Personal finance web sites?

March 14, 2006 9:00 AM

Please recommend some good personal-finance related web sites. I'm looking for sites with good information on all aspects of personal finance and responsible money use. Most of what I've found is focused on investing, though, and on macroeconomics. I'm not interested in the Big Picture. I want sites that focus on the Small Pictures: dealing with debt, saving for the future, finding bargains, etc. Think Your Money or Your Life, but in web form. Big sites, little sites, weblogs, print magazines — I don't care, so long as it's focused on personal finance. Bonus points for sites with RSS feeds.

This is all in preparation to constructing a personal-finance web site of my own, one built around sensible attitudes toward money. As a secondary question, I'd love to know what sort of content people would like to see from a personal finance site. Financial calculators? Book reviews? Hints and tips on saving money? What would make a personal finance site useful to you?

posted by jdroth to grab bag (21 comments total)

UK sites: The Motley Fool and MoneySavingExpert, the latter especially has a really helpful, busy forum.
posted by ceri richard at 9:08 AM on March 14, 2006

Second Motley Fool.
posted by shallowcenter at 9:13 AM on March 14, 2006

FatWallet Finance Forums
posted by rxrfrx at 9:17 AM on March 14, 2006

The Fool is good, but I haven't been able to get their RSS feeds to work. (Admittedly, I havne't tried very hard.) Can anyone point me to actual feeds that work from them? Also, Motley Fool tends to be rather investment-centric, doesn't it? Perhaps that's all I've ever gone there for and I should look at the other stuff on the site.
posted by jdroth at 9:18 AM on March 14, 2006

I like Lifehacker's Financial, Money, and Personal Finance tags. All three have their own RSS feed (good thing, because I can't stand the site design/layout.)
posted by invisible ink at 9:21 AM on March 14, 2006

The Simple Living site was initially based on Your Money or Your Life and it deals with finances on a more personal level. I have spent many hours reading though the forum posts - they are really fascinating.
posted by Ostara at 9:30 AM on March 14, 2006

I've always liked MSN's Money Planning info. It's not particularly sophisticated, I don't think, but it's straightforward and encouraging and reasonably well organized.
posted by occhiblu at 9:35 AM on March 14, 2006

Well, you did include small sites in your query - I've been enjoying the StackBacks blog lately when it comes to personal finance.
posted by myodometer at 10:06 AM on March 14, 2006

http://soundmoneytips.com/ is a good all-around simple blog

Yahoo Finance has a phenomenal stock/mutual fund screener and its free!

www.smartmoney.com for beginners

www.morningstar.com for mutual funds/ETFs some stocks too

www.motleyfool.com has become mostly pay service

www.valueline.com pay service has one of the best track records in picking winners.

www.berkshirehathaway.com : Warren Buffet's annual letters are a must-read

I think my recs started to get out of control and I will stop typing now, since I've veered off course
posted by erd0c at 10:32 AM on March 14, 2006

I Will Teach You To Be Rich, despite the sleazy-sounding name, is a wonderful personal finance blog. Ramit, the author, focuses on the stuff that's important for the average joe who wants to have sound finances rather than stuff for power investors. He has a good balance between big picture and small picture stuff and presents it with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

His recent posts are getting more and more expansive, but if you check out the table of contents you can read all his earlier posts on the basics of stocks, banking, real estate, etc.

AND it has an RSS feed.
posted by TunnelArmr at 10:51 AM on March 14, 2006

More of this kind of stuff is great (link to jdroth's blog entry outlining the basics of a handful of personal finance/investment books).

Between various personal finance forums and Motley Fool, there is an awful lot of "basic" info out there. I find that it's a mile-wide but inch-deep situation. But if you stuck to detailed and disciplined reviews and analyses of personal finance books, I think it could be very useful and interesting. The other thing I find lacking is good, solid financial theory applied to personal finance in an accessible manner - even explaining something as simple as time-value-of-money and applying it to mundane personal finance topics would be interesting. Someone looking into purchasing a rental property could probably use a good introductory lesson to risk/reward concepts using an example case.
posted by mullacc at 10:52 AM on March 14, 2006

suze orman's site is pretty good.

i find calculators to be only slightly helpful.

i'd like to read 'real life' stories about people who had debt and successfully got out of it and how they did it.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:53 AM on March 14, 2006

More of this kind of stuff is great.

Heh. That's exactly my goal.

It's actually the continued popularity of that particular weblog entry that has prompted me to set up a personal-finance site. I always thought that it was just me who didn't get it, who was swimming in financial trouble. Once I began to recover, and wrote that entry about what I'd learned, it became clear that this sort of advice is useful for many people: clear, sound, practical advice that's not designed to sell books or classes, but is designed to help people understand money and how it works. So many of the financial books have solid solutions, but these solutions are buried in hundreds of pages of fluff. (Nobody wants to pay $10 for a financial pamphlet, after all.) It's my hope that by continuing to read and summarize financial self-help books, and by keeping up-to-date with other personal finance sites, and by perusing various money magazines every month, that perhaps I can contribute something meaningful to those who need help.

Thanks for all of the answers so far. I'll be sure to check out all of the sites.
posted by jdroth at 1:05 PM on March 14, 2006

Random Roger, which is in my big list of favourite financial market blogs, also writes about retirement planning.
posted by sfenders at 1:06 PM on March 14, 2006

I was actually going to post that the "Get rich slowly" post on jdroth's web site was an excellent source of information, until I realized that you're the author of said post and probably know that already. It is indeed an excellent resource, and very concise.

Good luck with the web site!
posted by gwenzel at 1:39 PM on March 14, 2006

Australian site: Money.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:40 PM on March 14, 2006

I'll second occhiblu's recommendation for MSN Money, believe it or not. Much broader than just investing, unlike most of the other suggestions here that I'm familiar with.
posted by pmurray63 at 2:57 PM on March 14, 2006

Motley Fool & Clark Howard (on occasion)
posted by maelanchai at 3:43 PM on March 14, 2006

http://www.daveramsey.com/
posted by ZakDaddy at 7:47 PM on March 14, 2006

I like Moneysense and especially this post The Top 25 Money Tips of All Time.
posted by jamesonandwater at 10:16 AM on March 16, 2006

As a follow-up, I read through all of the suggestions here, and have, as planned, used the information I gleaned to begin Get Rich Slowly, a personal finance blog geared toward average people. I'm still finding my footing with the site, but eventually hope to post reviews of finance books, provide tips and suggestions, and have guest posts from accountants, etc. I would love to have other Mefites contribute. If you have an interest in personal finance, simplicity, or general frugality and would like to help, drop me a line.
posted by jdroth at 1:40 PM on April 13, 2006