Mint vs. Pear

I love budgets. I'm a dork with numbers, always have been, always will be. To placate this I use two budget tools, Mint, which is automatic, and Pearbudget, which ain't.

To use Mint I gave them all my account passwords. I sign in to the site and it signs in to the rest. Thus I see all my spending in one place. I like that; it's easy. Yet it fails in one sense.

Say you and I have a $40 bill at a restaurant and I charge it while you give me $20. Did I spend $40 in the category "restaurants?" No, but Mint thinks so. I can't input income manually. Nor can I budget for income that isn't monthly. What about stuff coming in every other month (some interest), or one-time things (that yard sale I had)? Forget it.

That's why I turn to Pearbudget after Mint. It can do those fancy budgeting things. It just requires more effort. Now I can see what I really spent and earned. It lacks Mint's cool graphs, but it lets me avoid giving them complete access to my life. And I can add tags: the more the merrier.

I suggest using both sites. It beats signing in to 7 different sites to check spending, and you can include what you want.