Trouble with comparisons

[just1more]

Could someone please tell me why my if statement is not working. I think I am comparing my integers correctly. No matter how high the $num1 count gets, it still responds with "They are equal"

#!/bin/bash
#I understand I get an error here until it is run again,
#but I do not believe it is affecting the comparison.

num1=0
cat wallet | grep -c spend > $num1
cat $num1

num2=0
cat wallet | grep -c spendmore > $num2
cat $soff

if [ $num1 -eq $num2 ]; then
       echo "They are equal"
   else
       echo "Not equal"
fi

echo "What are you buying today today?"
read ans
echo "------------------------------------------" >> wallet
echo "spend " $(date)>> wallet
echo $ans >> wallet

[secondmouse]

The problem lies not in the comparison statement. It's the variable assignment statements that cause the problem:
cat wallet | grep -c spend > $num1
is wrong, $num1 is not a file, you can not assign a variable value this way. $num1 and $num2 remain their original values (0) regardless the occurrences of 'spend' and 'spendmore' in the file wallet.

One of t the correct ways is
num1=`cat wallet | grep -c spend`

Do the same treatment for num2 and see if it runs correctly.