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Here is Your Guide to the Best Personal Finance Software

Written by Adam on April 2, 2021. Updated March 31, 2021.
10 min read. Spotlight, Personal Finance.

For this week I’m publishing an article by my friend Matt Caranante from Value Nomad (which is a cool site name btw). I’ve written about a few of these – Mint, Personal Capital, but Matt digs deeper into the comparisons between them. If you’re looking for new tools, or just trying to find new ways to use the ones you already use, read on!

Managing and budgeting money is a difficult task for most people, leading to financial problems later on. You can avoid debt and develop a saving culture by simply adopting a simple personal financial management system.

There are plenty of apps available nowadays that can help you with all sorts of issues such as budgeting, saving, investing, etc. All you need to do is find the right app for the problem you have at hand.

These apps are known as Personal Finance Software apps, and you can use them to master the basics of money management. They can even give you ideas on meeting both your long-term and short-term financial goals while setting up a little nest egg for the future.

In our list below, we take a look at the best personal finance software apps that you can download and use for your everyday needs.

But First…

Best Personal Finance Software

What Should You Look for in a Personal Finance Tool?

When choosing a personal finance tool, you must consider your goals at hand and what you need the software to do for you. Also, consider how sophisticated you wish the software to be in terms of operation.

For example, if you wish to have an app that can track your income and expenses, then find one that does precisely that, and if you are looking for one to help with budgeting, then find that as well. Here are a few other factors you should consider when looking for a personal finance software app;

Cost

Personal finance software will usually have a free as well as premium version. This means that you will have to pay annually or monthly to use the app. It’s always a good idea to get the premium version as it tends to have more features and can allow you to do more things with it.

Account Restrictions

Some apps will limit you on the number of accounts you can add to it. If you have more than one account (which almost everyone does), such as a saving account, investment account, and checking account, it is advisable to find an app that can accommodate them.

Reporting

A good app should be able to break down your spending in a way that you can view easily, for example, by use of graphs and charts. You should also have one that can easily customize the reports to fit your financial goals.

Human Support

Now, even though it is an app, it is always good to have some human touch. If you are stuck, there should be a number you can call and get in touch with an actual human customer support staff whom you can speak with, instead of the Robo-advisor.

Credit Score

The best apps come with a free credit score check. This will help you stay on top of your credit report and enable you to keep track of it in case the score drops at any one point. The faster you identify the drop, the quicker you shall be able to correct things.

What Can a Personal Finance Software App Do for You?

As mentioned above, you get to choose the app according to what you want it to do for you. For example, here are some of the needs the app can meet;

Budgeting

There are plenty of software budgeting apps that you can use to help you track your spending. You can sync such apps with your financial accounts, savings, and checking accounts, plus credit cards, investments, and loans. They usually automatically categorize your spending and help you to identify how to save on costs.

Saving

If you wish to develop a much-needed saving culture and come up with an emergency fund, then a software app geared towards saving can help make your work easier. This will give you tips on how you can keep a small reserve each month.

Some apps will automatically transfer money from your checking to your saving account each month without your input, as they are designed to help you with savings.

Investing

Investing in apps and software will help keep your money working for you to ensure that you achieve both your long-term and short-term goals and meet your retirement needs at the same time.

It is a little overwhelming for beginners to learn how to do this, but your work will be that much easier as they practically do everything for you with the apps.

Taxation

Tax season comes with many issues for most people because they do not understand how to do it and what happens. In fact, the kind of forms that need to be filled in can be a little puzzling to them. With a good taxation app, all of your concerns are put to rest as they practically do the work for you.

Most of them will ask you questions that you must answer and then guide you to the proper deductions and what you qualify for.

The Review

The Best Personal Finance Software

Quicken

This software has been around for a long time, and it is one of the most established software in the market. You can use it to manage many different aspects of your financial life, from budgeting, savings, investing, and debt tracking.

It is simply a jack of all trades. It features excel exporting, manipulations, and performance of calculations on your financial data. One of its more advanced features is bill paying.

The software will keep track of your assets to have an accurate calculation of your net worth. It is robust and can manage both businesses and personal expenses, and it can even handle property management for tenants and rental payments.

Quicken has different versions, and they all have different costs.

The starter – costs $ 35.99/yr.
The Deluxe – costs $46.79/yr.
The Premier – Costs $7.019/yr.
The Home and Business Version – Costs $93.59/yr.

It depends on what you are looking for. They all allow you to keep track of your income, create budgets, expenses and even run reports to analyze your finances.

