Below you’ll find links to a handful of products and services I recommend. The blog receives an average of 3 to 5 product “pitches” every month (for the last 10 years) of people wanting me to write about their business, website, or book. These are among the select few I’m willing to publicly endorse. The blog may receive income from some of the recommended resources below.
Talent Stacker Career Training
Talent Stacker is a resource that I learned about through my work with Jonathan and Brad at ChooseFI, and first heard about Salesforce as a career option in an episode where they featured Bradley Rice on the Podcast. In that episode, Bradley shared how he reached FI quickly thanks to his huge paychecks and discipline in keeping his expenses low. Jonathan teamed up with Bradley to build Talent Stacker, and they have helped more than 1,000 students from all walks of life complete the program and land jobs like clockwork, earning double or even triple their old salaries using a Salesforce certification to break into a no-code tech career.
Useful Credit Cards
Credit Cards are like chain saws. Incredibly useful. Incredibly dangerous. Resolve to pay in full each month and never carry a balance. Do that and they can be great tools. Here are some of the very best for travel hacking, cash back and small business rewards.
Personal Capital Investment Tracking
Personal Capital is a free tool to manage and evaluate your investments. With great visuals you can track your net worth, asset allocation, and portfolio performance, including costs. At a glance you’ll see what’s working and what you might want to change. Here’s my full review.
Betterment Automated Investing
Betterment is my recommendation for hands-off investors who prefer a DIFM (Do It For Me) approach. It is also a great tool for reaching short-term savings goals. Here is my Betterment Review
New Retirement Investment Tracking
NewRetirement offers cool tools to help guide you in answering the question: Do I have enough money to retire? And getting started is free. Sign up and you will be offered two paths into their retirement planner. I was also on their podcast and you can check that out here:Video version, Podcast version.
Tuft & Needle Mattresses
Tuft & Needle (T&N) helps me sleep at night. They are a very cool company with a great product. Here’s my review of what we are currently sleeping on: Our Walnut Frame and Mint Mattress.
Recommended Brokerage
Reviews
- Develop Your Skills and Talents
By Shawn Jenkins and Jonathan Mendonsa Shawn Have you ever considered your career to be like a brokerage account for financial freedom? You want to make the most of what’s in your account—or career—but you also want to do things to grow the account. In terms of a career, that translates to increasing your income. Early in my career, I noticed that people with technical skills were making a lot more money than the rest of us. I started to look into why this was the case. It didn’t take long to realize that there was much more demand for… [Continue Reading] - Chainsaws and Credit Cards
Post Highlights: Credit cards are powerful, dangerous tools. If you fail to understand them and use them poorly, they can become an endless source of misery and debt. Credit card variable interest rate increases are tied to the prime rate, so as the Fed raises the interest rate, the interest rate on your credit card will rise too. If you’re carrying a large balance, consider taking advantage of a 0% introductory rate on a balance transfer to a different card. But make sure to pay it off within the allotted time frame. ************************************************************************** 50 years ago, I was putting myself… [Continue Reading] - The Simple Path to a Lucrative Career
It is always wise to be careful in choosing with whom you associate and do business. The older I get the more this has proven true. I’ve known Jonathan and Brad, the founders of ChooseFI, for a long time. I was one of their first podcast guests and have been honored to be invited back several more times since. They, in turn, have been speakers at my annual Chautauqua and that is the highest honor I can bestow. In short, I like them personally, I respect their work and I trust their judgement. So a few weeks ago when Jonathan… [Continue Reading] - Tracking your holdings
Empower If you have come here, read through the Stock Series and decided the simple low-cost approach described makes sense, you are now faced with the problem of how do you get from where you are to where you want to be. That is, what do you do with all the investments you already have? How, exactly, do you move from point “A” to point “B”? If you are like many readers, you’ve come to this blog having already spent years, maybe even decades, investing. You very likely have a wide range of stocks and/or funds that seemed like a… [Continue Reading] - Personal Capital; and how to unload your unwanted stocks and fundsPersonal Capital If you have come here, read thru the Stock Series and decided the simple low-cost approach described makes sense, you are now faced with the problem of how do you get from where you are to where you want to be. That is, what do you do with all the investments you already have? How, exactly, do you move from point “A” to point “B”? If you are like many readers, you’ve come to this blog having already spent years, maybe even decades, investing. You very likely have a wide range of stocks and/or funds that seemed like a good… [Continue Reading]
- Tuft & Needle: A better path to sleep
About a decade ago and roughly a mile from where I lived at the time there was a mansion on a hill. As I don’t much care about mansions I don’t recall many of the details. I do remember a huge pool in the center of the house with columns running along the sides and reaching up to the glass ceiling far above and the various courtyards that the sprawling building wrapped around. These I remember because they were where the party was held. Hundreds of people attended this annual event. The man who owned the house invited all his… [Continue Reading] - Betterment: a simpler path to wealth
Make it so, Mr. Data. One of the things I’ve learned in the 2.5 years I have been writing this blog is just how many people there are whose eyes begin to glaze over at the mere mention of investing. They know it is important but their mind just shuts down when the topic comes up. They have better things to think about, to do. Curing diseases, negotiating world peace, building bridges, teaching our children, patrolling the streets, raising their families and any number of other engaging activities that better fit their inclinations. The problem is, of course, that money… [Continue Reading]