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Most Personal Finance advice you read is hyper-focused on either recommending or dissuading you from one particular product.
We try to think about our total financial setup a little more holistically at Personal Finance Guru, to live up to our motto of helping you build your Personal Financial Fortress.
To that end, we’ve provided the personal finance ‘stacks’ we each use below (‘stack’ here means like a companies’ Technology Stack, which brings many products harmoniously together to be greater than the sum of their parts).
Note that we may receive some small commission if you sign up for some of the products below. This helps us pay for things like server costs to keep this site running.
We only ever recommend products we personally use and love.
Owner @ Personalfinanceguru.com
I really enjoy the world of finance and personal finance and I’m always trying the latest products. I’m a super-optimizer, always trying to squeeze out every last penny I can, even if the time investment to do that isn’t really worth it. I definitely overdo it, but I enjoy the challenge.
I probably have too many accounts! I use Vanguard for retirement, Fidelity for general brokerage (e.g., S&P500 ETFs, etc.), Wealthfront for automated investing, and Yieldstreet for alternatives.
To keep track of the total view of my full financial picture I don’t think the Personal Capital can be beat and I’ve tried a bunch of the different aggregators. I personally use their net worth calculator (which requires linking accounts) and retirement calculator all the time.
I use Farmers for home, Chubb for umbrella, and Progressive for auto. For life it’s New York Life. I also have various business insurance policies. We also subscribe to AAA for roadside peace of mind.
I also have used and like SuperMoney’s interface to compare insurance offers across many providers in what is often a confusing landscape.
I used/tried most of the major tax services at one time or another, including TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and TurboTax, but now things are so complicated I’ve been forced to hire a CPA.
will probably have to create a whole post on this because there is too much to list here. Some of my favorites though are, Monday.com, Mailchimp, Canva, WordPress, LegalZoom, and Quickbooks.
I have been with Chase for basic banking needs like a checking account for quite some time and am very happy with them. I still don’t have a savings account!
I have 5 to help max out my credit score and maximize/optimize rewards:
1) Fidelity’s 2% cash-back – for a general purpose, high flat-rate cash-back card. This is first in my wallet and is my general go-to card.
2) Chase Sapphire Preferred – for a general-purpose travel card to get the 5x points offered when booking travel through their travel portal.
3) Marriott Bonvoy Boundless – I focus my stays and points with Marriott and this gives a huge points multiplier.
4) Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card – we spend so much at Amazon every year, that the 5% rewards rate became worth it here.
5) United Club Infinite Club – since my home city is a United hub, I concentrate my airline spending with them. Although there’s a $525 annual fee I get a United Club membership for layovers and 4x miles on United purchases.
Bonus) Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business – since I run a business I need a business card and this gets me an additional 15 elite night credits annually. Combine that with the 15 elite night credits I get from my personal Marriott Bonvoy card and I get 30 nights toward elite status right off the bat every year. It has a $99 annual fee but quickly pays for itself with its 7% room rate discount.
I love to read and nerd out about Finance (lame I know!).
If you’re a total beginner, you might want to check out our article for you here.
But here are my favorites:
Happy to be loan free but my wife uses SoFi.
Use the freemium version of Experian credit monitoring.
The only exchange I trust at writing is Coinbase. I keep everything off exchanges as much as I can though.