to your Mac’s System Preferences. You should see an option for “Keyboard and Mouse”. Click on that.
  2. You’ll see three tabs at the top of the Keyboard and Mouse box: “Keyboard”, “Bluetooth”, and “Keyboard Shortcuts”. Make sure you’re on the last one (Keyboard Shortcuts).
  3. At the bottom of the box, you’ll see a section that says “Full keyboard access”, with two options:
    1. Text boxes and lists only
    2. All controls
  4. Make sure “all controls” is selected.

That’s it! You should now be able to use the Tab key to get to all of the elements in PearBudget (and everywhere else!).

If that didn’t answer your question, get in touch with us by e-mail, at help@pearbudget.com.

A Giveaway! Also, Two Personal Finance Books You Should Look Into. Did I Mention the Giveaway?

So … we’re giving away a free book. Read on for more …

A lot of personal finance books are smarmy, poorly-written, or contain terrible advice (Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I’m looking in your general direction!).

I wanted to point out two new personal finance books that are absolutely worth checking out — either buying them from Amazon, or going by your local bookstore and flipping through them, or requesting them at your local library. (Side note: I can’t say enough good things about the “request a book” feature at local libraries. You tell them the book you want to get, and they buy it for you. And then, once you’ve read it, it’s not cluttering up your shelves anymore, and someone else gets to read it. How sweet is that‽) Anyway, on to the books.

Trent, over at The Simple Dollar, is a good writer and a good guy. He has a new book out, The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams. I just got a copy of it, and am very much looking forward to reading it.

Trent has a crisp, clear writing style, and a reasonable, rational approach to both money and life. I enjoy his blog immensely, and expect to enjoy his book. If you’ve read it, I’d love to know your thoughts.

Trent has announced that, if you buy the book before July 14th, he’ll give you all of the PDF downloads (e-books) from his site, including 31 Days to Fix Your Finances and an upcoming cookbook he’s writing. Pretty solid. Also, if you do read his new book and like it, I’d encourage you to write a review at Amazon with your thoughts on it. You can find out more about his giveaway here.

The second book I want to mention has been out for a few months now, Your Money: The Missing Manual, by Get Rich Slowly’s J.D. Roth. I had the distinct pleasure of being one of the book’s “technical reviewers” when JD was writing it. It is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it, especially as a foundational personal finance book. That is, if you’re looking for a good, approachable overview of personal finance, it’s a great choice.

My one quibble with it is that the full title is “Your Money: The Missing Manual: ‘The book that should have been in the box’.” I’m a little concerned that I never received my box of money. If you it showed up with yours, let me know?

Anyway, the next time you’re looking for a book-as-graduation-gift, Your Money: The Missing Manual would be a good choice, especially if you couple it with, you know, actual money.

The Giveaway

I have a copy of Your Money: The Missing Manual to give away. It’ll be just like being in Oprah’s audience on “car giveaway day” except that there’ll be just one of you, and instead of Oprah, it’s me, and instead of a new car, it’s a personal finance book. But apart from that, totally the same.

I’m not a big fan of “tweet about our product and you’ll get an entry in our contest”-style contests. I’d rather have a handful of genuine tweets or blog posts, rather than a boatful of inauthentic marketing tweets. (BTW, how do you fill a boat with tweets?) Anyway, if you’re inclined to talk about PearBudget on Twitter or your blog, I’d be really, really grateful. I can’t tell you how warm and fuzzy we get when you rave about PearBudget. But I’m not going to ask you to do that as part of this contest. Instead, what I’d like you to do is to help me solve a problem.

I hear from a number of folks who start using PearBudget, then find that they don’t have the time to enter in receipts, and they stop budgeting. I know it isn’t just a PearBudget issue, although I think we could probably make tweaks to make this less of an issue for our users. I want to solve this problem. So. To enter the contest for a free copy of Your Money: The Missing Manual, what I’d like from you are ideas for how to keep people engaged with their budgets. All ideas are welcome. Here are a few example ideas: Do we send an e-mail after 7 days of not logging in? Do we have office hours by phone where people can call in with general personal finance questions? Do we start forums and help people connect with a budget accountability partner? Do we start writing more posts on the blog here that go over budgeting basics? What can we do to keep people engaged? What could we do that would better keep you engaged? I want to hear some ideas!

Every tweet you send to @pearbudget gets you an entry in the contest. Every e-mail you send to charlie@pearbudget.com gets you FIVE entries in the contest. The ideas don’t have to be either good or super-fleshed out (but if the idea is super-good or fleshed out, it might get secret bonus points). There is no limit to the number of entries you can make, and you’re encouraged to submit ideas early and often. The winner will be chosen randomly from all the entries received, so the more ideas you send in, the better.

We’ll run the contest … oh … for a week. So send in your entries by 11:59PM on Thursday, July 15th, and I’ll declare a winner on Friday the 16th.

“I foresee another credit crisis.”

dbreunig:

I foresee another credit crisis. (Via io9)

How do credit card companies know when fraudulent charges are being made?

Curious about how credit card companies know when fraudulent charges are being made on your card? There’s a good explanation from someone who used to work in a fraud department for a credit card over at MetaFilter: I used to work fraud detection for a shall-not-be-named card service department, so I can walk you through my process that I used at the time…. It’s an interesting read.

I’ll also take this chance to plug our free ID-theft-protection web app, Wallet Garden. You have travel coming up soon, right? Might be worth taking a minute to set up your free account, and if you ever lose your purse / wallet, you’ll know exactly who to call to cancel the cards in your wallet.

Products I use and love

The following is a post (original here) from one of our users (Alex), who blogs about design, productivity, etc. at digitaldumpster. It’s always an honor to be mentioned favorably by our users, especially in a list alongside Tumblr, Dropbox, Evernote, and Backpack. (One of these days, I should write up my own “products you’ll like if you like PearBudget” list.) Anyway, thanks, Alex!

Lightroom & Photoshop- Necessary for photographers.

Tumblr– The simple and useful blogging service.

Teux Deux– To-do list managers are everywhere. This one is the one I am using these days.

Evernote– Helps for capturing ideas and inspiration on the go with my Droid.

Backpack– Helps me organize my life, school and business.

Pearbudget– Managing your money cannot get any easier.

Dropbox– Eliminates the need for thumb drives! 

There are more but these are essentials and used daily.