Favourite Financial Resources

[London]

An ongoing general thread to share interesting websites, blogs, or tools that help you be financially aware.

[London]

www.mrsjanuary.com

- This website is a great financial catch-all. Articles, reviews, and an excellent resource for coupons. It is also Canadian-friendly which is surprisingly hard to come by

www.theminimalistmom.com

- I have approximately eleventy thousand bags. A minimalist I am not. But this woman has an amazing backstory and blog outlining how they eliminated tens of thousands of dollars in debt over a few short years by embracing a minimalist mentality.

www.squawkfox.com

- Like Mrs January, another witty and accessible financial blog. Canadian friendly.

[southernpeach89]

I've always used www.mint.com for managing our money, bills, etc...

www.mint.com/

For investments and planning out your retirement and all that jazz, www.fidelity.com is a great resource.

www.fidelity.com/investment-guidance/overview

[London]

Checkout 51 is a great app. It offers cash back on various products.
You scan your receipt and accumulate dollars. Once you hit $20 you can cash out and they mail you a cheque. Best used when timing items on the app when they are on sale at your grocery store.

[jessiespano]

Feb 1, 2016 10:56:19 GMT -5 London said:

Checkout 51 is a great app. It offers cash back on various products.
You scan your receipt and accumulate dollars. Once you hit $20 you can cash out and they mail you a cheque. Best used when timing items on the app when they are on sale at your grocery store.

Also Ibotta. Same thing. I would love to share my link so I can get some referrals! And anyone else who has these apps can share for referrals too. Or would that get too crazy?

Oh and Saving star. This one you just link your grocery store savings card, pick out the items you'd buy, and then it gives you a rebate. You can cash out at $10.

This is my referral link for Ibotta. I get $5 for a referral you get $10 after you redeem your first rebate. Feel free to ignore.

ibotta.com/r/pwxnta

[jessiespano]

Also, do you guys want me to share what I'm learning in the Dave Ramsey class, leaving out the religious aspect? I could just make a weekly thread of the highlights and anything interesting I learn.

[tngrl3]

London I love how you Canadians spell certain words. Cheque looks so much fancier that way (versus check)!

[London]

Feb 1, 2016 11:26:46 GMT -5 tngrl3 said:

London I love how you Canadians spell certain words. Cheque looks so much fancier that way (versus check)!

I didn't even know Americans spelled it differently until very recently. I think I was watching a movie and saw it in writing. Totally a "wtf" moment haha.

[southernpeach89]

@lizzie17, Congrats on being debt free! That's awesome! We are almost there, we have my student loans left but I've paid off more than half of them so almost done.

[jessiespano]

Feb 1, 2016 12:41:54 GMT -5 @lizzie17 said:

I second the recommendation for Mint.com. We used it for several years to help us begin tracking our spending without taking hours to do the work. It was REALLY helpful.

We just celebrated paying off the last of our debts this weekend - over $130k debt wiped out. It took us about 6 years, but hot damn, its done!

I am a personal wealth manager by day, so feel free to message me any time if you guys have specific questions you want some help with!

ETA: I thought I would just add a little context, since many of you may wonder what kind of crazy person can advise others about their money by profession and have had to pay off excessive debts at the same time....

I graduated college not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and had a job in medical practice management to start off with, but I was never passionate about it. DH and I got married pretty young (I was 21), and we made a LOT of financial mistakes early on - put ourselves through college, so lots of student loans, used credit cards to supplement our lifestyle in college, bought WAY TOO much house for our income, etc. Once we realized how stupid we'd been, I started doing research on how to dig out of the hole we'd made for ourselves. We started on the Dave Ramsey plan to get our debt under control and put a plan together. It was a great start, but Dave's plan isn't very detailed in helping navigate all the nuances of real life and next steps (after debt repayment), so I looked into going through a Certified Financial Planning program at SMU. It was a post-graduate program that would take 2 years to complete, but I thought the education would be really valuable for our family to have. I started the program, and two weeks later, had fallen in love with the profession. It is such a great mix of finance (which feeds my inner nerd) and personal interaction and counseling. I've been in the profession for over 6 years now and love it to pieces. I mostly work with high-net worth individuals, but love working with young families on the side because that is really where we've been (personally) and who I identify with the most.

I won't push in if there's no interest, but I'm also happy to periodically post educational threads to talk about different topics in greater detail if y'all want. I could cover things like different retirement savings vehicles (401k, IRA, Roth IRA, etc), investing 101, college savings, debt payoff, life insurance planning, estate planning, etc. Just let me know.

Totally post the educational threads!  Debt payoff is my lyfe right now.

[mowkey]

Feb 1, 2016 10:39:19 GMT -5 southernpeach89 said:

I've always used www.mint.com for managing our money, bills, etc...

www.mint.com/

For investments and planning out your retirement and all that jazz, www.fidelity.com is a great resource.

www.fidelity.com/investment-guidance/overview

+1 I also use mint.com and fidelity.com (by default for fidelity because my 401K is through them). But I like their app and website and all the financial tools they have to use.

