Frugal Finance

This page is devoted to all of my favorite frugal finance links.

Frugal Newlyweds Financial Guide Series

Part 1: Learn about your own and your spouse's financial family tree.

Part 2: Use this spreadsheet or create your own to help you sort through each other's financial accounts.  Determine which accounts to save, which to close, look at changing and adding names and beneficiaries.  This is essentially the nuts and bolts of combining your finances.

Part 3:  Plan your future.  Look over your finances and determine your goals.  I gave a list of goals from most important to least important that you can use.
Part 4: (Coming soon!)Perform super quick weekly, somewhat quick monthly, and more extensive yearly financial check ups.

BEST FINANCE WEBSITE EVER! (yes, I did just use all caps)

Mint.com: Free and secure finance tracker website.  Remember Quicken?  This is like old quicken on steroids.  It is free because there are ads, but I still think this is the best tool of all time.

Best Sites for Coupons

Retailmenot.com has links to coupons for most retail stores.  The nearest mall is an hour away, so every time we take the hike to get there I always go through Retail Me Not's coupons and find coupons for the stores that we are planning on going to.  I have saved hundreds of dollars by planning ahead and looking for coupons.  I also use this website if we are planning on buying something online.  They almost always have legit codes which saves me time so I don't enter a bunch of expired codes.

Coupons.com has grocery/personal product coupons.  When I need to buy something that Aldi doesn't carry I normally check this site out.  I use this site a lot for buying things cheap at CVS.  Note: Many of the coupons get added at the beginning of the month and once they reach a certain print quota they are gone.

Financial Calculators

Dave Ramsey has really simple and easy investing calculator here.  If you are at the point where you are interested in early retirement like I am, this is an easy way to motivation yourself.  If you are still in debt he has some other easy and simple debt snowball calculators here.  If you don't know what debt snowballing is you should definitely read his book Total Money Makeover.

Dinkytown.net has the largest and highest quality financial calculators that I've seen on the internet.  They have calculators for mortgages, investments, determining whether one spouse should work, determining how long your investments will last you, estate planning, payroll deduction and more!  If you don't understand what the inputs mean for each calculator scroll to the bottom of the screen and it gives definitions.

Frugal Living Websites

Moneysavingmom.com is a website that I have followed for years.  Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, it has turned into a mega blog.  She has links to deals at all kinds of stores and lots of posts on ideas for how to live frugally.  It is more geared toward women and moms.

Freebieblogger.com is a website that puts links to anything that it finds that is free online.  I use to to get tons of free magazines that I keep in my classroom for when students complete things early.

Bargainbrianna.com is a website that also has links to current coupon deals at many stores.  It is also geared more toward women.

Mrmoneymustache.com is a website written by a man that retired at age 30.  He has lots of posts about anti-consumerism and frugal living.  It is less girly and more manly, although I don't feel put off by it.  Warning: May contain bad language.

Wisebread.com is a multipurpose frugal website.  It is a mega website with lots of different topics.  I doubt you can't find something to interest you.

Frugalfun.com is a (slightly aged) website with lots of information on how to have fun living on less.