Books, apps, coaches, and services - there's a ton of stuff out there all vying for your attention (and money). In this guide, I'm sifting through everything and giving you the resources that I like the best, or that have a positive reputation in the community.
Oh, and many of these links are affiliate links. When you use an affiliate link, I get credit for the referral, which helps to pay the bills.
Books
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko
A wickedly interesting look at how real millionaires act which, by the way, typically doesn't have anything to do with driving expensive cars, living in huge houses or shopping at ritzy department stores.
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
One of the most influential books in personal finance that revolutionized the way people look at money and their life. How much is your life worth?
Stop Acting Rich by Thomas Stanley
Stanley is at it again with this hard look at the devastating impact that pseudo-affluence has on those who are less affluent.
The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
For an entire year, Cait Flanders only purchased consumables like groceries, toiletries and gas for her car. Nothing else. No clothes. No electronics. Nothing. This book documents her incredible journey.
Financial Applications
Personal Capital
We use Personal Capital for everything related to our financial picture. It's one of the easiest and well-designed applications available that consolidates wealth from different types of banks, credit cards and investment accounts and puts it all together into a single unified view.
Credible Student Loan Refinancing
If you're saddled with student loans, consider refinancing those suckers with Credible. On average, folks save a couple hundred bucks every month. And, anything that you can do to bring down that debt, it's a win!
Courses and eBooks
How To Start Your Own Money Blog
My eBook teaches you everything that you need to know to start your very own personal finance or lifestyle blog. From mastering Wordpress to finding the right plugins, to web hosting and the pros and cons of divulging your personal information and staying anonymous, this eBook will take you on a journey from no blog to great blog in no time.
This eBook originally started as a free email course. Due to its popularity, the eBook was born. It's more thorough than the email course - and prettier, too.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
If you're into earning cash with your website, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make that happen. Michelle is a master at affiliate marketing and earns over $100,000 a month through her blog, and she teaches the strategies and techniques that just work.
Blogging
Convert Kit
I use Convert Kit as my email management system. By far, it's the easiest-to-use email system on the face of the earth to manage subscriber emails and engage with them about new content, products and services. If you don't already have an email marketing platform, you need to signup with Convert Kit.
Theme Forest
Wordpress is super powerful, but it doesn't exactly come with the prettiest themes built-in. Theme Forest is my go-to source for beautifully-designed themes (like this one!) for all types of blogging purposes. Whether you're looking to design a blog, start a magazine or spin up a business website, Theme Forest has all kinds of well-designed themes to choose from.
Wordpress
In my humble opinion, there isn't a better publishing system available for the Internet than Wordpress, period. Wordpress is by far the biggest and most well-supported publishing platform around and designed to support the smallest blog to the biggest news website (like CNN!). In fact, they will even host the site for you, leaving time for you to just write.
Grammarly
Grammar. It's a prickly beast but Grammarly does a pretty darn good job at catching your mistakes. It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than your browser's built-in system to catch simple spelling mistakes. But, Grammarly does more than just spelling. It checks your word use, too. For example - whenever I see someone confuse the difference between effect and affect, I know they need to use Grammarly.