There’s lots of online information about personal finance. If you’re looking for advice on budgeting or investing, you’ll find plenty. If you want quotes for loans or insurance, they’re available. If you need help getting out of debt, you can find it online.
Predictably, some of the personal finance resources online are better than others. Some are frankly self-serving, trying to sell you some product or service. Others give information freely. Some of the information is good and some is not so good. You have to evaluate and discriminate when looking for authority and accuracy in personal finance information. After all, it’s your money that you’ll be risking if you follow bad advice. So be careful out there.
We can’t hope to list all the good online sites for personal finance. There are just too many. But here’s a short list to get you started in the right direction. We’ve included a few of the standard mega-sites plus some really good ones that are not so well known.
Necessary Virtues Personal Finance
http://finance.necessaryvirtues.com/
Specializes in information about how to manage your money efficiently and live a prosperous life. Offers several full-length books as free downloads, including these titles: “Solving the Money Puzzle: Personal Finance Made Simple,” “The Science of Getting Rich,” “Money for Life,” and the classic, “Think and Grow Rich.” Also offers free newsletter, “Your Money Plan.”
MSN Money
http://moneycentral.msn.com/
Specializes in information for investors, including free stock quotes and analysis tools. Also has sections on planning, banking, and taxes. Good investment advice columns and features. Some analysis tools require Internet Explorer for best results. (The site is owned by Microsoft.)
CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/
More breadth than MSN Money but less depth on investing. Covers many areas and has quite a bit of unique content from Fortune and Money magazines. (This is a Time-Warner site so there is common ownership.)
Kiplinger.com
http://www.kiplinger.com/
Mostly about investing, but also has good articles on credit management, real estate, insurance, retirement. Do be aware that much of their focus is on selling subscriptions to their various newsletters, like the Kiplinger Report.
Zen Personal Finance
http://www.finance-weblog.com/
This is something completely different, a blog with a unique perspective on personal finance. Has sections on retirement, housing, credit, and investing (a mammoth 30-part series of posts on “How To Think Like Warren Buffet”). Not the place to go for everyday reference, but recommended for browsing.
The Motley Fool
http://www.fool.com/
Specializes in help with investing, particularly in stocks and mutual funds. Information is of high quality, but registration is required to access most of it, and payment is required for parts of the site and for some newsletters.
Yahoo Finance
http://finance.yahoo.com/
There’s a lot here, but most of it is conglomerated by Yahoo from various third-party sources. You’ll have to be discriminating.
Carnival of Personal Finance
http://carnivalofpersonalfinance.com/
A blog carnival that offers weekly collections of recent blog posts on topics like budgeting, saving money, earning money, managing debt, and living below your means. The quality is uneven so be prepared to dig deep.
So there you have it, a quick introduction to some of the best of the web when it comes to personal finance. Some of the big sites made our list as well as some smaller hidden gems. Here’s hoping you find it useful.
For each and every financial need of the human being, there is plethora of financial options available in the market. It all begins with the initial years of an individual, when he is a student, finance is extremely crucial at that point of time. Our parents do make some savings for education, but, the rising cost of education makes loans a necessity. There are very many expenses including books, hostel charges, tuition fees, computer and many more. There are certain things also which holds an indirect relation to our studies. One of these is means of transportation with which you reach everyday to your college. It might take long and this is diverting your concentration. For all such needs of the students, there are college student car loans.
College Student Car Loans are designed keeping a close view to the needs, as well as, the capabilities of the students. As you must know, the lenders are very lenient when it comes to approval of the loan amount to students for any of their needs. The brighter side of college student car loans is that you can have the loan amount at interest rates, lower than the customary one. The repayment needs to be made after you will be engaged in some full time employment. So, you have ample of time to repay the loan amount of college student car loans, after completing your education.
While approving the college student car loans, the lender neither asks a good credit record, nor any security. Along with this, you have so many flexible schemes to discount the interest rates and reduce the burden. You can make use of some co- signer, as well. Despite all such advantages, you have to plan some constructive way to repay the loan amount of college student car loans. So that you may not start your finances without any kind of stains on your credit record.
Let’s face the facts; one of the hardest things to manage is, of course, your personal finances. However, a lot of people do not know what it means to manage their personal finances. The good thing about this is that you can ask yourself four main questions that will be able to answer this for you. These are questions that can help you see if you have managed your personal finances the right way. Learning to do this is one of the hardest things that you can do. However, if you get to the point where you can do it, then you will live a very happy life.
The first question that you have to ask when looking at how to manage your personal finances is, can you meet your living means without using a credit card? This means, can you get by month after month without having to have a lot of credit card debt? If you can not, then you have not learned how to manage your personal finances the right way yet. This is something that people have to learn how to do. You have to learn to be able to break away from the credit cards and live debt free. Only then are you going to be able to handle your personal finances.
Then next thing that you have to look at is if you have any money saved up? Usually people do not get money saved up until it is late in their life. However, thinking about saving money up is a good way to get your Personal Finance in order. Remember, you need to make sure you can meet your living needs first. As soon as you can do that, then start saving money. After all, you can not start saving money before you meet your living needs. The sooner that you start saving money, the sooner you will get your personal finances in order.
The most important thing that you have to look at when you are trying to manage your personal finances is your job. You need to look at if you have a steady job that has reliable income. Now this is something that can be hard to do. That is because if you work in retail, you never know when you could get let go. So to have a steady job you have to be with a bigger company or your own boss. This can really help you get your personal finances in order. Your personal finances are the main thing that you need to be worried about. Get those in order first before you worry about other things.
The last question that you need to answer when dealing with Personal Finances is, do you have emergency funds? This means if something goes down, do you have the money to cover it? If you do, then you have your personal finances in order. Of course, this is a thing that goes hand and hand with saving. Keep all of these keys in mind when you are dealing with personal finances, and you will be on the road to financial freedom.