We all learn math, science and English throughout grade school, and some of us go on to learn in college as well. One thing that no one gets the same lesson on is personal finance! Grade schools and colleges might have a class here or there about personal finance, but there is not a standard by any means. We each get our own lesson by watching our parents muddle their way through their own finances. The majority of us really do not want to end up like our parents, financially speaking.
Approximately fifty percent of Baby Boomers have less than $100K saved for retirement and according to AARP Gen X has on average $125K in debt, which includes credit cards, school loans, and mortgages. This is a perfect example as to why young people today really aren’t interested in receiving financial advise from friends and family older than them! Young people today are apprehensive about taking on any debt and they are right to do so.
Looking for classes or books on how to learn about personal finance really depends on your own personal situation and everyone’s situation is different from the next person. Everyone has their own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to where they start out financially in life. In order to help you navigate the vast amount of knowledge regarding personal finance, we have created a short list of a top 20 Personal Finance Blogs for young people to follow and learn from below.
In no particular order here are finance blogs that may help you find your own personal financial path.
The College Investor
Blogger Robert Farrington started writing in 2009 and averages 5 blog posts per week. His niche is helping postgraduates get out of debt and helping them start investing. Some of his most popular blog posts are: 3 Ways to Make $50,000 Per Year Without Working With Passive Income, 50+ Ways to Make Money Fast With a Side Hustle and Secret Ways to Get Student Loan Forgiveness. I like that he shares not only tips for everyone, but opens up and tells people what he actually uses for his own personal financial needs.
Money After Graduation
Blogger Bridget Casey started her blog in 2012 and posts new entries several times a month. Her niche is in helping you figure out how to pay off your college debt and learn how to be in control of your financial life instead of being a victim of it. Some of her latest blog posts are: The Best Books to Gift a New Grad, How to Save a Down Payment for a House and How to Use the Debt Snowflake Method. She also offers e-courses. One of her courses Debt Crusher on debt elimination is free! Another course is on how to Build a Better Budget is pretty inexpensive at $47. Another course she offers is The Six Figure Stock Portfolio, which helps you learn how to build a portfolio. This class is $400, payable in two installments of $199 each. I love getting free debt advice and giving it as well.
Retire by 40
Joe Udo, formerly a computer engineer at Intel, said that the job became more and more stressful and he decided he needed to get out. He started Retire by 40 in 2010. He started his blog about his journey, mostly to keep tabs on himself to make sure he followed through and he was able to quit his full time job and leave corporate America in 2012. He now dubs himself Mr. RB40 says that just because he left the 9-5 does not mean that he does not work. He says he stays really busy with blogging and other things, like being dad and maintaining the house. He posts one to two times a week depending on his availability. Some of his most recent blog posts are School’s Out – First Grade is Over!, May 2018 Goals and Financial Update and Take a Peek Behind the Curtain – See How I Write a Blog Post. MR. RB40 shares his personal portfolio and his journey, and instead of starting out right out of college, this journey starts in his 30’s. With many people in different stages of life between their 20-30’s it is important to look at all pathways to being financial stable. His wife still works and they live off of his passive income, and Mrs. RB40 should be retired by 2020 and they will be living off his writing and their passive income.
The Penny Hoarder
Kyle Taylor is the founder and CEO of the Penny Hoarder website, which started in 2010. The website / blog’s mission is to improve the lives of regular people by allowing them to spend less time worrying about their finances and more time living their lives. The Penny Hoarder employs over 90 individuals and has many different writers, but the blog concept is there. The different categories that The Penny Hoarder focuses on are: Making Money, Deals, Food, Smart Money and Life. In all of these areas readers learn about how to pinch their pennies and save either with coupons, side gigs, budgets or college. Some of their most popular blog posts are: 8 Legitimate Paid Survey Sites to Make Extra Money Each Month, 12 Ways to Save Money and Add $5k to Your Bank Account this Year and 31 of the Absolute Best Freebies We’ve Ever Found Online. With multiple blog posts per day, if you are looking for a specific topic I’m gonna bet they have covered it!
