Personal Finance Resources

Table of Contents

1 Information

2 Research

3 YouTube Channels

4 YouTube Playlists

5 Videos

6 Books

These books are frequently available as audiobooks on YouTube & the authors may have channels, as well as physical or digital forms on Amazon or at your local library

Title Author ISBN
Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki 978-1612680170
The Richest Man in Babylon George S. Clason 978-1508524359
The Total Money Makeover Dave Ramsey 978-1595555274
Everyday Millionaires Chris Hogan 978-0977489527

7 Financial Institutions

7.1 Banking

  • Fidelity Government Money Market Fund: Tracks risk-free rate of return by investing in short-term debt securities with low credit risk. When interest rates rise, those higher rates typically pass through to money market funds quickly, but not FDIC insured: SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) insured against brokerage (Fidelity) bankruptcy, not asset depreciation
  • Fidelity® Cash Management Account: Sweeps money into FDIC insured accounts at banks, providing high interest
  • Marcus by Goldman Sachs: No wire transfer fees
  • NBKC: Provides budgeting & net worth tracking tools
  • Redneck Bank: Highly competitive FDIC insured money market fund
  • T-Mobile Money: High interest checking, especially for mobile customers
  • Charles Schwab: Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking® Account
  • Capital One: Easy to use high interest checking
  • Betterment: Sweeps money into FDIC insured accounts at banks, providing high interest, sweeps in unneeded cash. Also has graphs. Advisory services are provided by Betterment LLC
  • Wealthfront: Sweeps money into FDIC insured accounts at banks, providing high interest. Also has net worth tracking. Advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC (“Wealthfront Advisers”)

7.2 Investing

7.3 Financial Data & Charting

7.4 Insurance

  • Zander Insurance: Independent agents that compare policies from many insurance companies
  • USAA: Competitive insurance

7.5 Grants, Scholarships, Financial Aid

  • FAFSA: Surprisingly large aid grants, free and simple application

7.6 Loans

8 Social Security

Get 8% more Social Security retirement benefits for each year you delay retirement, up to age 70, but be sure to apply for medicare at age 65 regardless of circumstance

9 Cash Back Debit Cards

10 Cash Back

Retailers pay companies to advertize for them, and these companies offer cash back to users in return for acting on those advertizements

11 Credit

"Gold is money. Everything else is credit." - J. P. Morgan

Money maintains or increases its value (to you) over time, whereas currency is a medium of exchange but decreases in value over time.

We live in an era where credit is available in huge quantities for almost everyone and almost every institution.

Credit can multiply your spending, which can allow you to buy assets sooner but always creates a liability for yourself. If you buy a poor asset or just increase your expenses, debt you incurred will still be a liability to drain your wealth from you.

Credit is based off your main credit report, which details all your open accounts & recent blemishes. If your credit report looks good, you'll likely have a good credit score as well.

It's free & harmless to check your credit report & your credit score. You are encouraged to & should do so periodically to measure your progress & correct errors. You can request your credit report from each of the three major credit agencies (Equifax, Experian, Transunion) through annualcreditreport.com or each agency's resources. Credit card issuers will often give you a free credit score every few months, since they check themselves anyway!

See the myFico links in 2 for more information & sources

See Credit Wise from Capital One, Nerdwallet, or some YouTube Channels for credit card information

11.1 Credit tracking

You can use these sites to estimate your credit score in order to gauge when to apply for a better credit card while you're beginning to build credit. However, these sites usually show a Vantage Score rather than a FICO score, which weight categories differently, and most lenders use FICO scores. Therefore, these free scores are only estimates. After building good credit, the main factor in improving credit is time, but these sites also track and graph your credit score over time.

https://your.vantagescore.com/free shows a list of free VantageScore providers

11.2 Credit cards

11.2.1 Warning!

Always pay credit cards back in full! They always charge above 8%-30% interest yearly! Do not accrue a single cent in interest!

Most banks have a way to automatically repay the balance due, or at least the minimum payment due.

11.2.2 Issuer limits

Some credit card companies have rules and restrictions that limit how many cards they'll issue you based on your recent history

  1. Capital One

    Capital One limits the number of directly issued cards available for any cardholder to two and supposedly doesn't like giving credit cards to people that already have established credit

  2. Premium companies

    Companies such as Barclays supposedly won't issue credit cards to you if you don't use your existing credit cards from them or have too many total credit cards

  3. J. P. Morgan Chase

    Chase will only issue credit cards to people with less than 5 new credit cards in the past 24 months. Therefore, others recommend getting enough credit to gain Chase's trust and then apply for your desired Chase cards before applying for other credit cards. Supposedly Chase wants to see you have at least one credit card with over a $5000 limit before giving you a credit card.

