Mo Money – mo problems. No, not really, but anytime I think about money management it is something that pops into my head. If you follow either of my businesses you know I have declared a war on my debt. I have joined the legions of Dave Ramsey fanatics serving Sallie Mae her eviction notice. I have written about my debt before on here.
For some reason people do not discuss debt, but we do however discuss the things that help us accumulate debt by the thousands. Seriously, long onto any social media network you will see people discussing Rockstars shoes, Celine bags and Prada dresses. Honestly, outside the rich kids of Instagram, do any of us have that much disposable income to live life like that at such a young age? Nope, keeping up with the Joneses
Here are some of the tools I personally use for every day money management aka kicking Sallie Mae out of my life:
Mint
I have used the Intuit owned company off and on for five or so years. Several times I have quit using it, just being over it. You plugin all your information: assets, liabilities, credit cards, bank accounts, student loans and more. Next you set budgets for your life. I created shopping and food budgets. Literally, I would get these alerts that basically felt they were saying “Tasha girl – sit your butt down you have over spent your shopping budget by $300.” The emails do not come like that, but that’s what it felt like. Finally, I’ve recently got serious and started sticking to my budget. I created a $30 week grocery budget. Yup, I can juice and eat healthy on a budget.
Outright
If you have been reading IC for awhile you know I am a huge advocate of the Go Daddy owned company. I started using them before they got acquired though. I have cultivated an amazing relationship with their social media team and other members. Outright is a bookkeeping program that allows you to enter in all your bank accounts, stripe, paypal, shopping carts and more. It calculates all your expenses for you. In addition, you can send invoices on there. It will categorize all your income and expenses, which make it super easy for tax time.
Learnvest
I learned about this online content based site early last year. They are an amazing site that links you with creditable professionals to help you grow your business. In addition they have a “knowledge center” where you can learn more about various subject matters. Discussing savings, retirement, 401K and much more. So many business owners do not have savings accounts or think they need a retirement account. Retirement is not exclusive to corporate employees. Insightful website helps you get an every day understanding of your money.
To note: Outright and Mint both have blogs that they share great information on. Informative for the person wanting to get financial freedom and be smart about business.
Have you used any of these companies for your personal or small business? What are your thoughts on them?
Photography by Peddhapati; imaged sourced by Flickr Creative Commons
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