I just started using Digit to build an emergency fund.  I read it on a blog when I was looking for small ways to save, info from their website:
There are 4 main things that influence Digit's savings algorithm:

Checking account balance

Upcoming income (paychecks or predicted irregular income)

Upcoming bills

Recent spending

Every weekday Digit uses these 4 inputs to try and find a small amount of money it knows you don't need for upcoming bills or spending and more importantly won't feel based on how you've recently been spending money.

If it is able to find some money, Digit will auto-transfer those funds to your FDIC insured Digit account.


digit.co/r/uHNnA?wn (disclaimer, if you use this link to sign up I get $5, its a referral link from my site)

There is also Achorns, which i was thinking about using.  But wasn't interested in more investment accounts.  I wanted to save for an emergency fund or vacation fund.  I already have investments that i am happy with.

[mowkey]

@lizzie17 congrats! What an awesome feeling. We are done paying about $60k in debt on June 20th of this year. This the the third year. I cannot wait!

I used clarifi.org. We had gotten into credit trouble for many of the reasons Lizzie stated. Clarifi is a non profit credit counseling service. We didn't get debt relief but we consolidated all our payments into one. We did get lower interest rates. In the 9%-12% range instead of 25%-30% range. It did not affect our credit in any way because we are paying back all we owed. Come July, we are essentially getting a huge raise by eliminating that big debt payment finally. My credit has actually went up 100 points the last 2 years. I've also never have missed a payment or paid a bill late though either.

I no longer use credit cards except for a target card and a kohls card. My limits are under $1000 though.

[jessiespano]

Feb 1, 2016 16:03:22 GMT -5 mowkey said:

@lizzie17 congrats! What an awesome feeling. We are done paying about $60k in debt on June 20th of this year. This the the third year. I cannot wait!

I used clarifi.org. We had gotten into credit trouble for many of the reasons Lizzie stated. Clarifi is a non profit credit counseling service. We didn't get debt relief but we consolidated all our payments into one. We did get lower interest rates. In the 9%-12% range instead of 25%-30% range. It did not affect our credit in any way because we are paying back all we owed. Come July, we are essentially getting a huge raise by eliminating that big debt payment finally. My credit has actually went up 100 points the last 2 years. I've also never have missed a payment or paid a bill late though either.

I no longer use credit cards except for a target card and a kohls card. My limits are under $1000 though.

I might have more questions about this if you are comfortable- either here or pm.  

[swbrigadoon]

@nraylor989 I love Khan Academy for so many things!

@lizzie17 I would love all the help I can get . I feel so clueless when it comes to saving/investing.

[mowkey]

Feb 1, 2016 16:37:01 GMT -5 jessiespano said:

Feb 1, 2016 16:03:22 GMT -5 mowkey said:

@lizzie17 congrats! What an awesome feeling. We are done paying about $60k in debt on June 20th of this year. This the the third year. I cannot wait!

I used clarifi.org. We had gotten into credit trouble for many of the reasons Lizzie stated. Clarifi is a non profit credit counseling service. We didn't get debt relief but we consolidated all our payments into one. We did get lower interest rates. In the 9%-12% range instead of 25%-30% range. It did not affect our credit in any way because we are paying back all we owed. Come July, we are essentially getting a huge raise by eliminating that big debt payment finally. My credit has actually went up 100 points the last 2 years. I've also never have missed a payment or paid a bill late though either.

I no longer use credit cards except for a target card and a kohls card. My limits are under $1000 though.

I might have more questions about this if you are comfortable- either here or pm.  

Sure! Either way here or pm. It changed our life.

[jessiespano]

This isn't really a resource but jungledealsblog.com is my jam. She posts great deals from Amazon. I just got a shampoo and moisturizer for free. Zero dollars. The trick is to not get caught up in every single deal, but she posts some really useful ones. I keep my eye out and buy things for birthdays and Christmas as they come up.

Not this month though. This month I only get free things.

[jessiespano]

Feb 1, 2016 16:49:33 GMT -5 mowkey said:

Feb 1, 2016 16:37:01 GMT -5 jessiespano said:

I might have more questions about this if you are comfortable- either here or pm.  

Sure! Either way here or pm. It changed our life.

Can you pm me with some info when you have the chance?  I've poked around the website and it looks like something I'm interested in.  I just want to know what the first step is, what they did for you (you don't have to give me actual numbers of course), and what the affect was on your finances, etc.  Just a general account of your experience.  Just whenever you have the time.  Thanks!

[xcrissx]

@lizzie17, congrats on being debt free!
I would love some investing 101 (I'll need you to speak to me like I'm a toddler).