  4. American Express

    American Express supposedly limits the total number of cards you can have from them to 4-5, but this may have changed

11.2.3 High cash back

  1. No annual fee
    1. Capital One
    2. Barclays
    3. Chase (use https://www.chase.com/mybonus to use bonus point offers)
    4. General
    5. Gas
      • Abound Credit Union Visa® Platinum Credit Card: 5% cash back on gas and rotating categories up to $100.00 in rewards earned per statement cycle
      • AAA Travel Advantage Visa Signature® Credit Card: 5% cash back on gas purchases and electric vehicle-charging stations, 3% cash back on travel, restaurants, grocery store, and purchases at AAA
      • Cashback Rewards Plus American Express® Credit Card: 5% cash back on your first $3,000 in combined gas station and military base Purchases yearly
      • Sam's Club® Mastercard®: 3% cash back on dining & travel. 5% cash back on gas (on the first $6,000 per year, then 1% after). Maximum of $5,000 in Cash Back rewards can be earned in a calendar year. Cash back rewards are forfeited if the Cash Back earned in a calendar year is less than $5.00. Cash back rewards will be automatically loaded onto your Sam's Club membership and may be redeemed only at a Sam's Club location or at SamsClub.com
      • PNC Cash Rewards Visa credit card: 4% cash back on gas & 3% cash back on restaurants
      • Verizon Visa® Card: 4% cash back on grocery store and gas purchases if you made the mistake of choosing Verizon as your mobile carrier
      • Getaway by FNBO Credit Card: Earn Unlimited 3x points per dollar spent on travel, dining and gas
      • NBKC Bank Cash Rewards American Express® Card: 3% cash back on the first $6,000 in eligible net purchases made each year at gas stations, 2% cash back on supermarket net purchases
      • Truist Enjoy Cash credit card: 3% cash back on gas, 2% cash back on utilities and groceries, 10% bonus cash when you redeem rewards into your BB&T checking or savings account. Monthly cap of $1,000 on spend at the bonus rates
    6. Groceries
    7. Other
  2. Travel

11.2.4 Others' lists

11.2.5 Secured

Secured credit cards require a security deposit in order to open the account, usually equal to the credit limit you get. However, this makes it extremely likely that you'll get approved for any that you apply for, allowing you to build credit history if you're rejected from all other products. Good issuers will refund the security deposit and upgrade you to a standard card after 6-12 months of timely payments.

Many issuers charge outrageous recurring or one-time fees, but there are some with good fee schedules. The security deposit is onerous enough, there's no reason to pay more!

Nerdwallet has a list of the best secured credit cards

11.2.6 Opt in to the fast lane

optoutprescreen.com lets you opt out of credit card offers in the mail. However, there's a reason to opt IN to offers: these pre-approval offers may not create a credit inquiry on your credit report if you use them to apply for the credit card / product. Therefore, you could apply for dozens at once and suffer no negative credit impacts. The determining factor is supposedly whether or not you have to enter your full social security number when applying: if the form only asks for the final 4 digits of your SSN, that's a sign it may come at no cost to your credit to apply.

CreditKarma.com also says "See if you pre-qualify with no impact to your credit score", and many of their recommendations / offers initially only require the last 4 digits of your SSN.

The determining factor is likely whether you are soliciting a creditor or the creditor is soliciting you: an advertisement on a website or in the mail is initiated by the creditor, so they are more desperate to make a loan than you!

Valuable issuers like Chase are still likely to count these new credit lines against you, and credit issuers reserve the right to deny your application if your credit report changes between when they send the offer and you actually apply, so this is more of an advanced strategy.

12 Gift Cards

Gift cards are less fungible than cash or bank credit: they are tied to a single store. This restriction is actually so limiting that that they can be purchased at a 15%-50% discount: People would rather trade gift cards for half their value in cash in order to gain the ability to spend that cash in more than one place. Prepaid debit cards are more fungible, but cards cost a fixed fee to open and some vendors charge 3%+ to process credit/debit transactions. Both these types of cards don't earn interest while they hold any value, which means that the company that issues them gets to enjoy the interest on unused currency.

Take advantage of how worthless gift cards are by buying them for 15%-50% off:

  • Paxful: Trade Bitcoin for gift cards for up to 50% off
    • Read the safety tips before trading
    • Don't release Bitcoin from escrow before you get paid and you're happy with the transaction!
    • Consider getting verified to gain access to higher quality sellers
  • Purse: Trade Bitcoin for Amazon items for up to 33% Off

13 Mobile Internet

I value basic mobile data above all else, as it's much more secure than the Public Switched Telephone Network and more flexible to send an email than an SMS message, plus you get web and streaming access.

These providers have unlimited 2G mobile data for as low as $15 per month!

FreedomPop has a free plan but automatically charges $8 for data overage and $10 for a SIM card. Maybe useful as a backup. Only 10 minutes of talk & 10 texts: truly basic. GSM only

For foreign travel, especially to Canada or for a long term, it's more affordable to use local services, but mintmobile has a decent rate on international roaming. Local phone carriers will likely need a valid credit card issued from a local bank to complete your order. It also seems that networks are much more regional in other countries than in the USA, so local service avalability and quality may vary.

14 Corporations

A Limited Liability Company (LLC) can assist you in lawsuits. If an LLC is sued, only the assets owned by the LLC are at risk. The owners or employees would have to be named in a seperate lawsuit to be liable. Profit generated by an LLC flows through as income to the owners, so income generated from assets given to an LLC can be collected but expenses and liabilities are limited to the total assets in the LLC.

A C Corporation can help you save on taxes if you're in the top income tax bracket: Corporations pay a 20% tax on profit and individuals pay up to 15% on distributions. Compared to the top income bracket of 37%, this saves at least 2% on taxes. The real tax rate would be 1-(1-20%)*(1-15%) = 32%, which is currently equal to the third highest tax bracket on income over $163,300 for single individuals in 2020.

Otherwise, I know of no more rights or privileges that corporations have than a human being.

Legalzoom can assist you in forming companies and corporations.

Author: Evan James McCarter

Created: 2023-08-09 Wed 02:40

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