Top Personal Finance Resources for Young Professionals
When it comes to young professionals, there is usually one way to describe their lives—busy. Which is why finding efficient ways to improve how young professionals manage their finances is so important. What follows in today’s blog post is a breakdown of the top personal finance tools for young professionals, and how they can help save time, and ultimately money.
Budgeting and Managing Cash Flow
- Mint: Want to start budgeting, but don’t want to do all the work? Then Mint is the app for you. Easily and securely connect your bank and credit card accounts into one place, create a budget within minutes, and then let Mint categorize your transactions so you always know where you stand. Plus you can do all of this from your desktop, phone, or tablet. Learn more here.
- Level Money: takes a unique approach to helping you manage how you spend money each day, responsibly. It takes into consideration your upcoming bills, your income, and then breaks down how much you can spend each day, your “Spendable.” Get started here.
- EveryDollar: Dave Ramsey Solutions is behind this great, yet very simple budgeting tool. Similar to Mint you can sync accounts, but with EveryDollar you’ll manually categorize each transaction into your various spending buckets. This helps to foster awareness around where you spend money. Check it out.
- Lifewise eMoney: Most similar to Mint, Lifewise offers free access to its own financial management dashboard. This includes Mint-like functionality that allows you to budget and monitor cash flow, plus a secure vault for storing financial documents, financial workshops and calculators, plus tons of free educational resources. Sign-up here.
Investing and Saving Made Easy
- Betterment: Betterment is one of the leading automated investment platforms, or “robo advisors” as they are popularly known. Betterment makes the entire process of opening an investment account, getting invested, and staying invested nearly effortless, which for busy young professionals is oftentimes the expectation. Invest today.
- Blooom: For those young professionals with a 401(k) and no idea how to set up their investments within it, you need to check out Blooom. Not only is it Netflix cheap, but it makes life so much simpler by taking over the management of your 401(k) so you can focus on enjoying life. Automate your 401(k) today.
- Acorns: Remember saving your spare change as a kid and then cashing it in? Acorns is the digital reincarnation of the piggybank for young professionals. In fact, with each purchase, Acorns, rounds up your purchase and saves the “change” into a well-diversified, low-cost portfolio, all automatically, all for you! Get your digital piggybank.
- Ally Bank: Traditional banks are paying virtually nothing when it comes to the interest on your savings account. Which is why if you’ve got some money stashed away and are looking to make a more than a few bucks per year in interest, you’ll want to check out Ally Bank. It’s arguably the best online high yield savings accounts that’s currently paying roughly 1%. Maximize your savings.
Insurance Quotes
- Quotacy: Imagine if Apple or Uber redesigned (the kings of simplicity and awesome user experiences) the process for getting term life insurance quotes and ultimately purchasing the policies? That’s what Quotacy has done. The process is nearly effortless. Get quotes in seconds, then if you find a policy you like, kick start the process all online. It’s that simple. Get quotes now.
Student Loans
- National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS): Keeping track of all those student loans as a young professional can be difficult. Thankfully, you can get information on every loan you have, which is the first step to getting them paid off—getting organized. Visit NSLDS to get a comprehensive breakdown of your loans. Organize Your Student Loans.
- StudentAid.gov: Student loans are complicated, period. Which is why helpful resources are tremendously helpful. Look no further for digestible information on your income-based repayment plans, loan consolidation, forgiveness, and much more. Learn about your loans.
Credit Cards
- NerdWallet: The ultimate resource for researching and comparing credit cards. Whether you’re looking for cash back cards, have bad credit, or travel a lot, NerdWallet can help determine the best card for you. NerdWallet also has similar resources on the top banking, mortgage, and loan solutions. Find a credit card (spend responsibly!).
New to Lifewise?
Providing the perfect blend of powerful technology and human guidance, Lifewise is geared toward young professionals searching for a better way to make wise choices and sound financial decisions. Backed by BerganKDV Wealth Management, Lifewise is supported by a team of CPAs, CFPs and CFAs who stand ready to guide you through every financial challenge and windfall.
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