Personal Capital

Personal Capital allows you to manage your finances using a single platform. You can add your mortgage payments, bank accounts, and any other credit accounts to the platform. It also includes investment accounts, if you have any.

Using this software can save you from switching from multiple screens when working on your finances to know where you stand.

For example, if you have a portfolio of around $50,000, you can easily get personalized financial advice based explicitly on your goals. The financial advisors on the app are obligated to provide you with advice that is best for you. You will, however, be charged a fee for this service.

This software can also tell you whether you are on track with your investment or retirement goals at all times.

Now, if you are not ready to use the financial advisors, there is the personal capital that keeps track of your investments and finances in one place.

This software is free to use, but for additional services, you shall have to pay for them. Also, there are costs for other app features.

What You Can Do with This Software

Budget tracking

Use the free version to keep track of your spending patterns against your cash flow. You can analyze your spending according to the individual transactions and the spending categories.

They will give you monthly summaries that help you to know exactly how you used your money. However, if you only need software to help with budgeting, this is probably not the best option. Many other apps are specifically geared for this and have many features, such as alerts for upcoming bills and a bill payment function provision.

Analyzing your Cash Flow

This financial tool will create for you a budget. Once that is set up, it will keep track of your expenses and income from all the different financial accounts you have linked to. You can then set goals such as preparing for debt repayment and saving for your retirement.

There is an analyzer that will develop strategies for you so that you can reach your goals quickly.

Now, despite it having a dashboard that has limits when it comes to budgeting, it is an excellent service for investment management and can be of use in the following ways;

Analyzing your 401 (k)

Most people participate in this employer-sponsored retirement plan. Few, however, are aware of the kind of fees that are hidden in such plans. The analyzer in the software will show you precisely what each fund you have is costing you.

It then suggests for you alternative allocations that can help lower these costs.

A retirement planner

The planner used in the software is the “what if” scenario, and it helps you determine whether or not you are on track with your retirement goals. You can be able to adjust and make changes to any situation you are in.

For example, if you are not on track, you may need to change your job or career. If you are almost starting a family, then this means that you need more spending money, which would reduce your savings.

This planner considers everything to give you the best advice when it comes to your retirement plans.

Investment checkup

This is probably the most important aspect of the software tool. Once you can aggregate your investment accounts, then the app shall help in optimizing these accounts. It will recommend where you need to make adjustments in your portfolio and where you need to improve on overall portfolio performance.

Net worth calculation

If you wish to keep track of your assets and your liabilities to quickly determine your net worth at the press of a button, then this app will do exactly that for you. It keeps track of these two critical aspects of your net worth – the assets and liabilities, and at any one time, you can check and see how much you are worth.

Personal advisor

Now, although the financial dashboard is free to use, you can still contact the personal advisor. The advisor will provide you with investment advice and also answer a few questions regarding your finances. Please note that you will have to pay for this service.

Mint

This is another popular expense tracking and budgeting tool. It allows you to pull your bank and credit card information onto the tool so you can critically analyze your spending. It helps you pinpoint the areas you need to cut back and where you need to improve your finances.

It offers more accountability and allows you to set up alerts for low balances and due dates. These keep you on track at all times. They also help you to avoid late payments and expensive fees on your loans.

If you set up the budget categories, Mint will give you some real-time information on the amount of money you spend on gas and food.

Mint is a free app and can be downloaded on your Android as well as IOS devices. You can also use it on your desktop computer.

Features of the App

Budgeting and Expense Tracking

This is its primary feature. The Mint app is all about Budgeting and Expenses. It shines brightest here. Budgeting is pretty easy to set up on the app, and after you have downloaded and synched your transaction, you shall receive an auto-categorization of your expenses easily.

It will then create subcategories for you, although you will not modify the categories’ important areas.

You will have the option to make some changes to the transactions after they have already downloaded.

Creation and Management of Goals

This is yet another prominent feature of the app. You are managing and tracking goals. If you have new goals, such as paying off your credit card or saving for a new car, you can set them up easily on the app. Your monthly budgeting goals will reflect these new goals.

Monitoring your Credit Score

As mentioned earlier, an excellent personal finance software tool should come with this feature. Mint offers a free credit score tracking option. Although it is a new feature, it will keep track of your entire financial information at all times.

All you need to do is log in and click on “show details.” This will give you your credit score, age of credit accounts, payment history, and much more.

This app caters to the masses, and it shines brightest when it comes to tracking expenses and budgeting.

It has an investing area, which is just a simple feature, which means that it is not as established as other apps.

