Tag Archives: Personal finance

In 2009 It’s All About Money – Again!

I have to tell you, I like Thursday Bram’s work. She writes a blog called Stepcase Lifehack.  I don’t know what that means, but hopefully one day I’ll get around to asking her.  In the meantime, I do like her subjects and the time she evidently invests in delving into them.

Sometimes bloggers, even our most popular, just run short of time and, apparently, put in the first thing that comes to mind or hand.  One distinguished and high ranking blogger recently posted in his blog a digital snapshot of a very ordinary, everday item.  The backstory, such as it was, was short and sweet…a sentence or two, and not very incisive or thought provoking, either.  I could give you the entire photo and sentence or two and I bet you would agree.  But I would get in such trouble.  ( Did I mention that this is one of the Net’s most popular bloggers?)

When I was reading a particular business book, my hobby, or one of them, there was a chapter called: “Don’t Moon the Giant”.  It warns of the hazards of provoking someone with a lot more power than you have and getting squished under his giant foot. ( I can hear that squishing sound, already.)  Anyway, I learned that lesson well.  You’ll get no more from me.  Except to say that Thursday Bram is the opposite of that.  She has something to say and says it well.

Anyway, here’s her take on finance resources online for 2009, found at 30 Money Sites to Check Out in 2009 – Stepcase Lifehack. Think you’ll enjoy and find them helpful:

Blogs

  1. Get Rich Slowly: I never fail to be impressed by the posts on GRS — this blog started as a personal financial journey, but has grown into so much more.
  2. I Will Teach You To Be Rich: While most personal finance blogs focus on cutting costs, I Will Teach You… pushes readers to increase their income, instead. It’s an approach that I think is ignored all too often but is absolutely important.
  3. WiseBread: There are plenty of money blogs that focus on one person’s journey: it’s a useful view point, but there’s just as much value in seeing what a community of people come up with. WiseBread offers an amazing community of writers.
  4. Yielding Wealth: When it comes to keep track of news in the personal finance sector, Yielding Wealth is always on the spot with the facts.
  5. The Simple Dollar: Of all the great content on TSD, I recommend the book reviews. There are plenty of great books on personal finance out there and I typically find them through TSD.
  6. Mrs. Micah: Another ’speaking from experience’ blog, Mrs. Micah is more detail-oriented: her posts offer great tips on how to handle specific situations.
  7. No Limits Ladies: If you’re interested in focusing more on the money-making side of personal finance, NLL talks about everything from real estate to building a business. While the blog is geared towards ladies, I don’t think that they’d mind if guys stop by.
  8. The Frugal Duchess: The Frugal Duchess herself released a book earlier this year, and her blog is full of the same level of advice she dispenses at the Miami Herald.
  9. Five Cent Nickel: Full of practical advice and great deals, Five Cent Nickel offers a quick clue-in on all sorts of personal finance topics.
  10. The Color of Money: While not properly a blog — The Color of Money is the Washington Post’s regular column about personal finance — you’ll find tons of great information that doesn’t always make it through the rest of the personal finance blogosphere.

Web Applications

  1. Mint.com: Probably the most popular money management application online, Mint.com is continuing to evolve. Most recently, the application became available on the iPhone.
  2. Wesabe: Another popular money management application, Wesabe is community-oriented. You can get lots of help and advice with any financial situation you encounter.
  3. Shoeboxed: My favorite financial tool of the last year is Shoeboxed: for a small fee, they’ll take care of sorting and scanning all of your receipts.
  4. QuickenOnline: You can take advantage of the full power of Quicken online — and for free. It’s a solid money management tool, based on Intuit’s years of work in the field.
  5. Thrive: If you’re in your 20s or 30s, Thrive offers all sorts of personal finance help targeted just at you.
  6. BillShrink: BillShrink helps you compare your cell phone plan and credit cards to make sure that you’re getting the best possible deal.
  7. Rudder: When visiting several sites to manage your money is too much, Rudder provides a solution — it delivers all of your personal finance information straight to your email inbox, allowing you to control your money there.
  8. SmartyPig: SmartyPig offers a head start on savings, allowing you to put money out of reach while you work towards a goal.
  9. Billster: Sharing expenses among a group — like splitting the rent with your roommates — got a lot easier with Billster. The site tracks shared bills and payments.
  10. Xpenser: For an easy way to track expenses, consider Xpenser. It works through email, an iPhone app, SMS, IM and Twitter.

