About Charlie Park

Charlie Park built the simple and beautiful online budgeting and expense tracking tool, PearBudget. He firmly believes that the simpler your finances are, the better. He writes about money management for Simple Mom and lives with his wife and three daughters in Virginia.

by Charlie Park on April 19, 2013 • 31 Comments Organizing Your Home

One simple way to avoid identity theft

Ready to be scared a little bit? The odds are very, very good that — at some point in time — a website you use has been hacked, and your e-mail and password from that site have been compromised.

Ready to set your mind at ease? It’s simple and easy to set up your online life so that you’re totally safe if that ever happens again (and to protect yourself now, in case one of your passwords is out in the wild).

I know that normally I talk about money stuff, but today I’m going to be talking about you, your online life, and how you can make sure the bad guys don’t get to access your bank accounts, your e-mail, your blog, or the other important parts of your identity on the internet.
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by Charlie Park on January 9, 2013 • 20 Comments Money Management You

Four steps to simpler financial goals this year

Written by money contributor Charlie Park.

So we’re now nine days into 2013. Just enough time for those New Year’s resolutions to have fallen by the wayside, right?

Or maybe you saw Tsh and Jeannett’s posts last week that encouraged you to think about goals for the year, rather than resolutions? If not, we’re going to look at that idea one more time, but with a focus on money.

Money is like fitness — it’s something that people often put off thinking about unless A) they’re about to go on vacation, B) they’ve had some sort of a scare, or C) it’s the new year.

If we harness that last one (yay, new year!) and wrap in Tsh’s point about goals-not-resolutions, we get a great four-point process to making 2013 a terrific year for you and your money. Let’s take a look at it.
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by Charlie Park on October 17, 2012 • 29 Comments Money Management You

Saving money: big and little wins

Written by money contributor Charlie Park.

One of the funnier “religious wars” I’ve seen when it comes to money is fighting between people in favor of “big wins” versus the people in favor of “little wins.”

“Little wins”-ers want to be as frugal as possible, to look for ways to save money wherever they can. “Big wins”-ers see those little steps as a waste of time. Instead, they look for a few big areas where they can save money, and focus their energy there.

Which of these approaches is better? Which one will do a better job of getting your family on solid financial footing?
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by Charlie Park on July 25, 2012 • 37 Comments Money Management You

Outsmart your own brain and spend less money

Written by Charlie Park of Pear Budget.

Sarah and I have a clothes dryer that — no joke — hates us. It destroys our stuff. It doesn’t do what we ask it to. And when it does actually do what we want, it complains, loudly. Seriously: It’s like a giant metal toddler.

The thing is, we should have replaced this thing months ago. Dryers aren’t cheap, but if we’d made a plan, we could have bitten the bullet long ago and replaced it. But we still have this awful, hulking, beast of an appliance throwing tantrums in the laundry closet. And we’ve invested money into it that we could have put towards its replacement.

Why? Because of a trap in our thinking we’ve fallen into, repeatedly. There’s a good chance you’ve fallen into this thinking trap, too, and you’re spending more money than you should. It’s called “the sunk cost fallacy.” Today we’re going to see how we can outsmart ourselves in order to beat the trap and to save money.

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by Charlie Park on May 2, 2012 • 34 Comments Money Management You

Refinancing a mortgage, simply

Written by Charlie Park of Pear Budget.

Last week, Tsh shared her story of how to get a mortgage without a credit score. I loved her post, and am impressed by how intentional she and Kyle are about paying off their new mortgage.

“But money’s tight!” You’re saying. “I don’t have any extra cash to use to pay my mortgage off early!” I hear you, friend. Today we’re going to talk about a simple way that you can cut several years off your loan (or free up some extra money in your budget), by refinancing your mortgage. It’s not too hard, and we’ll cover the basics.

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