TurboTax

This is the TAXATION app. You will probably not need it throughout the rest of the year, but it will come in handy when tax time comes around. It is, however, one of the most expensive taxation tools in the market today, but it is also extremely user-friendly and will walk you through your tax preparation with ease and accuracy.

Here are the different costs

Premium – $90
Self-employed – $120

The app allows you to enter your tax information, and you can even import your W-2 form from your employer and then take a picture of it. The same goes for if you work for yourself. TurboTax will then transfer the data onto the form.

Suppose you have used the app over the years. In that case, it will simply remember your personal information without requiring you to input the data again, then ask you whether you have had any significant changes in your life.

The basic version of TurboTax will let you file your state and federal returns for free, and the only form you shall use is 1040 without any attached schedules.

TurboTax also connects you with an Enrolled Agent or a CPA to help you with personalized advice and answer any questions you may have about your tax returns.

The app’s paid version will help you identify deductions that you may not even know are available to you.

YNAB

YNAB stands for – You Need a Budget. It is a personal software whose main aim is to help with your financial literacy and manage your monthly budgets.

As you manage your finances and create your budget, the software will provide you with tutorials to tackle tough finance topics. If you are struggling with a bad financial lifestyle, then YNAB is here to take you through a few management rules that will eventually help you out.

The software allows you to link to your bank account and integrates your spending information to perform budget tracking and analysis. You can then keep tabs on how you have spent your money and take action on areas you have been overspending.

It does not have any investment capabilities, though.

YNAB will offer you a 34-day trial period for free, and in this time, you can use the software in full, then after, you can decide whether it is right for you in terms of your financial goals.

After the trial period, the complete software will cost you $11.99 each month or a one-off payment of $84 for a year.

Conclusion

Financial Management is one of the activities guaranteed to help you out of the “Rat Race.” It may be a hard thing to develop, but with time it gets easier. The above financial management tools are geared towards making it easy for you to keep track of your money.

Choose the right tool that will suit your needs and ensure that you understand how it functions in full, so you can enjoy all the features it has to offer. All the best.

This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.

5 Steps to Embrace Lifestyle Deflation Without Deprivation

Written by Adam on March 28, 2021. Updated January 8, 2023.
9 min read. Canonical, Minafi, Blog, Personal. 6 Comments

Let me know if this sounds familiar. When you were younger, you had less money than you have now. You worked hard, and every dollar you earned was a new opportunity to support yourself, buy something fun or have an exciting experience.

As you progressed in your career, perhaps you upgraded different parts of your life. You worked hard, and every dollar you earned was a new opportunity to support yourself, buy something fun, or have exciting experiences with new people. As you made more money, you probably bought more things. Maybe you upgraded from an apartment to a house. Or from an inexpensive area to the center of a city. Or from a cheap used car to buying your dream car.

Star wars lego figure — The path to lifestyle deflation goes at your own pace

How far down this path you go depends on when you pause to reflect. Some people never do and end up with piles of debt, cluttered houses, and empty hearts.

There’s a name for this: hedonic adaptation (also called the hedonic treadmill). Over time you add more luxuries to your life. You start using a dishwasher. Each adult gets their own car. You buy an Instant Pot. As time goes on, this life becomes your new baseline. The cost to support your lifestyle climbs ever higher, but it’s hard to figure out what you could cut out.

Did you know that you can change the speed of your treadmill? You can choose to slow it down and to live a more simple life. You can even lower the speed and bring the life you love with you. Let’s look at a few thought-exercises you can do today (or at any time) to nudge your mindset in a new direction.

1. Find What “Enough” Means To You

For everything in life – from money to possessions to relationships – there’s a sweet spot. Too many relationships, and you’ll be overwhelmed. Too few, and you’ll yearn for more connection to the world (just ask 2020). The trick is finding the sweet spot where you have enough.

Yet most of us, myself included, don’t think about how much enough truly is. If you never reevaluate what enough means to you, how will you ever know when you’re there? You might even have reached enough already but don’t even know it. You could slow down the treadmill while maintaining the same level of happiness you have today.

