A lot of my personal finance related topics come from questions that I’m frequently asked. Half the reason I write these blog posts is so I don’t have to answer the same questions over and over again. It’s easier to just send a link haha. One of these such questions is what bank do you use, what investing platform do you use etc.
Bank – Ally
I think I’ve mentioned before that if you’re still using a traditional bank like Chase, you’re leaving money on the table. Big banks like Chase offer 0.01% interest rates. Online banks like Ally offer interest rates of 1% or higher. That’s 100X more interest that you could be earning! Ally’s rates change with the market. Last year, my savings account earned more than 2%. I have both my savings and checking accounts with Ally. I even have a separate account for my rental property but they’re all organized under one login.
Ally will refund the ATM fees on any bank’s ATM that you use. If you still feel the need to have a bank with a physical branch, then keep just a few hundred dollars in an account at a local branch and put the rest in an Ally account. It’s FREE money guys. And there’s no minimum to open an account.
Investing – Wealthfront
Wealthfront is a robo-investing platform. Because the platform uses technology and algorithms instead of active human managers, it has some of the lowest fees around. If you use my referral link, you can get $5,000 managed for free.
I love that Wealthfront makes it super easy to automate your investing. You answer a few questions – age, risk level etc. then it creates a diversified portfolio for you made up of mostly low-fee index funds. It also has automatic tax loss harvesting to minimize your tax bill. I have a monthly recurring deposit set up so it takes the same $ amount from my checking account and automatically invests it for me.
Wealthfront has regular taxable investment accounts as well as 401ks and Roth IRAs. My IRA is at Fidelity since I opened one when I was back in high school. Otherwise, I would definitely use Wealthfront for my retirement account too.
Learn more about Retirement Saving 101: Why I Don’t Have a 401k
Tracking/budgeting – Mint
Mint is a free website/app where you can aggregate all of your financial accounts. You can connect your bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, and even input real estate holdings. I like to use it for two purposes – to look over my credit card spending and to track my net worth.
Mint has a lot of features to track spending/budgeting. It will sort your credit card charges into categories so you can see what percent of your spending goes towards groceries, for example. I like seeing all of my accounts in one place so I can get a big picture overview of my finances.
Learning – BiggerPockets
Bigger Pockets is where I first started learning about real estate. They have forums, podcasts, blog posts, books, and more. Anything you ever wanted to know about real estate or finance… I guarantee you can find the answer here. You can make a free account. I have a pro membership because I like to play with the rental property calculator. P.S. feel free to add me on there!
Photos by The Wild Authentic Photography
If you got to the end of this blog post and are wondering about my dress… It’s from the LoveShackFancy for Target collection which is now sold out. 😢 You might be able to find some of the dresses for sale on Poshmark. I’m linking some kinda sorta similar options below.