My Money Blog
Jonathan Ping has been sharing his knowledge about money and finances since 2004. He might post once or twice a month, but that’s because he is busy living and loving life! He and his wife cut back to being half time workers and their passive income is enough to cover their household expenses, but they aren’t ready to retire just yet. This blog is about preparation and learning about your finances and retirement. His most recent blog posts are: Airbnb vs Hotels Price Comparison Chart, How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free (book notes) and British Airways Fuel Surcharge Settlement. What I love about this blog is that he doesn’t claim to be an expert, just a man trying to figure it out each and every day.
Frugal Rules
John started out adulthood like many do, with piles of credit card debt, and he has become debt free and is a veteran of the financial services industry as a stockbroker. He wants to spread financial literacy, so the more people understand how to live within their means. Some of the topics Frugal Rules covers are: frugality, investing, debt, credit cards and online brokerages. Some of the most recent blog posts are: Are Side Hustles Worth the Sacrifice?, 7 Best Ways to Sell Your Old Stuff for Money and How to Invest in Stocks When You Do Not Know Where to Start. I like that he owns up to his debt from college and says that he wasn’t aware of living within his means, because that is where many people find themselves regardless of their age! Knowing the next step to living within your means is an important one.
Good Financial Cents
Jeff Rose is a self-proclaimed numbers geek. If you don’t love this guy after reading his about me page, you should just stop now, just stop it. He has credentials but also personality. If you can make finances fun that is a talent in itself! His site also has a Retirement Income Calculator, which I know there are plenty of those online, but not all are found on blogs. Some of Good Financial Cents’ most recent blog posts are: 87 Super Easy Ways to Save Money, CIT Bank Review and Best Insurance for College Students. Still trying to make a difference and reach everyone, Jeff also has a Podcast that might reach more young people than his blog, because what young person do you know that sits down to read about financial literacy? While owning up to his failures he makes it fun to learn about finances what to do and NOT do, sometimes from personal experience.
20 Something Finance
G.E. Miller started blogging in 2007. He believes he has solved the financial matrix and he spends less, has less but insists he isn’t missing out on anything. He posts a new blog entry about every week. Some of his most popular blog posts are: Money Savings Products I Personally Use, How to Pay Taxes with a Credit Card (and Profit) and The U.S. is the Most Overworked Nation in the World. I like that he started at the bottom, where most people find themselves when looking for a change in their finances. He moved for a higher paying job, he bought a smaller home; he sold his second car and started biking to work. He switched his purchases of products and services from ones that cost money to ones the create money. He talks about how to use your credit cards to earn cash back each month on purchases you are going to make anyway.
Everything Finance
This site was started in 2007 and while this blog site is more corporate run that is not to say that it doesn’t have some great information for young people. Great articles on getting started in investing, understanding your credit score and loans like mortgages or personal loans. Some of the most popular blog posts are: 5 Tips for Managing Bills as a Married Couple, 7 Summer Jobs You Can Do from Anywhere and Why We Bought a House When Renting was Cheaper.
Girls Just Wanna Have Funds
Ginger with Girls Just Wanna Have Funds for women entrepreneurs to use passive income to reach their financial goals. She started her blog in 2003 with the mission to teach women about how to earn their financial freedom because she has been there done that and wants to help you avoid those same mistakes! Some of her recent blog posts are Tight on Funds? Here’s What You Can Do!, 3 Ways to Fix the Mistakes of Your Younger Self and 3 Interesting Ways Other People’s Money Can be Good for Your Finances. While her site is geared towards young female entrepreneurs, that’s not to say guys can’t benefit from reading her blog too!
The Centsible Life
Kelly Whalen a mother of four has been blogging since 2009, she started The Centsible Life as a way to keep track of all the advise she had been given and read up on for ways to get her family out of debt. She soon realized that her blog was helping other people just like her trying to get out of debt too. Blogging quickly became more than just a hobby for her! Her site covers all things life and money. Your finances are tied to your health, food, travel, etc so just about anything where you spend money or it costs money or you can save money in life, The Centsible Life will write about it!