The concept of enough spans many aspects of your life:

Enough relationships – Does that mean one life partner? 5 close friends? 5,000 Instagram followers? A group that goes to brunch every week? What do enough relationships look like to you?
Enough money – Is it being able to pay bills and support your family? To afford an education? To create a better future for those you love? Is it enough to become financially independent and retire early?
Enough novelty – Shopping and buying are so convenient today that it’s easy to get that “high” from buying the newest gadget, exciting toy, or clearance item. If you buy too much, it might be a coping mechanism. Too few, you’re starting to feel deprived. If you like variety and often buy new things, but want to live a minimalist lifestyle, borrow things instead of buying them. Today’s libraries not only offer books, movies, and music but a wide range of items like video games, board games, baking pans, and kids building kits.
Enough experiences – Traveling and exploring can be life-changing and is a priority for a lot of people. You can still cut back the amount of money and time you’re spending without feeling deprived. Whether you cut back on the number of vacations you take a year or start to look for travel deals, focus on your bucket list activities vs. saying yes to every opportunity that comes along. When exploring your local area, think about the places you would want to see before moving or free activities like state parks.
Enough fame, prestige, or power – Do you want to be seen as an expert? Looked up to? Asked for your advice? Many people strive to be revered. Ask yourself what enough of each of these looks like for you.

“Enough” isn’t a concept we talk about much in the United States. We’re raised in a culture that values work above all else, where companies are rewarded for maximizing profits. I’ve never heard a for-profit company say, “We’ve made enough money, so now we’re going to donate everything from here on out.”

That’s a different story in Sweden (for people at least). There’s even a Swedish word for it: lagom. Lagom doesn’t have an exact translation into English, but it roughly translates into:

Lagom, noun: Just the right amount.

Lagom isn’t about deprivation. It’s about finding balance. Not too much and not too little. It’s Goldilocks eating the porridge that’s just the right temperature and sleeping in the bed that’s the right size.

It’s making an effort to not look at the world as black and white. Lagom, and the concept of enough, are focused on finding that sweet spot where you’re happy with what you have and happy with what you don’t have.

hike sign — The route to minimalism can be as slow as you want

2. Take the Route to Slow Minimalism

A few years ago, you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about Marie Kondo. Her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011) and her Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019) started an entirely new conversation about consumerism and minimalism.

Her work focuses on a single concept that’s funny when you first hear it yet rememberable: does it sparks joy? If it does, keep it. If not, thank it for its service and let it go.

Books and TV shows give an unrealistic look at what change looks like. Going through a lifetime’s worth of possessions will take a vastly different amount of time if you live in a 500 sqft apartment versus a 3,000 sqft home in the suburbs with a garage.

Luckily, ending credits don’t start to scroll after a single day of work – or even a single year. The process of editing your possessions down can take as long as you want it to take.

I went through a similar editing period after my mom passed away when I was 23 years old. I inherited the house I grew up in and a lifetime of possessions, many of which she inherited from her parents. Marie Kondo’s advice to sort through everything within a weekend wasn’t an option for me.

Instead, I decided to reframe my approach. I’d tackle a different room each month – donating or removing what didn’t spark joy. This concept of slow minimalism helped keep me from feeling overwhelmed while continually improving my surroundings.

When reducing clutter, you’ll find things around your house that you never used or are in excellent condition. There are lots of places you can sell these items online. You might want to travel more or have more spending money; the proceeds could help you meet your goals.

One month I added new storage and organization to the garage, making it easier to do more yard work (but unfortunately, just as sweaty). One month I reorganized my kitchen, making it easier to reach pots and pans, which led to more home-cooked meals. Each room’s changes resulted in happy productivity – I was using the spaces more in the way they were intended.

During this first pass, I wasn’t focused on beauty – that would come later. The first step was making these spaces functional. The value of slow minimalism is exponential growth. Your environment won’t change overnight, but one day you’ll be able to look back and see how far you’ve come.

In my case, these spaces were outright broken. Minor improvements let me reach a point of “enough” for each space without spending $30,000 on a complete kitchen remodel. Slow minimalism can give you the same wins as a major overhaul without the same price tag.

3. Reconsider Your Big 3 Expenses

Your largest three expenses – usually housing, transportation, and food – are the area where the smallest changes can make the largest impact on your budget. These can also be the most difficult changes to make! Moving homes and changing vehicles come with a hefty price tag.

After I graduated college, I immediately followed the advice I kept hearing over and over on the news: “renting is throwing money away.” I did the “financially responsible” thing and bought a house. Buying a house is the largest purchase most people ever make and my largest by far.

Unfortunately, I bought a house in 2006, immediately before the housing market bubble popped. To add insult to injury, the total of my mortgage + property taxes was about 53% of my monthly income!

Since the housing market bubble, most of today’s mortgage companies won’t lend above a 43% mortgage to income ratio. Those numbers don’t include maintenance, lawn care, and the occasional burst pipe that always happens at the worst possible time. Without realizing it, I had completely overextended myself.

