recommendations
If you’re interested in the products and services I personally use for budgeting, personal finance, and life management, this is your resource! I’ve complied a list of my favorite recommendations. This list includes only the companies and offerings I have personally used and/or know are extremely helpful in helping you manage your personal finances and life. (And many of them are completely FREE).
Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more)! Regardless, I only recommend products and services I personally use and/or have verified to be beneficial for personal finance and life management.
BUDGETING
EveryDollar
To get your finances under control, you need to be creating a monthly budget and tracking expenses throughout the month. I failed at keeping a paper budget, but once I found EveryDollar (created by Dave Ramsey’s Team) it made such a big difference that we’ve been budgeting since February 2018 faithfully and successfully. The free version allows you to create the budget, track expenses including debt pay off and savings, and it’s very user friendly. The paid version imports your bank transactions automatically so all you need to do is categorize them. We create our budget on a desktop computer and then track it in the app, although you can create a budget in the app as well.
SAVING MONEY
$5 meal plan
If you’re looking for a meal planning service that is simple, efficient, and most of all budget-friendly, you’re going to love $5 Meal Plan. This meal planning service will save you so much time and energy and at only $5 per month, it’s worth every penny. They send you a weekly meal plan and shopping list to make everything super easy. Picky eater families like mine will love the customizable build your own meal plan tool which lets you pick and choose the meals that work best for your family. It helps us keep a variety in our menu and keeps our grocery budget under control. You can read my full review here. And if you want to give it a try, sign up for the FREE 14-Day Trial and see what it’s all about!
SERVICES
Coming Soon.
BUSINESS
TAILWIND
I love entrepreneurship and business strategy almost as much as I love helping women with their finances. I think it’s awesome when you can peruse something you are passionate about that also brings in income. For me, that is coaching other women through their financial struggles and blogging as a personal finance resource. One of the most important tools I have used to grow my blog is Tailwind. It’s a social marketing service that allows you to not only schedule posts to Pinterest and Instagram, but to work with others and implement strategies that will help boost traffic for your site. Pinterest is the number one referral for my blog traffic and I owe a lot of that to the Tailwind service. If you would like to use it to help grow your online business (whatever that may be) you can sign up through my referral and receive a $15 credit for Tailwind Plus, that’s an entire month free to try it out and see how you like it.
flodesk
Flodesk is the new email marketing platform on the block and I’m obsessed. It’s easy to integrate and easy to design stunning emails. This allows me to send emails to all my subscribers and keep them up to date while allowing me to automate certain tasks and focus on creating new things. It was created by creatives for creatives and I suspect it will only continue to get better. It’s budget friendly at only $19 per month and you can get 50% off your first month with this referral link.
canva
I make all the graphics for my blog posts, freebies, Pinterest images, and Instagram text images with the free version of Canva. It’s very user friendly and there are so many free templates and images yet you can easily make very custom looking designs. I use the web version for creating blog and Pinterest images but I’ve used the free app for social media content. I’ve even created virtual birthday invitations using Canva! It’s all around amazing and even better that it’s free!