BudgetEdge

New Year's Plans

2007-12-14T09:21:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

With Christmas leading into New Year's just around the corner, we thought that it would be a good time to let you know that we're planning to update some portions of the site over the coming months.

We've read your emails and in some cases spoken directly with you about what you'd like to see changed. Also, we've been busy designing value added financial tabs that can clarify your financial life even further.

Since we don't want to prematurely let our plans out into the wild, we're going to be a bit coy and say that you'll like the coming changes (some of which are subtle, so you may not notice them right away). Until then, we wish you the best holiday season possible and a very happy and prosperous 2009!

Server Issues -- Fixed!

2007-11-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,
A corollary to having lots of good news is that bad news is just around the corner...and here it is, I guess.

For a reason that only the little elf who lives inside of our server knows, the site went down after the host server hiccuped. At the moment, I'm optimistic that we won't be down for too long, but any amount of downtime is a pain in the butt for everone.

So until we get whatever this problem is fixed, we're going to have technical difficulties. Let's hope the elf is in a better mood soon.

Apologies all around. I'll post news as I get it.

UPDATE: We've narrowed down what's wrong with the server and are working to get the site back up ASAP.

UPDATE 2: And we're done. Wasn't our fault, it turns out. So now I'm going to publicly name and shame the party [our host server] responsible (Site5.com), I'm looking at you... For killing a half day's worth of customers' attempts to get to the site, you should be taken to task.

Once again, sorry everyone for letting you down. We'll start looking for a new hosting solution in the morning.

Even more publicity...

2007-11-12T10:54:00.000-05:00

While I can't say that the budgetEDGE team is letting this free media go to our heads, I can say that the stars must be lined up in our favor this week.

We've just been named the Cool Site of the Day on the website of the same name (you can see the site here). The New York Times says that Cool Site is the arbiter of taste on the internet, so it's great to be noticed by them.

Since Cool Site plans it's featured sites a few weeks in advance, you'll have to wait until November 20th to vote for us there. But please do take a minute and go to Cool Site now and again on the 20th.

We hope that you'll help us to popularize budgetEDGE so that more people can understand what is happening to their money. We want to help you regain their financial freedom. That's our mission. Help us spread the word.

Thanks!

Publicity!

2007-11-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

Well it's a good week here at budgetEDGE HQ.

When we checked the statistics for the site's traffic late last week, we found a sudden spike in traffic. After a little head-scratching and some research, we traced the root cause to a Pittsburgh area news clip that featured budgetEDGE and Wesabe as two of the best personal financial management sites on the internet.

Your budgetEDGE team loves free press, especially when it's good. You can watch the video segment here.

Ashley Diparlo and staff at WTAE Channel 4 in Pittsburgh, we thank you for helping show budgetEDGE to the world!

Zero Based Budgeting

2007-09-18T16:27:00.000-04:00

Recently someone asked to me write about zero based budgeting in budgetEDGE (zero based budgeting is the idea that you should allocate all of your money each month to some purpose, with nothing left over (hence the zero in the zero based budgeting)).

That's easy to do in budgetEDGE.

1) Enter your income and expenses as usual. If you have money left over it can be used for debt payoff (2) or savings (3).
2) Debt payoff: If you are carrying a balance on your credit cards or other term or revolving debt accounts, apply the residual there. budgetEDGE can track your declining balances for you.
3) Savings growth: If you are lucky enough to have no debt (or you simply choose to keep more of your money in interest bearing accounts), then apply your excess funds to savings. budgetEDGE will keep track of its growth.

The most important thing to keep in mind if you are going to follow this budgeting method is that your final residual balance will need to be managed very carefully because it will likely show negative numbers fairly often. You may find yourself transferring money from your savings account to your cash account regularly (something else the budgetEDGE can manage for you).

If you are ok with maintaining an active budgeting method (and are excited by the thought of additional yield on your idle cash), then zero based budgeting may be the right fit for you.

Try it now on budgetEDGE.

Unplanned downtime -- Fixed

2007-09-18T13:37:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

Just as we were planning to write about our latest updates to the site, it went down. We're looking into it now to see where the problem lies. We don't expect to be down for long, but in case we get stuck neck deep in code, check back tomorrow (hope it doesn't take that long to fix though).

Thanks for your patience!

the budgetEDGE team

UPDATE: I don't know exactly what happened, but we're back...

We've added some functionality to the credit card mini-budgets so you can adjust the final amount owed to your CC company (in case you don't want to go back and add or delete any individual expenses).

Also, we closed a few bugs and added links to Digg and other sites so you can help us spread budgetEDGE to even more people.

Credit Card Management is Live!

2007-09-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

We've been busy here at budgetEDGE these last few weeks. While most of our work went towards fixing bugs and some UI tweaking, we also added new functionality to credit card balance tracking and long term debt tracking.