I was fortunate. My salary increased over time, and my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I began splitting expenses. Skip to a decade later, and our housing cost was down to 20% of my income.

But was that the right decision? Should I have stuck it out? Or should I have cut my losses and moved somewhere cheaper? I’ve thought about that question a lot since then and have come to a realization: I was scared to admit I made a mistake.

I liked the house but didn’t love it. The cost and time to maintain it was far more than I budgeted. If I had accepted my mistake sooner, we could have moved to cheaper accommodations, had more flexibility in our budget, and many fewer worries.

When we eventually sold that house and embraced apartment living, it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders. Sure, we sold it for much less than we bought it for (thanks, Florida), but it felt refreshing to have a new start. We may move into a house again in the future, but an apartment feels right for now.

When you think about your big three expenses, you may have made decisions in the past that you wouldn’t make again. Whether these were mistakes or just changes in your preferences, accept that you’ve changed! Learn from your current situation and make a list of what you like – and more importantly – what you don’t like about it. Use that criterion to plan your next home, your next vehicle, and your next big purchase.

4. Focus on What You Can Change

Change is complicated. It’s the cause of most of our stress and most of our comfort. When we initiate that change, it can be stressful. When change happens to us, it can be overwhelming.

Organizational reshuffling, landlords changing terms, and even friends changing plans at the last second. Changes we’re in control over feel much more solid: like we’re building the life we want one decision at a time.

Lifestyle deflation and optimizing your budget can feel like either. You can choose to feel like something is happening to you or like something you’ve initiated. Which one you choose will determine your success and your stress level.

One of my favorite quotes about control comes from Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher from around 50 A.D.:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions.
Epictetus, Enchiridion and Selections from the Discourses

When it comes to your finances, you’re in control! You can choose lifestyle deflation or inflation. You can decide to change your hedonic treadmill’s speed all a once or do it little by little.

You can also change your housing, your car, your everyday spending habits. It’s even possible to change how you think about money! As actions and thoughts, these are all in your control.

Even deprivation is a feeling you’re in control over. Two people shown the same lifestyle can see deprivation or abundance. The trick, if you want to call it that, is to slow down your hedonic treadmill little by little without hitting the point where you feel deprived. Part of doing that is accepting that you’re in control of your own actions, your own mindset, and your pace.

5. Decide What You Want To Strive For

Is there something in your life you strive for with all of your heart? Something that you wake up thinking about that comforts you, and that gives you butterflies in your stomach?

Perhaps there isn’t – and that’s OK! There have been many times in my life I haven’t had a project, goal, or dream. But whenever I do have something to dream of, you can guarantee that I’m happier to be around, more driven, and more focused.

When optimizing your budget, it’s easy to go overboard. Months with higher spending are often followed by months of austerity. It’s this kind of yo-yo budgeting that I see all the time by people who start to optimize their finances.

What I’d encourage you to do is this: make a list of 101 things you want to know, have, or do – a list of what to do with your life.

Let your mind run wild when creating this list. Include places you want to travel to, goals you want to accomplish, and career dreams. Include who you want to be – a great mother/father, a friend people confide in, a shoulder to cry on. List out what you want to create in life and what you want to learn.

Creating this list won’t be easy! Most people can come up with about 30 items before it gets difficult – it was for me. Push through that feeling! Write down what you really want, not just what you’d admit to with acquaintances. Be honest with yourself and take as much time as you need. If it takes a few days, that’s alright!

The next step is the important part. When you think about your spending, keep this list in mind. If you somehow find yourself cutting all expenses on this list then you’ve gone too far. Add back in expenses that bring you closer to your goals and dreams. Shoot for a life that you’re in control of that balances your dreams and your budget – with enough of both.

This post was written by me, but originally published on Your Money Geek.

How To Make Money On Facebook and 14 Ways People Are Doing It

Written by Adam on March 26, 2021. Updated March 31, 2021.
9 min read. Spotlight, Personal Finance.

This week I’m sharing an article by my friend Andrew Kraemer from Wallet Squirrel. One area I don’t write about here on Minafi is ways to make money. I’m hilariously bad at it. It’s clear that the way to build wealth involves earning, saving, and investing. If you’re looking for another way to increase the earning side, this article shares some new tactics that I hadn’t previously thought of!

