Get organized, stay on budget, raise your credit, get competitive insurance rates, and much more, using free tools. Get the Money Girl book at http://MoneyGirlBook.com
Money Girl
336 MG 7 Best Free Personal Finance Tools
When you hear a good idea, it's natural to do a double take. That's what you might do when you hear "Discover" while automatically double the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with "Cashback Match." Wait, what? Yup. Double the cashback is something so good you might do a triple take. It pays to discover. See terms at discover.com/creditcard. Welcome to another weekly edition of the Money Girl Podcast. I'm Laura Adams, the author of "Money Girl's Smart Moves to Grow Rich." Grab a copy of the paperback or ebook from your favorite bookseller. If you're ready to improve your personal finances, it can be as easy as using a new digital tool. No matter if you want to be more organized, stay on budget, raise your credit score, get competitive pricing information, or crunch the numbers for a financial decision. There's an application for you. And you might be pleasantly surprised to know that many powerful financial programs are free. In this episode, I'll tell you about seven of the best free personal finance tools that you should start using today. All right, let's get to it. Tool number one is mint.com. Mint.com and its mobile apps give you a simple, clean platform to connect all your financial accounts in one place. Transactions for all your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, and retirement plans are aggregated into a single dashboard, so you have a bird's eye view of your entire financial life. Mint.com is loaded with features that help you create and stick to a budget, pay bills on time, create financial goals, and know your net worth. It learns how you want to categorize transactions, and then does it automatically so you always know where your money is going. You can customize your dashboard and get account updates as often as you like. This free program blows away many other financial products that you have to pay for. Tool number two, Ace Money Light. Ace Money Light is free personal finance software for your PC or Mac desktop. It has all the features of Ace Money, the full version that sells for $39.99, except that light only supports two accounts. It's known for being the best free alternative to quicken, which also has a starter product for $39.99. Ace Money Light is perfect for managing your home or small business accounting needs. You can manage bills, track budgets, analyze spending, and create reports by categories. It also imports your transactions from online bank accounts using the standard QIF and OFX file formats. Tool number three, fresh books. Fresh books is a cloud-based accounting system for small businesses. There's a free version that allows you to manage up to three clients and several full versions with more functionality that range in price from $19.99 to $39.99, all with live customer support. You can build clients by email or snail mail, set up recurring invoices, get paid by credit card, PayPal, or many other payment gateways. You can also set up automatic payments from your clients. What makes fresh books different is that you can use it on your desktop and mobile devices, so you can work anywhere. Now that we're in Q4, it's a good time to start thinking about making memories with the people you love most before the end of the year. We put a lot into the time we spend with our loved ones. So you want to extend that care, comfort, and peace of mind to what happens when you're gone. 41% of people don't have the life insurance coverage they need. Policy genius makes finding and buying life insurance embryos. With policy genius, you can find life insurance policies at start at just $292 a year for a million dollars of coverage, and some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. Policy genius combines digital tools with the experience of real licensed agents. You can compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for free with no hidden fees. They have an amazing licensed support team that helps you get what you need fast, so you can get on with your life. They answer questions, handle paperwork, and advocate for you throughout the process. Policy genius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace, and even if you already have life insurance through work, remember it may not protect all your family's needs or follow you if you leave your job. So save money and time on providing a financial safety net for your family. Head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com. Tool number four, checkingfinder.com. One of the best things about the web is being able to compare multiple products in one place. When you're looking for a high interest bank account, check out checkingfinder.com. It gives you a side by side comparison of the best free accounts at credit unions and community banks. The interest rate you'll get depends on which institution you choose. There are a few easy requirements, such as signing up for online banking, getting e-statements, making a certain number of monthly debit card transactions, and having at least one direct deposit, automatic withdrawal, or online bill pay each month. All of the accounts on checkingfinder.com pay competitive interest rates and have no fees or minimum balances. Plus, they refund your ATM fees nationwide, have online banking and bill pay, and are federally insured. That makes it easy to bank long distance at no cost and manage your account from anywhere. Tool number five, annualcreditreport.com. Credit reports play a critical role in your finances. They determine factors like whether you get approved for a credit card, loan, or lease request. What interest rate you have to pay for loans, credit accounts, and security deposits? How much you have to pay for insurance, like auto and home policies, and whether a potential employer will hire you? Because your credit is so important, you're legally entitled to a free copy of your credit reports from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies every 12 months. You can get all three at the official credit site, annualcreditreport.com. Using this federally approved tool to review your credit reports once a year will help you find and correct errors that could be dragging down your scores. Plus, it's the best way to catch early signs of identity theft, like seeing an account that isn't yours, and stop a criminal in their tracks. To see a step-by-step video about how to check your free credit reports, download My Credit Score Survival Kit. It's a tutorial I created that lets you look over my shoulder as I check my own credit. It also includes an e-book and audiobook with three smart strategies to raise your credit fast. Visit smartmuse-to-grow-rich.com and click the button that says Credit Score Survival Kit. Again, the Credit Score Survival Kit is a free download at smartmuse-to-grow-rich.com. Tool number six, insurance quotes.com. Insurance is an expense we all have to pay. So why pay more than you have to? There are some great online portals that allow you to shop and compare multiple policies. The secret to cutting insurance costs is to shop around at least once a year. Many people don't realize that rates vary considerably from company to company and even fluctuate from month to month. So no matter if you need coverage for your car, home, life, health, or business, you can get free quotes at insurance quotes.com. It's a great place to get free quotes from the nation's top insurance companies at the best price. Tool number seven, dinkytown.com. I know it's a funny name, but if you need the answer to just about any financial question, like whether to get a 15 or 30-year mortgage, whether to lease or buy a car, or how long your retirement savings will last, head over to dinkytown.com. Their library of handy financial tools and calculators will help you crunch numbers related to mortgages, loans, credit cards, debt, cars, investments, retirement savings, and taxes. I hope you'll find this list of free financial tools helpful, but if you have a favorite that I didn't mention, please share it with me on the MoneyGirl Facebook page. If we haven't connected on social media yet, please visit Facebook and do a search for MoneyGirl. On Twitter, you'll find me under username @lauraattams, L-A-U-R-A-A-D-A-M-S with no space. Everything I mentioned is on the MoneyGirl page at quickanddirtytips.com. To read a transcript of this show, look for episode 336, called Seven Best Free Personal Finance Tools. I'm glad you're listening to Ching. That's all for now. Courtesy of MoneyGirl, your guide to a richer life. [BLANK_AUDIO]