First, let's hit the highlights of the credit card functionality. Since budgetEDGE already tracks cash movements in and out of your primary bank account, we thought it would be useful to add non-cash expenses to the mix, so you could get a better understanding of how your cash is being used.

One key way to do that is to provide a function for you to add credit cards and track how the balance is expected to change over time. We accomplish this by tracking the outstanding balance owed and allowing you to create recurring or non-recurring expenses for the credit card (like $50 every Saturday for dinner) that in total show whether your payment efforts are making a dent against your debt.

Here's how you can access this feature.

When you are creating expenses you will see a small check box in the new expense popup bubble that says "Track this expense as a credit card." When you select that feature, budgetEDGE will create a new tab for you with the same logical flow that the income, expenses and savings tabs have (namely, you click the Add expense item on the top right hand side of the panel, give the expense a name, a recurrence and an amount --voila!). You should have a general idea of your interest rate, the date that your payments are due and when your account closes for the month. If you don't know, grab your last statement; it'll be there.

If you've already created your credit card expense, then click on the little M inside of a circle next to the credit card's name on the expense panel. The same popup bubble will appear, allowing you to begin tracking your progress against your credit card debt (assuming you have any, that is...).

Next, let's talk about assets and liabilities. We have put together a rough asset and liability engine that provides you with information about the current value of the things you own, versus the money you owe. Each of these functions lets you enter a starting value, a current value, a rate of growth / interest, etc. to give you an idea of your non-cash financial situation. We have a host of improvements planned for this space, but you'll have to wait on those (sorry!).

In other news, we've been picked up by the Museum of Modern Betas, Killerstartups.com, Happycodr, and simplespark.com. Thanks to you guys (where ever you are!) for letting the world know we exist.

I've sent two polite emails to personal finance blogs (www.my-personal-finance-blog.com and www.gradmoneymatters.com) in the hope that they will be able to give us feedback about functionality they would like to see in future versions of the site. Who knows what they'll say.

Until then, best wishes from the budgetEGDE team!

A few enhancements

2007-07-21T17:03:00.000-04:00

We are excited to announce that we just hit the schedule and rolled out the release today. Phew! the last 2 weeks were tough but a lot of fun building new sets of functionalities and improving the user experience. We got some valuable feedback from our friends who have been enjoying the new way of looking at their budgets. We are very thankful of you all for writing to us about your experiences.

Although we got some feedback towards the end of this sprint but we didn't think twice to incorporating as much of those as we could in the current release. However, please allow us till next release to take care of the rest. I hope you will will make the best use of the new features

Enjoy and do tell us what you think.

We are smart and hardworking and we believe in continuous improvement so do not hesitate to critique.

Updates

2007-07-17T13:53:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

I believe that we are planning to roll out a new set of features over the next few days, followed by another roll out in about three weeks.

We've fixed some bugs and added some functionality for asset management in the version that comes out this week. The later version should include more interesting options for expenses [more about these features as the time to launch nears].

Feel free to email us with your thoughts or suggestions!

What is budgetEDGE?

2007-07-17T12:01:00.000-04:00

budgetEDGE is a different way to manage money that focuses on your current cash needs in light of your future obligations. Current budgeting offerings online tend to either deconstruct your past spending to show you how much you spent on a bunch of different categories or items or they offer a simple one month template that is supposed to be good enough for you.

In both cases the budgeting programs are wrong. Backward looking budgeting is interesting for uncovering some patterns of spending, but it is often useless for understanding how much money you will have in the future or how much you can / should save, spend, etc.

Simple one-month budgets are also worthless because they don't include the carryover of cash from one pay period to another, they are often not aligned with the common business practice of having 26 pay periods, and they do not allow for changes in expenses over time.

So we began with the premise that we were going to build something that looks at your core earning and spending patterns to uncover the amount that is left over. This amount is what remains for paying yourself, saving, or paying credit cards. [I realize that some people prefer to pay themselves first, then pay everyone else. Ok; do it. You can in budgetEDGE.] In any case, by uncovering the primary patterns, you suddenly have a view into how much cash is left at the end of any given pay period in perpetuity.

As you move through your pay periods, you can refine the amounts shown so that you can track what you will have leftover. You can even play around with various scenarios, such as doubling your credit card payments or savings amounts to see what impact it has on your ability to pay your other bills. The system is flexible, so use your imagination.

Alpha Version just released

2007-07-06T07:52:00.000-04:00

We are pleased to announce that BudgetEDGE alpha is released today. There is more to come in candidate beta release which is scheduled to be released to the world in mid August.

What is budgetEDGE?
We are not the typical budgeting site. You won't find artificial percentages that tell you that spent 3% more on deodorant this month than last. You won't find mind-numbing lists of accounting gibberish or numbers, either.

Instead, you will find your personal patterns that drive your lifestyle presented simply and intuitively.

To be invited to our early launch, please email us at beta@budgetedge.com