On this page I refer you to resources that have helped me weather with savings, budgeting, investing, or research and learning. Disclosure: some of these links are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you purchase some of these products. I don’t recommend anything I don’t have experience with myself and I list these resources because I am confident you will find them as useful as I have. You can read the full affiliate disclosure here.
Saving
Acorns, in a nutshell (see what I did there?) is a savings and investment app. The main feature is the automatic investment of your spare change. You can link your credit and/or debit cards to the Acorns app ans your purchases will be rounded up to the nearest dollar and the spare change dropped in to your account. The app allows you to you invest as little as $5 at any time or on a recurring basis through automatic withdrawals into a portfolio of ETFs. Your investments are then diversified across more than 7,000 stocks and bonds and automatically re-balance when the market fluctuates. The best part, if you sign up using their current offer here they will give you $5 to start.
Earny is an app that you can download for free which connects to your email address that you use to receive e-receipts on purchases. Earny scans your e-receipts to see what you purchased with your credit card and researches other merchants’ websites to see if the same items are sold cheaper elsewhere, or if the price drops. The app automatically claims the difference from your credit card company on your behalf. Sign up using my referral link here to help the site.
The Krazy Coupon Lady will find you savings at just about any retailer you can imagine. The website is also filled with insightful tips on how to save money, couponing tips, shopping hacks and much more.
Investing
E-Trade is the first investment brokerage I used and it remains my favorite to this day. There are other platforms out there that may be commission free or be easier to use on a smart phone, but for me ETrade will always be my first option. I feel they are the most well rounded platform when it comes to stock market trading. They offer tools to help you learn as well as easy tax documentation access, news, updates, alerts, etc. If not for ETrade, I would have never achieved the level of financial success I enjoy now.
Robinhood is a free stock trading platform. They offer no commission trading and there is no account minimum requirement. Getting started is a breeze and if you are accustomed to using a smart phone, you will find their interface easy to use. Join now and receive a free stock just for signing up.
Research and Learning
Bankrate.com has a wonderful collection of free, easy to use calculators. I have used their simple savings calculator countless times to estimate savings outcomes over various periods of time, interest rates, deposit amounts, etc.
Check out my list of 20 life changing books on personal finance.