Resources

  1. Consumer Reports: While Consumer Reports has gotten into blogging in a big way lately, the whole site is very useful even if you aren’t a member.
  2. Bankrate: No matter what kind of financial information you’re looking for, Bankrate can lead you to it: loans, credit scores and taxes are just a sample of this website’s resources.
  3. The Motley Fool: The Motley Fool’s main focus is investments, although it does provide resources for other financial topics.
  4. Investopedia: Another site focused primarily on investing, the tutorials availbale on Investopedia provide a great education in a variety of topics.
  5. CNN’s Money101: For a complete guide to your financial life, Money101 can’t be beat. It’s full of step by step lessons that walk you through all sorts of financial projects.
  6. Tip’d: Tip’d launched this year — it’s sort of a Digg for money news. It’s full of great articles if you’ve got some time to spend reading.
  7. Inner8: If you’ve been looking for a place to discuss investments with other investors, check out Inner8. This new site provides tools to a large investment community.
  8. AnnualCreditReport.com: No matter what all those TV commercials say, the only place you can get all three of your credit reports for free is through ACR. It was established as to legislative requirements and protect consumers.
  9. PayScale: For financial information about your salary, check out PayScale. The site provides information about just where your salary should be.
  10. Kiplinger: Kiplinger offers solid personal finance advice on all sorts of topics, as well as current financial news.

What did I tell you?  Is Thursday Bram a blogger who knows a thing or two about finance online or what?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Think Outside The Box : Get A Free Online Financial Guru

Tough times have arrived.  Time to think outside the box.

Do you ever spend more than you should?  Let your bank account get too low?  Put off budgeting?  Forget or delay paying off those high interest credit cards? Who doesn’t?

What we could all use is a a financial planner/ manager who will take care of all those myriad money details for us.  But who can afford that?  You can.  We all can.  Because Mint is free.

Mint – Manages Your Money

http://www.mint.com/

“Mint is fresh, intelligent online money management. Not only is Mint free, it saves you money….

With Mint , you can achieve better online financial management in less than five minutes. After that, … Mint money management software does the rest, with virtually no more work required. It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up–to–date and amazingly accurate views of your financial—life from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.”

How Does Mint Work ?

Mint connects to more than 5,000 US financial institutions. Your account information is updated daily. Mint automatically categorizes all your purchases, showing you how much you spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more, with amazing precision.

Secure: Mint provides bank–level data security and industry–leading identity protection. Its security and privacy have been validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe. Users sign up with nothing more than a valid e-mail address, password, and zip code, then enter login credentials for supported financial institutions. Mint doesn’t store any of these credentials, working instead with Yodlee, a third-party financial aggregation service provider that’s provides similar services for “top” US financial institutions. Mint uses 128-bit SSL encryption to communicate with Yodlee and pull your transaction data. Mint never knows your identity.Their level of security is much the same as Paypal.com, eBay.com, your bank or many of the other online companies to whom you’ve given your financial information.

Mint Is Your Financial Traffic Cop/Watchdog

An advanced alerting system highlights any unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills so you’re in constant contact with your money. Plus, Mint is proactive—alerting you when you are exceeding your personal budget, have a low balance, need to pay a bill, and more.

Mint Is Your Sharp Eyed Accountant Looking for Savings

In addition, Mint goes beyond visibility and analysis providing personalized money–saving and money–making suggestions. Mint provides users an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during their first session. Mint is constantly working to find you savings. Mint keeps looking for new ways for you to save every day—continuously comparing your needs to product, service and bank offerings most relevant to you. ( Of course, the companies who are making the offers are also financing the program, Mint, so you don’t have to….to you it’s free.  Just bear that in mind when you evaluate the offer.)

Mint is Your Always On, Anywhere/anytime access, Free Financial Planner

These are some of the goals Mint can help you with.

