When I have a personal finance question, curiosity, or problem, I look to Ramit Sethi for help. His book I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Believe it or not, I started thinking about retirement right after I graduated college. No, I didn’t win the lottery or have a big entrepreneurial success. I started investing and contributing to my IRA. It was a good way to stay productive and get ready to be an adult. If you start thinking about retirement in your early or mid 20s, you’re likely going to be in great shape 40 years down the line. Unfortunately, many people don’t plan that far ahead, so they end up needing help much later in life—and often they don’t have access to good advice once they realize that they need it. Financial Engines is trying to change that. It all started with Bill Sharpe, who won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. By combining “Bill’s pioneering investment methodology with proprietary technology” Fiancial Engines is able “to provide all investors with cost-effective, expert advice and management—the kind previously available only to the world’s largest institutional investors.” Financial Engines, which is based in Palo Alto, CA with offices in Boston, MA and Phoenix, AZ, partners with both retirement plan providers and large employers to offer their services and change the way that people get retirement help. Continue reading about Financial Engines…
Social networking sites have a serious TMI (too much information) problem. Never has it been easier for our friends to tell us stuff that we really didn’t want to know. And now it’s getting even easier with websites that share where we’ve most recently swiped our credit cards. Take for example my girlfriend, if she used Swipely, you’d know that the last place that she swiped her credit card was in the toilet of her office. No, she doesn’t work for Ryanair and have to pay to use the toilet. She just had a little a mishap when her credit card fell out of her back pocket. Yuck (but I’m still laughing because she had to wash it off). Ok, that’s not exactly how Providence, RI based (yes, a startup based in Rhode Island) Swipely works, but it gives you an idea. We already discussed the idea of social networks for spending a few months ago when I wrote a post about Blippy, and now it’s a hot topic again because Swipely just launched in conjunction with securing a $7.5 million round of financing. We’re starting to see location based social networks take off, and it’s only a matter of time before we share our purchases too (although Blippy’s data leak from a few weeks ago might have set the timetable back a bit). Facebook is already abusing the hell out of your data, so you might as well give in and start sharing everything on your terms before Facebook does it without your permission. Continue reading about Swipely…
We all have that friend who shares way too much information on social networks, and in many cases we are that friend. The problem with status updates is that most of them aren’t very interesting. Lately, we’ve been moving in a much more interesting, but also much creepier, direction. Now we have services that tie into our Twitter and Facebook accounts that can tell people where we are, whom we’re with, and even what we’re buying. It’s that last one that we’re going to talk about today. Blippy is a Palo Alto, CA based startup that lets you and your friends share and discuss recent purchases. It may seem a little weird at first, but it makes sense. Why go to review sites to get reactions from people you don’t know or trust, when you can see what your friends have bought and what they have to say about it? Continue reading about Blippy…
We’re officially in the Christmas season, and that means lots of good things. One thing that isn’t so good is all of the spending that comes with buying people gifts (whether you enjoy the consumerist aspects of the holidays or not). It feels great to be generous, but only until you look at your credit card statement at the end of the month. Cutting back on gifts or making your own is one idea, but it’s a lot easier said than done. Your best bet is probably to find some other ways to save money so that you can buy everyone what you want to buy them. A great way to do that is BillShrink. They’re a Redwood City, CA based startup that offers “a free, personalized savings tool that helps you save money on your everyday bills.” If you can cut your cell phone, credit card, and gas bills, then you’ll be able to buy me (or someone you actually know) more gifts. Continue reading about BillShrink…
Internship searching is hard enough on it’s own. When you have to worry about not being able to feed yourself over the summer because you might have to take an unpaid internship, it can become overwhelming. Obviously the best remedy is to find a paid internship, but that’s easier said than done. What you can do to ease your financial fears for the summer is to start paying attention to personal finance (that’s a link to Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich, because he’s the go to guy for that kind of stuff). You can also start using Thrive, a website that “brings all your credit card, checking, savings, retirement, and investment accounts into one place so you can easily see what you have, what you owe, and where you can grow.” They’re based out of New York City, and as far as I can tell they’re offering a product that is extremely similar to Mint, which has been on my radar for well over a year now. Still, Thrive appears to have developed a great tool for monitoring your personal finances, and since they’re hiring paid interns, we thought we should take a look at them. Continue reading about Thrive…
We can be pretty sure that most of our readers are concerned with their futures – internships aren’t for slackers. Many undergraduates spend a lot of time focused on preparing themselves for a career, but they often ignore the other things that are essential to success in the “real world.” One of those things is personal finance. Everyone who is responsible about his or her finances raise your hand (or leave a comment). Yeah, that’s what we thought. Well, in this Web 2.0 world, managing your personal finances can actually be kind of fun. Mint is a startup that is enabling the fun. Continue reading about Mint…
