Library of Financial Wellness Resources

An organized collection of financial wellness checklists, how to find financial professionals, helpful guides, tools and resources, and more.

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash

Editor’s Note: This is a living story, updated regularly with new content to be maximally helpful to our readers. We welcome suggestions and corrections. If interested in contributing, please complete our author pitch here.

Topic Index

Student Loans | Cost of Living | Credit | Financial satisfaction | Savings | Retirement | Investing | Wedding budgeting | Couples budgets | Mortgages | Economic empowerment | Financial feminism

Millennial and gen z financial wellness

Additional self-help resources are listed below.

• Information and statistics regarding the financial wellness of millennials, gen z

Financial literacy and education

• Orgs and nonprofits — CFPB
• Tools/apps
• Courses
• Checklists and guides
• Books — When She Earns More, Broke Millennial

Financial therapy

• What is it?
• Tools/apps
• Resources for finding/hiring
• What’s legit vs not

Financial planning

Financial planning is one of those things that’s understandably intimidating. Here are a few recommendations for places to get help. Certified Financial Planners (CFP) and Financial Advisors are not necessarily the same; Money Coaches are also a different category.

One critical thing to note about financial planners is that they are not all legally required to put your financial interests first. Shocking, right? This largely relates to how advisors or planners are paid. For the last 50 years, most broker-dealers (Charles Schwab, for example) generated revenue through transaction fees. For example, every trade on the eTrade platform may have cost $6. Now, these companies have switched to $0 transaction fees to compete with $0 trades on the Robinhood platform.

TLDR — to find an advisor who will put your financial best interests first, you’ll want to work with a “fiduciary.”

• The XY Planning Network says “regardless of age or assets, their fee-for-service financial advisors are dedicated to working in your best interests.” This is a network of fiduciary advisors. They generally charge based on a percentage of your assets they manage on your behalf or for planning services (“fee-only”). You can search for specialists in your type of employment — dentists, for example — or location, type of financial needs such as student loan debt paydown, and more.
• Personal Capital and Wealthfront both offer a free tool that anyone can sign up for to see the bird’s-eye view of their finances. However, they’re largely focused on retirement savings forecasting. In other words, the main limitation is that it is not comprehensive or particularly customizable.

More

• Professional organizations for researching CFPs, RIAs, FAs — finding/hiring
• Roboadvisor — explanation and resources/comparisons
• Tools/apps
• Checklists and guides

Psychology of money

• Family financial history/genogram
• Financial stress
• How mental health influences financial wellness

Wills, trusts, and estate planning

• Trust & Will is an online service that specializes in helping young families with wills, trusts, and guardianship documentation.
• FidSafe is handy in the event your partner is hit by a bus and you need access to their accounts online — and modern couples have a lot of them. FidSafe is an “easy, no-cost way to store, access and [securely] share digital copies of your family’s most important documents.”