Perhaps in some ways we all practice a little avoidance ( perhaps even denial) when it comes to our finances.  Do we really want to know how much we spend eating out or whatever our personal indulgences are? Maybe not.  Or, at least, maybe not by choice.  But a recession is upon us and, for most of us, there is not only the possibility but the real likelihood that the champagne will not be flowing and the airline tickets won’t be raining on our heads.  One way or another, we should all be contemplating the recession time strategy of tightening our belts, lowering our expenditures and increasing our savings to ride out this gathering storm. I, for one am going to be trying Mint to see if it can help me achieve some of those those financial goals I’ve procrastinated about.  Where else can I get a financial guru I don’t have to pay, feed, meet with or take to an expensive lunch?

If you try Mint, please do write us and share what you think and how it’s working for you.  If you have any other online, automated financial guru you’d like to recommend, please do.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Crunch Time – Prepare For the Personal Credit Tsunami

Suze Orman addressing a Senate Committee.
Image via Wikipedia

If ever there were a time to batten down our financial hatches, don our life vests and check the life boat for leaks, this is it; I can almost hear the gale force winds howling when I listen to Maria Bartiromo giving us the horror tale of the stock market in the evening. This is only made more scary by Suze Orman advising us how to deal with our incredibly shrinking assets in the morning.

But we all know what the best first step should be.

Michael Sitarzewski in How we got out of debt: from $50k to $0 in less than a year talks about his own moment of illumination when he realized he was looking at “a $23k personal loan, $24k in two cars, and a few thousand on credit cards ($50k for for the math deficient). He had heard Dave Ramsey on the radio, was impressed, so he and his wife turned to Dave’s book The Total Money Makeover for help.

“The plan? Live on less than you make (a lot less if you can), and use the rest to pay off debt.

So we formulated a plan based on Dave Ramsey’s “Baby Steps.”

1. The $1,000 Emergency Fund - we put ours in a savings account that was tied to the checking account as overdraft protection. That helped us get over using the credit cards as a buffer. We found that we never had an expense so large that we needed more than $1,000.

2. Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball – pay off the debts, smallest to largest, using the payment from the last one on the next. Eventually, everything is paid off and the fun starts. Interest isn’t relevant in the conversation because the excitement and the feeling of progress by paying off debts is extremely valuable. Don’t get out the calculator, it doesn’t matter. Pay them off, smallest to largest, and you’ll see how fun getting out of debt can be.

We started with the smallest card, then the other. Closing credit cards is fun. In the meantime I made the incredibly difficult decision to rid myself of my car and the $800/mo it was costing us. Man I loved that car, but $580 for the payment, another $100 for insurance, and $120 or so in gas per month? Didn’t love that. My car took two months to sell, but once it did we were able to apply that money to the other car (it was next in line).

With the second car paid off ($300/mo), my car sold ($800/mo), and the credit cards gone ($180/mo), the personal loan was up next. The friend that loaned us the money was getting a little impatient with us given how much debt we were paying off, but he was pretty excited to see the progress come so quickly when it was his turn. We were paying that debt off quickly. Very quickly.

It is said that once you start doing smart things with money, money finds you. Whether or not I believe that in a metaphysical sense is a matter of debate, we did see a nice tax return (the largest in years) and had an investment pay decently that spring. We didn’t get raises during that period, and still haven’t, but the investment keeps making returns and by getting out of debt, we’ve found a lot more money in our salaries.

We wrote the last check on September 18, 2007 – we were debt free in less than a year.

3. 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings - we chose a high interest savings account… and decided on 3 months of expenses because two of us were working. By extension, that means 6 months as long as we don’t both lose our jobs. We’ve completed this step. Reaching this goal while debt free was relatively painless – we were already trained by the budget.

4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement. In 2007 – for the first time ever – we fully funded our IRAs. We snuck it in just under the wire, but we did it.

For the long run, look at  5 through 7: College funding; Pay off your house early – Build wealth and GIVE! “

This advice is good for normal times but in today’s hazardous financial climate, with worse times looming, it will pay extra dividends to start the belt tightening and budget crunching, injecting more discipline in our spending and, generally, getting our financial house in order. When the good times return, this should accelerate our savings and one day we could be receiving interest instead of paying it out monthly.

Video: Suze Orman’s Guide To Tough Financial Times

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]