Cheatsheet to Personal Finance

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7 min readDec 21, 2016

SIGH, it seems that we’re nearing that time of year again when your weird co-workers and distant aunts start asking what your New Years Resolutions are. Yup, I’m not looking forward to it, either. But it did motivate me to get my shit (ahem, finances) together. I’m no expert, but I’ve tried a ton of these personal finance products and put together a list of tools that made my life a little bit easier (and *might* make yours easier too).

Maybe we can achieve a New Year’s Resolution this year after all.

p.s. I’ve starred* the apps/tools that I’ve settled on using for myself. None of these companies have sponsored this post (but definitely feel free to hook a brotha up if you work at one of these companies).

1. Seeing a Bird’s-Eye View of your Finances

If you’re like me, your money is all over the place. And there’s no way I’m disciplined enough to remember each password, either. These tools let you get an overview of all of your finances.

Level Money*

My fav. It’s simple and tells you the most important thing — how much you can spend today or this week/month. It also lets you create some nifty trackers to measure how much you spend on specific categories like restaurants and Uber (yes, I need my own category for Uber).

Personal Capital

PC is kind of geared towards the more hands-on, “sophisticated” user. It’s particularly powerful if you have a large number of investment accounts (hah).

Mint.com

If one tool were pumpkin-spice latte basic, Mint would be it. This classic finance management tool probably has the most account integrations (for those of you using a no-name, local credit union you always brag about). Like Level, it’s also good at tracking categories for your transactions and managing specific budgets that you set up.

2. Banking (i.e. Your Checking Account)

Honestly, I would optimize bank choice based on accessibility of ATMs (since the interest rates at most national banks like Bank of America, Citi, etc. are pretty low/horrible). But here are some alternatives in case you’re looking to diversify or are just feeling special.

Online banking

Online banks don’t have to deal with all the maintenance costs that a Capital One, for example, has to deal with (read: offices/staff). For example, Ally, EverBank, and GS Bank* (Goldman) all allow you to manage your checking account online and offer around 1% annual interest (much higher than the typical 0.01%).

Banks with Free ATM Fees

These banks are generally pretty standard and don’t have particularly high interest rates, but they do have unlimited free ATM withdrawals (take that Brooklyn bars that only accept cash!) — Schwab High Yield Investor Checking* and First Republic. (No pictures because their websites are pretty boring).

Simple

Pick this one if you’re all about that startup life.😉 For real, though, it’s useful if you want to control everything from your phone and want some surface-level analytics/budgeting built in.

3. General Market Investing (ETFs/Index Funds)

For some of your excess cash on hand, I’d recommend investing in the markets as a whole. You can do this by putting your money into ETFs and index funds. Without going into the rabbit hole of nuances and different permutations of mutual fund investing, ETFs and index funds typically just represent a particular category of stocks (e.g. all US healthcare stocks).

A few platforms like Wealthfront* and Betterment invest in a broad range of ETFs for you. They have more similarities than differences. They are both “robo-advisors,” meaning that they will automatically invest into various ETFs for you based on your risk tolerance (i.e. you don’t have to talk to anyone to invest, just answer a few multiple choice questions). They both allow for normal and IRA (read: retirement) investment accounts. They both don’t charge for trades that they make, and they both have tax-loss harvesting mechanisms (i.e. they will sell and re-buy investments when losing so that you can claim a “loss” on taxes and thus save).

If you’re investing under $10,000, Wealthfront is cheaper on fees; if you’re investing above $100,000 (hah), Betterment is cheaper. In between, it’s pretty similar.

4. Trading Stocks

They say that you’re typically better off investing in index funds (psh, what do they know), but if you’re feeling lucky…here are some ways to buy into your favorite companies.

Robinhood*

No fees per trade!! Easiest way to purchase and sell shares via phone (and only phone — no desktop app). Though it’s easy, it does lack depth of information (the charts are simple, and deeper financials are not available). I recommend researching on Google Finance and then trading through Robinhood.

Others

There’s a plethora of alternatives: E-Trade, ScottTrade, TD Ameritrade, etc. These are probably what your parents use. They have much deeper financials and real-time data, but they charge you between $5–10 per trade.

5. Automated Saving (read: keeping money safe from your trigger fingers)

These apps help you save without thinking about it. It’s like giving Mom access to your accounts and making sure you don’t overspend, except this time around, she doesn’t know the embarrassing amount you spend on boxed wine and mac & cheese.

Digit

This app analyzes your spending habits and every couple of days, it will transfer a couple dollars that you won’t miss into your savings account.

Acorns

Acorns rounds up your transactions (e.g. $0.40 if you spend $3.60 on coffee) and auto-invests that money into ETFs and stocks based on your risk profile. You can also directly deposit more funds into these investments.

Qapital

Qapital deposits your money into a separate account based on triggers that you set up (e.g. deposit a dollar every time you buy coffee). It’s useful for specific budgeting activities (e.g. allocating money for that Insta-worthy vacay to Bali you’re dreaming of).

6. Taking Care of Those Pesky Student Loans

Who doesn’t hate loans? Honestly, the process of paying them back is so cumbersome that you’d think that they didn’t want their money back. Well, I’m hoping the suggestions below are helpful.

Refinancing

Earnest, Sofi, and Upstart are a couple of platforms that will refinance your loans by considering data about your likelihood of paying it back. They take into account data that traditional loan providers don’t know how to analyze (e.g. where you went to school), so they are able to offer lower rates.

Management

Student Loan Hero and Tuition.io allow you to monitor all of your loans in one place. Think Mint.com for your loans. SLH is accessible directly, whereas Tuition.io now has to provided by your employer.

7. Making Sure Your Friends Pay You Back

Those paper towels you always buy for the squad add up. Claim what’s rightfully yours!

Venmo

Super simple — be able to send and request money from your friends for free and via your phone. Note that you can request up to $999,999. Get your friend back for all the Chipotle s/he owes you.

Splitwise

Splitwise helps you and your roommates/friends keep track of communal expenses. It then allows you to “settle up” and split the costs via Venmo or your preferred payment method.