“It’s not how much money you make but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” – Robert Kiyosaki
Financial planning is the process of determining ways to earn, save, and spend money. Through it, you can also determine the amount you need to earn, invest, and spend. It can provide direction and discipline with the way you use your money. It can help you achieve your financial goals or life goals, such as purchasing a house, starting a child education fund, or simply having sufficient resources or investments when you retire from work.
If you need some advice on managing your finances, you can begin by reading some online blogs.
Financial Planning Blogs
1. The Reformed Broker
This site is owned by Joshua M. Brown. He is a New York City-based financial adviser. The Reformed Broker started in 2008 and eventually became one of the most read sites about financial planning. You can read in this blog topics about market, politics, economics, culture, and finance. What’s unique about it is that Joshua does not write topics giving out financial advice or what to invest in, but commentaries on his market-related insights instead.
2. Abnormal Returns
This website was founded by Tadas Viskanta, a private investor with over 25 years of experience in financial markets. His written works have been featured in different journals, such as the Financial Analyst Journal. This site aims to bring the best of the investment blogosphere to its readers every day.
3. Workable Wealth
This financial planning site is for generations X and Y. It is owned by Mary Beth Storjohann, a financial coach, author, and speaker. She chose to provide guidance to people in her generation who are in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, because of the limited financial information for these age ranges, based on her experience.
4. Nerd’s Eye View
This blog is owned by Michael Kitces, who has two master’s degrees in Financial Services and Taxation. Nerd’s Eye View has been recognized as the number one industry blog. It contains over one thousand articles about financial planning.
5. FF Pad
FF Pad was founded by Bill Winterberg in 2008. He is a respected personality in the financial planning industry. This site is one of the leading sources of news, insight, and thought leadership in financial planning technology. Aside from this blog, he also has a YouTube channel and an iTunes podcast about financial planning.
6. Money Crashers
Andrew Schrage owns Money Crashers. He created this blog to educate people in making wise decisions about investing, education, real estate, credit and debt, insurance, spending money, etc.
Andrew’s goal is to motivate people to take control of their finances by providing informative, actionable content. Money Crashers try their best to provide trustworthy information and tips for all aspects of financial life that can help everyone – be it a recent college graduate or a professional investor.
7. Mr. Money Moustache
Mr. Money Moustache is a personal finance blog made by Peter Adeney where he shares his personal secrets on creating a better life than your current situation. He started this blog to educate people about taking care of their finances to feel the fun of financial freedom.
8. HowToSaveMoney
HowToSaveMoney is a blog by Stephen Wayman. He grew up with his father, an expert investment advisor who taught him early on how to manage money responsibly. In this great informative blog, he shares the secrets that he has learned from important financial personalities.
Before starting a blog, he did a lot of homework, such as comparing credit card fees and reward programs, cable and internet providers, and much more. Besides financial education, he also provides a ton of how-tos, like watching sports for less, stacking grocery deals and coupons to get the best deal, etc.
9. My Own Advisor
My Own Advisor is a blog by Mark Seed. Like most people, his father told him that one of the best ways to wealth is to invest. Therefore, in his 20s, he started investing. When he realized that the bank was taking hefty fees for money management, he decided to take action on it.
He read every book he could get his hands on, setting an investment portfolio goal of $1 million, and he did it around the age of 40. He provides knowledge on investing basics to specific stock and trading advice. It is an excellent blog for people who want to learn to invest and build their portfolios.
Financial Planning Apps
Another way to help you manage your finances is by using applications. Since we are using our phones and computers most of the time, we can also use them to monitor the way we spend and how much we are saving. Here are some apps that may be useful in financial planning.
1. Budget Simple
This web app can help you track your monthly expenses. You can use it to record your monthly expenses, as well as the monthly fees you need to make to avoid missing them.
2. Mint
This app is available on Web, iOS, Android, and Windows 8. It can track your bank accounts, credit cards, as well as your investments. It also has a feature where you can plan your budget and future expenses. It can give you an overview of your finances.
Mint is one of the most well-known financial planning and personal finance apps that give you a whole picture of your finances in one place. When you link your credit and debit cards to your accounts, it pulls out your transactions, categorizes them, and shows you how much money you are spending.
It also allows you to keep track of your bills and expenditures while creating a budget you can stick with. The app also allows you to access your credit card score, and you get a breakdown of the list of the things that lead to your current credit card score.
3. YNAB
YNAB, short for You Need a Budget, is a popular personal finance app based on four of the YNAB rules: Give every dollar a job, embrace your true expenses, Roll with the punches, and Age your money. This helps make a better budget and gain control of your spending.
You can easily import transactions from your checking account and then apply them to each budget category to get a complete picture of your spending. It also helps you keep a balanced budget by adjusting the budget categories if you spend accidentally.
4. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is an excellent financial planning and wealth management app that helps manage assets, investments, and everyday spending accounts. You can also connect your bank account to track spending and create a monthly budget.
The app does its best by helping you track and optimize your investment. Your portfolio can be tracked by account, asset class, or individual security. Furthermore, you can also discover opportunities for diversification, risk management, and any hidden fees you might pay with the app’s built-in intelligence.
5. Prism
Prism gives you complete financial insights by presenting all the bills and finances in a single app. It promotes 11,000 plus billers, including big banks and small companies. It also lets you add your bills automatically track your accounts.
Prism also allows you to get rid of late payments by sending you date reminders. You can also use the app yourself and pay bills by scheduling payments to be made the same day or several days in advance. It lets you get rid of the need to log in to multiple accounts for paying bills.
6. Expensify
If you’re a business traveler, this app is best for you. It can help you expense reports on where you are spending your money. It has features that allow you to take photos of receipts, track time, and log distances traveled. You can also print it out if you want a report of your expenses. This app is available on the Web, IOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.
7. Pocket Expense
Just like Mint, this app can give you an overview of all your accounts as well as expenses. It can categorize your transactions, track your bills, and set budgets to achieve your goals. It is available on the Web and iOS.
8. Expense Manager
This is a free app for Android phones. It can give you an in-depth and high-level view of your income and expenses across days, weeks, months, and years. It can also organize your bills and provide reports about your finances. It has added features such as a currency converter, shopping list, and different calculators.
Having a financial plan makes it easy to make financial decisions and stay on track to be able to meet your goals. We hope these resources will help you start your own financial planning.
Conclusion
There are many financial planning resources out there that can help you manage your finances safely and effectively. We have tried our best to put together the best ones among them. All these financial resources belong to the financial gurus and professionals, so you don’t have to worry about the information is authentic or not.
The financial apps you see allow you to pay bills and track your credit score and how much you have spent. These also allow you to save a ton of time by pulling out the whole financial picture and making financial planning much easier.