Money Smart Life
Ben Edwards started Money Smart Life in 2006 to share his story about being in control over his spending. His journey began when he was only 12 year old and wanted a Nintendo and his parents made him work for his money to buy it. He worked hard to earn the $150 needed for the system, but when it came time to actually buy it, he decided not to. He claims to have cracked the Konami Code and chose instead getting the game system to invest his money and how it became addicting to him to check everyday in the newspaper how his stocks were doing. While not all 12 year olds are going to swoon over getting stock for every birthday and Christmas, that’s exactly what Ben did. This gave him a financial edge over his friends after graduating from college he was able to cash in stocks and buy his fiancé a ring, put a down payment on a house and pay for their honeymoon. He was ahead of the curve because of the decision he made when he was 12 years old. What I love about this story is how you can use this same advise and teach your children and or use it as personal advice to start controlling your own financial future right now.
Debt Roundup
Debt RoundUp was started in 2012 by Grayson Bell to help navigate his way out of debt and share his own journey at the same time. While Grayson isn’t a certified financial planner, he is a guy who dug himself out of debt one penny at a time. His site is to share his personal journey and provide tools to help you get started on your personal journey out of debt or learning how to manage and use their money to free them of the looming cloud of credit card debt. This site’s followers aren’t financial professionals but they are regular people sharing their successes, failures, struggles and ways they found worked! So if you are like Grayson and financed a Jetski and want to get out of the financial hole you are digging you will be in good company with the author and followers of this page. I might need to follow this one myself, as someone who went on vacation after losing my job and another time went ahead and bought the furniture when my roommate lost his job. Knowing you can make financial blunders and still get out of the hole is always good to know.
Wise Bread
Wise Bread is not rung by one person but instead a community of bloggers whose mission is help you live your life on a budget. The writers blog about Credit Cards, how to avoid them, how to use them to your benefit and how to manage them. They tackle the topic of personal finance and budgeting. They give tips on frugal living and life hacks and more. A few of their latest blog posts are 28 Free Ways to Entertain Your Kids This Summer, Best Money Tips: How Much You Should Spend in Retirement and These 8 Modern Car Features Are Riskier Than You Think. What is great about this site is that the community of writers have all kinds of different perspectives that they share while writing so while you might not agree with one blog post, there still might be another post that speaks right to you and your current situation. Just keep reading and see if you find a blogger or topic that is going to best fit what you are searching for!
The Simple Dollar
The Simple Dollar was founded by Trent Hamm in 2006 when Trent was tired of ‘trying’ to get out of debt and was ready to make it happen for good. While working on his own debt he felt inspired to help others do the exact same thing by sharing the tricks and tips that worked for him. Now with a staff to help run the site and contributing writers they have more than one post per day to help you learn how to plan your financial goals for credit cards, loans, insurance, investments and banking. Having multiple writers is a great way to be more relatable to your readers by having lots of different perspectives writing each day that have different backgrounds and can share their own struggles and successes. Some of their most recent posts are: Ten Inexpensive (and Quick) Ways to Liven Up Cooking at Home, The Gap Between Your Goals and Your Actions and How to Plan a Really Cheap Weekend Getaway.
Broke Millennial
Erin started Broke Millennial to help young people figure out how to get out of debt and #GYFLT (Get Your Financial Life Together)! She explains that she learned at a very young age the value of a dollar after working hard to earn it and this life lesson helped her through college and she graduated with zero college debt! Learning how to get your financial life together happens differently for everyone and if reading all of these blogs isn’t quite you style, check out her youtube show where she breaks it down in quick videos for you. I love that she addresses one of the big things about young people… umm they don’t really read much! They want information and they want it NOW! Being able to get the same information watching a quick video is time well spent rather than fifteen minutes of reading articles. Everyone learns differently, and I am just glad someone recognizes this! Some of her latest videos on YouTube are: 5 Pieces of Money Advice to Ignore, The 2 Easiest Ways to Pay Down Debt and Mastering Your Bank Account. Her mantra is “It’s time to get your financial life together. It doesn’t need to be terrifying. It just needs to be done.”
