Recommended Resources

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Favorite Personal Finance Books

Some of my favorite personal finance books are these:

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. Possibly my favorite personal finance book, this is the best one I have read as far as laying out a simple plan that you can follow to save, get out of debt, and invest to build wealth. Two thumbs way up!

Smart Money, Smart Kids by Dave Ramsey and daughter Rachel Cruze. In this great book for parents, Dave and his daughter Rachel teach parents how they can teach their children about working, spending, saving, giving, avoiding debt, and being content. This book teaches parents how to help their children make good financial decisions and gain character attributes that will help them not only win with money but win at life.

Your Money or Your Life (2018 edition) by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. This book takes a different approach from most of the personal finance books out there. It emphasizes discovering your values and then aligning your life to follow those values. It also shares the intriguing idea of looking at everything you buy in terms of number of hours worked (hours of life energy spent), and suggests considering whether the things you buy or spend your money on are really worth the number of hours of life energy spent to pay for them. The authors suggest the idea of potentially working less, and living more.

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. This book explains the benefits of automating your finances so that you can set up systems to help you win with your money. By automating your finances you can save and invest in order to build wealth and retire in style. Set it so you won’t sweat it!

Love Your Life, Not Theirs by Rachel Cruze. This book emphasizes that if we always focus on what we don’t have and on comparing ourselves to others, then we will always be unhappy and broke. She teaches the importance of getting out of debt in order to avoid the worry and stress of living paycheck to paycheck and teaches sound financial principles such as living on a budget and saving for the future that bring joy and build a solid financial foundation.

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William D. Danko. This eye-opening book debunks the idea that millionaires all live in huge homes and drive brand-new luxury cars. The reality, in fact, is that most millionaires live in ordinary neighborhoods and drive average cars. The findings of Stanley’s study are fascinating, but beware that he uses a lot of statistics. Even still, it really is a great read. Highly recommend!

Find out more of my favorite personal finance books here.

Favorite Personal Finance Resources and Products

And here are a few of my favorite personal finance resources:

Personal Capital. With Personal Capital, you can see not only all of your bank checking and savings accounts and even your credit cards and other finance accounts, but you can also link your retirement and regular nonretirement brokerage accounts. This allows you to have a complete, overall picture of your current financial situation. And you can also view your account history to see how your accounts and overall portfolio have done over time. I love this very helpful tool and use it regularly! Sign up for your free Personal Capital account here. 

Financial Peace University is a 9-week course taught by finance expert Dave Ramsey. In this awesome course you’ll learn how get on the same page with your spouse about money and how to dump debt, save for emergencies and purchases, insure against less, get good deals, and more. My husband and I took this course, and I highly recommend it to all couples to both learn to win with their money and also improve their marriages.

Favorite Resources to Earn More Money

Proofread Anywhere. If you have an excellent eye for detail, being a professional freelance proofreader might be just the job for you! If you’re interested in this line of work but don’t have any former training as a proofreader, check out this free one-hour workshop from Caitlyn at Proofread Anywhere to find out if proofreading might be the perfect career for you. I have worked as a professional editor and done freelance editing and proofreading for more than 15 years now, and it is an occupation that I love.

Do you think that becoming a professional proofreader might be a good fit for you, too? Learn how to turn your passion for words and reading into a wonderful career in as little as 30 days!

Favorite Blogging Resources

SiteGround. This is the web hosting service that I use, and they are awesome. It took me months to decide on a hosting service because I didn’t want to make a bad choice, and I finally decided on SiteGround because of the excellent customer reviews and the affordable price. They are not the least expensive, but I do feel 100 percent that they are the best choice for new bloggers and intermediate bloggers working to grow their business.

Blog by Number Course and Ebook. If you are ready to earn some extra income or even potentially follow a new career path (one that you can start part-time from home while you keep you day job), I recommend the great course and ebook Blog by Number by Suzi Whitford. It’s one of the courses I took as I was preparing to be a brand new blogger, and it helped give me the knowledge I needed to start on the path to becoming a successful blogger.

Divi by Elegant Themes. There are free website themes through WordPress and other companies, but I chose Divi because it was recommended by a few different professional bloggers as the best theme for serious beginner bloggers because of the flexibility it allows you to easily design and format your blog and awesome features such as free A/B testing to help you discover what works to covert your visitors to customers.

Theme by Number. This is another one of Suzi’s courses that I have taken as I have worked to learn to become a successful blogger. This excellent course teaches you step-by-step how to set up and use the Divi theme by Elegant Themes in order to create a blog that looks great and makes you money!

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I also recommend Michelle Schroeder-Gardner’s course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing if you really want to learn the ins and outs of how to make money with affiliate marketing. It was the very first course that I bought. Michelle makes more than $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing, so she really knows what she’s talking about! In the course, Michelle walks you through the basics of affiliate marketing and the best ways to make money through affiliate marketing. If you believe that starting a blog (or even using Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or other social media sites) to earn affiliate income is something you would enjoy and be good at, then I strongly recommend that you take Michelle’s course and incorporate affiliate marketing as one of your methods of generating income.

MailerLite. I recommend signing up for MailerLite in order to regularly email your subscribers. (More high-quality email communication = more engaged readers and visitors = more conversions = more money. :)) I signed up for the free version of MailerLite right after I set up my blog, and it has been great. It’s been easy to use, customer service has been great when I’ve had questions (they offer 24/7 support), and my email sequences that I’ve set up have worked flawlessly. Unlike many email service providers (ESPs), you can send unlimited emails per month even with their free plan. When you start getting more subscribers, they have a simple, inexpensive tiered pricing program that you can easily switch to. Two thumbs up. Check them out here.

FlexOffers. This is one of many affiliate networks that are available. They are the first network that I signed up with, and they work with many companies that you may want to promote. Not to mention, their customer service is awesome!   

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