I’m listing my favorite personal finance resources for you. All of them are free for you to use, most won’t require any kind of login, and all of them are great. But, these sites have to pay the bills and keep the lights on too. So their revenue comes from somewhere. I prefer sites with no advertising or limited advertising, but some sites with advertising still have great information. A few of these sites will ask you for a voluntary donation. Others have advertising blocks on the site or are paid to review products and services in their articles. When they do that it’ll usually be disclosed at the beginning or end of the article. This is especially true when they’re reviewing banking products, credit products, or investments. Be aware of how you consume hidden or passive advertising from any site. Just because it’s advertised doesn’t mean it’s bad, but be aware of biases and seek out additional information where necessary.
Resources for Personal Finance Education
Khan Academy is free for you to use and they don’t advertise. Instead, they request a voluntary donation. Their educational material is amazing. They have courses that are very simple and remove a lot of the jargon and confusion. For example, they have a video called “The Anatomy of a Paycheck.” Khan Academy isn’t limited to personal finance. Kids and adults can find educational videos and activities on topics ranging from science to the arts, and from coding to history. So, if you’d like to get an in depth understanding on a personal finance topic such as buying a house or paying for college, this is where you get it. You can watch these videos on Sunday mornings in your pajamas if you want, and it’s not going to spam you to death with ads for products.
This free website was created by my former mothership, Bank of America, in conjunction with the Khan Academy. It’s a little different in that there aren’t set course progressions. Instead, you can pick and choose more easily. It has topics on choices such as paying down debt vs. saving, or changing the dates your bills are due to make budgeting easier, and buying a car. It even has information on internet and banking security. There are videos, articles, infographics, quizzes and calculators. It’s probably the most comprehensive personal finance site out there. Again, you aren’t going to get spammed to death with ads. You’ll just see the Bank of America and Khan Academy logos a lot. In developing the content, they did a lot of research about how people retain information and that shaped how they made their explainer videos. The videos are short and easy to understand.
Resources for Optimizing Savings
Wise Bread’s motto is “Living Large on a Small Budget.” The website is in blog format with a number of contributing experts addressing a wide range of personal finance topics. For example, right now they have an article on using your kids’ holiday gift lists to teach them about money. They have daily deals listed on tons of products and services. They have advice on everything from budget travel to reducing your car payments. Note that they do have ads and sometimes are paid to review products or services.
This is another site for maximizing and optimizing savings. It covers side hustles, ways to get paid for completing surveys, discounts, credit card reviews, ways to pay off debt, information about class action lawsuits, and more. Think about your finances like this (you’ve heard me say this before, I’m sure): income minus expenses should equal a positive number. If it doesn’t, then you have to either increase your income or decrease your expenses. When you have a month where your budget equals a negative number or isn’t balanced, you have to come up with the extra by drawing from savings or using debt. Penny Hoarder helps you find ways to both increase income by “manifesting income” in a variety of interesting ways, and to decrease bad kinds of debt. Yes, there are some ads and they sometimes receive compensation to write about products and services. For the most part, great articles and ideas.
Optimizing Credit Card Use
This site started with the goal of comparing credit cards. Obviously, you don’t want to carry credit card debt and pay high interest. However, if you use credit cards to your advantage you can actually earn points that have significant value and reduce certain expenses, such as with travel points or cash back. Nerd Wallet is useful for evaluating these, but has expanded its topics to include reviews of deposit accounts, mortgages, investment platforms and more. It also has tons of great calculators you can use to do quick evaluations on retirement savings, budgeting, mortgage payments, and just about any other personal finance calculations you might need. Yes, they do receive compensation to write about products and services. So, be aware of that going into it. But, they have great resources and topics are always relevant.
This dude started out as a travel points blogger and sold his brand. However, he’s still the face of the brand and his message stays strong in the way content is developed. People who lack discipline in credit card use should avoid credit cards until they can master budgeting and savings. But, people who can use them responsibly who’d like to also maximize them for travel purposes should definitely start with this site. They do get paid if you follow links from products and services they review.
Investment Education
I am an Investopedia Advisor Insights Premier Advisor. That just means that I answer Investopedia user questions related to personal finances. I don’t pay to use the service. I applied and was accepted to be an advisor featured on their platform. But, Investopedia offers more than just Q&A. They have lots of great articles and learning options. There are courses you can take to learn about investments, and you can look up just about any investing term you can imagine and find out what it means in lay terms. You’ll see advertising on their site in blocks and popups. You can choose to ignore it.
I’ve been featured in one of their articles. The Street was founded by Jim Cramer. You might know him as that guy who runs around yelling “Sell! Sell! Sell!” or “Buy! Buy! Buy!” or “Booyah!” on CNBC’s Mad Money. I have trouble watching that show because it’s a little too high energy for me. But, I love Jim. He speaks rational truths most of the time. He’s been caught in a bad call once or twice, but for the most part, he gives great advice on principles of investing. You can read articles about personal finances and investing on The Street. You can also access his “10 Commandments” and “25 Rules” e-books for free, but you have to input your email address to get those and you’ll probably get spammed from that point forward. You can access articles without subscribing just by visiting the site. Be aware that there are ads all over the site. He also has an investment club you can join but that’s a paid subscription.