Financial Samurai
Finding it hard to get motivated to get out of debt or earn more money? This is where the story of the Financial Samurai begins. Sam Dogen was working in Corporate America waiting for that next big raise wasn’t a driving force, but finding a way to life free was motivation! What does living life free mean? It means something different to each person, but here it means spending time with family, travel and have little worry about finances. Starting the blog in 2009 it only took 3 years to make the jump from employee to self-employed. Sam’s experience shows that even if you make the right choices and invest and get educated you can still fall victim to financial disaster. He suffered financially from the financial crisis and with money no longer as a motivator; living life by his terms is what mattered most. Now he writes for his blog and is able to save and is control of his financial life, and he shares his knowledge about investing, negotiations, starting a blog, financial products and wealth management.
Taking financial advise from someone who is well educated on this topic is never a bad thing, but knowing how they have personally made their success and worked through their failures is important. Why would you take financial advise from a guy behind a desk with an office? Do you know his credit score? Do you know his debt to income ratio? Nope. If you do not know someone’s ability to manage their own financial life, why would you take their advice?
Nerd Wallet
Tim Chen is the CEO and founder of NerdWallet, he started the site in 2009. Tim states that he has made many avoidable financial mistakes and while some mistakes cost money, others cost time. Either way sharing way to avoid making these mistakes to others was a passion of Tim’s and thus NerdWallet was started. NerdWallet now has roughly 285 employees and their site covers topics like: credit cards, banking, investing, mortgages, loans, insurance and money. Topics for each may be finding the best credit card for your situation, how to start investing or how to earn more interest with your investments. Taking the financial advise from a blogging standpoint to a full grown company with employees is quite an achievement from someone who is honest about making financial blunders. It is always good to know you can make mistakes and still find success down the road.
Club Thrifty
Holly and Greg Johnson who were previously in the mortuary business founded Club Thrifty in 2012. Through hard work and by not listening to other people they pursued their goals and soon started living their dream life. Having kids and working full time jobs and working a side hustle wasn’t easy, but knowing you can only fail if you quit trying they knew that this was their ticket out of their financial struggles. It didn’t happen over night but they worked their way out of debt and soon found that living life without debt and huge interest payments you can actually afford to LIVE! Their blog’s niche is about you stop spending and start living. You can often learn a lot about how to travel on the cheap and learn about how to use credit card points to help cover the majority of your travel costs. What is exciting about this blog is that with no financial background and a family to support they were able to work together as a team and now work from home or a beach or a foreign country to support their family.
The Minimalists
The Minimalists’ founders Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus started their site in 2010 after a realization that having it all, the money, the houses, the cars, the 80-work week still left them unsatisfied. They were not in control of their lives. This led them to begin taking control over their lives through minimalism. Their story didn’t start there, they are long time friends who both grew up poor and both found their lives needed change and decided to take control over their lives with minimalism. A few of their top blog posts are: New to Minimalism? Start Here, 30-Day Journey to Minimalism Game and Tour Joshua’s Minimalist Apartment. The Minimalists also have a podcast, books, films and tour to help inspire people to take control over their lives by not allowing all the ‘stuff’ to control their lives. What I like about this blog best is it speaks to how to live life and not focus on keeping up with the Jones next door. Living life as a minimalist does not mean you go without, it means you are fulfilled by other things in life other than ‘stuff’.
All of these blogs have something to offer people, whether you are starting out in life right out of high school, graduating from college or are already married with kids. Take some time to find a blog that speaks to you and your financial goals in life. If you don’t like to do a ton of reading, find one that has a podcast. It is never too early or late in life to start taking control over your financial future, so start now!