This is a page of all of the resources that I use and/or recommend highly. These are all tools and sites that have helped me on my journey to financial freedom, and I think that they can help you too! What’s better than having a bunch of handy resources all in one place?
Note: This page may contain affiliate links. Please see my affiliate disclosure for more information.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Personal Capital: Personal Capital is a FREE money management tool that will help you keep track of all of your finances in one place. This will come in handy when it comes time to start budgeting. It’s super easy to use and I use it every single day to get a snapshot of my finances. You can see my review of Personal Capital here. Sign up for your FREE account with Personal Capital and get started on managing your money!
YNAB (You Need A Budget): YNAB is my #1 tool for budgeting. It’s so easy to create a budget, input your income, and record your transactions on the website and in the app. YNAB will run you $5/month, but it’s well worth the money. YNAB easily helps me to save hundreds each month because it forces me to be on top of my finances. Also, it comes with a 34-day free trial, to see if it’s for you.
Mint: Mint is an incredibly popular money management and budgeting app from Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks and TurboTax. You can import all of your transactions into Mint and create budgets, to track your spending. I personally prefer to use Mint exclusively for their super useful Bills feature. I import all of my bills into the app, and it gives handy reminders of when bills are due, how much they are, and even lets you pay them directly through the app (for a fee, of course.) I definitely recommend giving Mint a look.
Square Ca$h: Square Ca$h is awesome. It lets you send money quickly and instantly to anyone with a bank account. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to pay a friend for something, and was able to pay them instantly with Ca$h. It’s completely free to sign up, and if you use a debt card, you get free next-day delivery for all transactions, or instant (seriously, instant) deposits for a 1% fee. If you hook up your credit card, there’s a 3% fee. Has definitely helped me in a pinch.
Venmo: Venmo is pretty much the same exact thing as Square Ca$h. You can send money quickly to anyone else who has the app. I use both apps, since different friends use different services. Also free to sign up.
Credit Karma: Credit Karma is a site that gives you FREE access to your credit score. I use it regularly to stay on top of my score, and see how I’m doing. Credit Karma also has a nifty feature that lets you apply for a credit card directly through the app. Please be careful if you do decide to get a card, as it’s really easy to get yourself in trouble with them. But the feature is there.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Tailwind: Tailwind is an amazing app that I use to pin on Pinterest. It comes with a super handy scheduler that makes pinning easy. Using Tailwind, I was able to increase traffic to my blog by 3,000%! Yup, three thousand. Tailwind is pretty much necessary if you’re hoping to master Pinterest, which will in turn drive traffic to your blog. You can sign up for Tailwind for free.
PicMonkey: PicMonkey is a website (and app) that you can use to design rich graphics, that you can use on your blog, Pinterest, or any social media account. PicMonkey has been so valuable for quickly creating high quality pins, which drive traffic to my site. And more traffic = more money! PicMonkey will run you $7/month (after a free trial, of course) but it’s more than worth it.
Canva: Like PicMonkey, Canva is a website that lets you design all types of graphics and images. Canva is free, but I find it to be a little more limited than PicMonkey (and a little slower too.) I use Canva to create Pinterest pins, but eventually found myself switching to PicMonkey. I found PicMonkey to be well worth the $7 price tag.
BLOGGING
Bluehost: Bluehost is an incredibly popular hosting company and the one that I use for Money Hero, as well as other sites I’ve created. I’ve tried various other hosts, and Bluehost has by far been the best. You can easily start a blog with Bluehost for less than $3/month! This will get you set up with a hosting package for your site, as well as a free, unique, personalized domain name of your choosing.
ConvertKit: ConvertKit is an email marketing platform and autoresponder that will take care of all of your emailing needs for your list. You can use ConvertKit to collect email addresses, send emails, create courses, and build your mailing list. More emails = more conversions = more money! Definitely worth giving a look!
How to Start a Profitable Blog in 15 Minutes: I wrote a post on How to Start a Blog with Bluehost and WordPress for those of you who are interest in starting your own blog. I’ve found blogging about a topic that I love, personal finance, to be incredibly rewarding. My detailed guide can get you up and running in no time with your own blog.
WordPress Blog Setup: Rather have someone setup your blog for you? I can help. I will help you to get your domain and hosting package setup with Bluehost, and get WordPress installed on your site. I will personally prepare your blog for you, install WordPress, and take you through all of the setup steps. This includes installing for you all of the WordPress plugins that I use that are absolutely vital to running my blog efficiently! Check out what I offer on my Services page!
SEO Starter Pack: Good SEO is absolutely necessary for you to get your site ranked on search engines such as Google, so that people can find all that great content that you have to offer. I will give you a rundown of SEO tactics, as well as show you how to make sure that you are correctly optimizing your site to turn up in search results. I will show you the tools that I use for SEO on my blog, as well as how to monitor your SEO. Check out what I offer on my Services page!