Budgeteer vs Budget

May 21

Well I suppose that there aren’t too many original ideas out there. Nevertheless, when I happened upon a piece of software called Budget while I was reading through my feed reader this morning, I had to take a second look. Why? Well because I wrote (and am in current development of) The Budgeteer!

There were notable differences, obviously. Comparing the two programs, here is what I noticed:

1. Budget deposits absolute amounts into each sub-account (represented as envelopes) whereas the Budgeteer deposits percentages into each sub-account. I recently thought about this difference actually. It would be nice to have options to do both/either. My original approach of percentages allows for things such as taking 10% off the top for tithe, but it has pitfalls such as having to specify a percentage for each sub-account. Granted of course you can play around with them over time such that they will approach what you actually need/want/use.

2. Budget is much prettier. Both their Windows and Mac executables look better than my Python GUI. Granted, I haven’t been trying to make it beautiful or anything. And it is essentially the same functionality (clicking on different buttons, etc). Nevertheless, that is a plus that Budget has.

3. Obviously Budget is production software that is being sold whereas the Budgeteer is something that I wrote up in a week and have since played with only a little bit. Budget also costs 30 bucks, and (when the time comes) the Budgeteer will not.

4. The Budgeteer has a cooler name.

All in all, I would like to think that Budget and the Budgeteer are similar. However, I must concede that they are not even close to similar. Budget is much more polished, and I am now more determined to develop the Budgeteer!

I’ve changed the name of the program to Budgeteer. I don’t know why I need so many e’s.