I previously had a series of posts on certain specific personal finance topics, mostly related to credit cards and various retirement accounts. As I looked back through them, though, I realized three problems: (1) they weren’t that much better versus what was already out there, (2) some of the content had gotten stale, and I wasn’t going to invest the time and effort to keep them up to date, and, most importantly, (3) they were fundamentally focused on the wrong things. Personal finance is a game of doing the basics, consistently; it’s easy to focus on the minutiae of which credit card is best for grocery spend, but these are optimizations that are only worthwhile after nailing the basics: understanding where your money is going, building up an emergency fund, paying off credit card debt, investing in low-cost index funds, etc. Therefore, I decided to delete a lot of the older posts focused on the less important minutiae, and instead highlight sources through which I learned about these basics, plus give some insight into the specific tools that I use. I’ve written other posts tied to my money psychology, which you can find from my main writing page.
Learning about personal finance
By and large, I’ve found Reddit’s r/personalfinance wiki to be a great first-stop for most topics. Reading through the Prime Directive page / flowchart is where I’d start if I were learning about things for the first time, double-clicking on various topics as needed to understand. A more-hardcore focus on early retirement called FIRE (Financially Independent, Retiring Early) has its own subreddit, wiki, and prime directive flowchart.
If you’re more of a book person, I’m a huge fan of three books: (1) I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi, (2) The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, and (3) The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel [1]. Both r/personalfinance and r/financialindependence have their own (much longer) reading lists as well.
Although I rely on YouTube for learning about many topics, personal finance isn’t one of them. I’m skeptical of the motivations of financial influencers (especially when it comes to credit cards); the basics of the game don’t change much and therefore it’s difficult to continuously put out content on the most important topics.
Tools/Banks I use
I’ve used Monarch for my ground source of truth for several years, and pay for it very happily. They’ve consistently delivered thoughtful software that does what I need it to do with minimal hassle, and I like their approach to monetization (no ads, no selling data).
I’ve banked with Schwab for literally over half of my life for everything from banking to investing to credit cards. Their customer service has consistently been phenomenal (24/7, US-based) and I’m often talking to a human in under 90 seconds. Most of their products are best-in-class, or at least quite good.
[1] I’m also a huge fan of Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, but I’m skeptical of how broadly applicable his advice is. My reading list has more notes on my thoughts + links to more discussion on the book.