good online financial help

June 16, 2009 6:35 PM

Financial fool filter: I'm looking for authoritative online financial information/planning advice

I've tried to search AskMefi, but don't think I've found what I'm looking for (please link if I missed something, quite possible).

I'm trying to do some financial self-help online, for personal reasons, I don't want to see an actual financial planner. I'm looking to get some best ideas or guidelines on budgeting, primarily -- such as x% of monthly or total income should be spent on housing, x on groceries, x on 401k, etc. I'm in NYC, so I'm wondering if those numbers are different here v. other areas. I'd like to know how much risk someone my age should take on in investing, but I'm not looking for investing info at this point, just figuring out how much income should go into it and acceptable risk load would be a great starting point. I'm not looking for books.

Thanks. I've tried to include everything, memail me if you need more info.

I know a lot of you on this site like mint, but I'm not comfortable giving out my account info, so that and anywhere else that requires such personal info is out.

posted by cestmoi15 to work & money (5 comments total)

The Motley Fool is an excellent site for this, and free. www.fool.com - the discussion boards, particularly Living Below Your Means, are a good place to start.
posted by mazienh at 6:53 PM on June 16

The percentage of income a person in NYC spends on housing is generally higher than the national average.

In fact, many things in NYC are more expensive than the national average.

Keep that in mind when you read things online that give you specific numbers, either absolute or percentage. Most such articles fail to make an adjustment for cost of living, or tell you how to adjust their numbers.

One thing that I've found helpful when budgeting is to create a spreadsheet with my monthly income, taxes, etc. I have a simple one in Excel I designed for a friend a while back, which I can email you if you wish. My email address is in my profile.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about risk. Every person has a different risk tolerance, so it's not really responsible for someone to say "You're 30, so you should allocate X percentage to stocks, Y percentage to bonds, and Z percentage to cash." You need to figure out how much risk you are comfortable taking, given your time constraints, liquidity needs, time horizon, etc. You say that you don't want to use a financial planner, but this is precisely what (good) financial planners elicit from their clients.
posted by dfriedman at 7:34 PM on June 16

You don't need fancy software to do this, just $5 of office supplies and an hour a week. I like Dave Ramsey's methods, at http://www.daveramsey.com/. You can also ask here. Assuming you just did, here's my advice.

No one will tell you what to spend with the exception of your house, which should be 25% of your take home, and can't usually be more than 30% of your gross (according to a lot of rental agencies and mortgage underwriters).

To budget, just spend your money on paper before you get it. At the top of a piece of paper, write what is coming in, and then list everything you will buy. The most important part of this process is really putting down what you want - this isn't the place to be stingy. Its better to overbudget and come in underthan try to scrimp at the end of the month to make up for shortcoming.
In:
Paychecks

Out:
Rent
Groceries
Power
Phone
Fun
yaddayadda

After 3 months you'll have a good idea of what you spend.

I take each category I make and get cash out once per pay period. I divide it up into envelopes and spend it from that.

This stuff isn't hard, just don't get wrapped up too much in math - the math is only 20% of your success - your head is the other 80%.

Baby Steps for financial success:

Get an emergency fund of $1000
Pay off your debt with a debt snowball.
Get a bigger emergency fund of 6 months of expenses (not income).
Contribute 15% of your income to retirement accounts.
Save for your kid's education.
Pay off your house.
Invest and give.
posted by bensherman at 7:40 PM on June 16

There are some good articles that address a lot of your concerns on kiplinger.com. Easy to read and cover everything from the basics of budgeting through to the more advanced investing stuff.
posted by the foreground at 11:38 AM on June 17

Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog with accompanying forums that deals with all this kind of material: you could start with basics, but it moves up from there. The forums are usually pretty helpful as well.
posted by jacalata at 4:54 PM on June 17