Facebook is the largest social network on the planet. While this feels like a generic statement, take a moment to visualize 2.4 billion people on the plant spending anywhere from 5 minutes to the average 145 minutes on social media. Facebook is an $826 Billion empire, but it’s also an opportunity for anyone to leverage their audience and make money. Let’s look at how to make money on Facebook and 14 ways people are doing it.

How To Make Money on Facebook in Innovative Ways

No reason to bury the lead. Here are the more unique ways on how to make money on Facebook. As we go down this list, we’ll start with the most interesting money-making ideas and end with the more obvious.

1. Create & Sell Facebook Messenger Chatbots

As businesses use Facebook more and more to engage with their audiences, they’re finding direct messaging to be the most personable. However, unless you’re a large company, most businesses lack the staffing to respond timely. This pain point has resulted in the rise of Facebook Messenger Chatbots.

Suppose you’ve yet to encounter a chatbot or unfamiliar with the concept. Chatbots use Facebook’s direct messenger platform to provide automated responses to a customer’s questions, allow direct purchases, and more. Most questions are 90% of the same inquiries, so why not automate the response? This chatbot technology used to be for multi-million dollar companies. Yet as the technology has advanced and becomes more user-friendly, it’s now available to anyone to build without knowing how to code.

Companies like ManyChat or Falcon let you set up chatbots in less than 30 minutes. It’s something easy to do, but many businesses don’t have the know-how. This problem creates an opportunity to pay big money for someone to build chatbots for them. Consider using a service like ManyChat or Falcon with their pricing structure of around $110/mo and then charging your client $200/mo and pocket the difference?

2. Find Popular Social Media Memes and Turn Them Into Swag

Suppose you’re someone who regularly scrolls through Facebook, finding the funniest daily memes. Consider using your expertise to identify the best memes/jokes/news and creating a graphic to sell on mugs, shirts, art, and more.

Websites like Teespring, Society 6, and even Merch by Amazon allow you to easily create fun graphics and add them to shirts, mugs, and more! Some sites have all the design tools integrated; others ask you to upload an image. All you have to do is create a design and direct people to your products. These companies will display what your designs appear like on different products, handle payments, handle shipping, and send you monthly profits. On a $15 shirt, you can make around $7. After a while, these add up while these services handle everything for you.

3. Create & Host Events on Facebook Events Tool

Bloggers, Influencers, and more regularly use Teachable, Udemy, and more to sell online courses and host events for their audiences. Instead of those platforms costing you to play middle-man, let Facebook Events host instead. With Facebook, you can create an event for your audience, send them regular updates, take payments and even host the event through Facebook.

Facebook manages the entire process essentially for free (minus their transaction fees). Yet, you control the whole process. So if you have any skill you want to teach or course to share with your friends, it would help if you considered monetizing it through Facebook’s Event Hosting Tools.

4. Find A New Job on Facebook

Getting a new job feels obvious, but Facebook has expanded its job portal extensively over the last couple of years. Facebook is hoping to compete with Craigslist and Indeed on job postings connected to each company’s Facebook Business Accounts. While this won’t necessarily be a side-hustle to make extra money on Facebook, a new job can make you more money. Check out Facebook’s Jobs Page to see the type of opportunities available on their job board.

5. Join a Sweepstakes Facebook Group and Enter in Bulk

There are thousands of sweepstakes starting daily. While these are randomized for the winners, it’s super easy to play.

All groups of people subscribe to Facebook Groups centered around sweepstakes and enter new games daily. When all you have to submit is an email address, there isn’t much to lose. You can either create a new free Gmail account or use an app like Unroll. me to unsubscribe from any mailing lists you’re inevitably joining.

Sweepstakes may not sound like a guaranteed way to make money, but it’s fun. The more competitions you enter, the more often you are to win. Most sweepstakes offer between $250 – $500 per game. The benefit of a sweepstakes Facebook Group is that you’ll be aware every time a new sweepstake is published.

Part-Time Jobs Centered Around Facebook

Facebook is like a mini digital world, and if you’re good at navigating the social network, you can create tremendous job opportunities for yourself. Many companies/startups/influencers feel they need to be active on Facebook 24/7 and often pay people to help them out in different ways.

6. Market Yourself As A Social Media Manager

If you’re already intimately familiar with Facebook and used to regularly posting fun content, why not consider becoming a Social Media Manager for a company, blogger, or influencer? Social Media Managers seem like an easy gig. Still, it’s a highly sought-after position as many businesses understand they need to regularly engage with their social media audiences but lack the staff and experience to create quality content.

This position typically involves creating exciting content by posts 2-3 times a day, engaging with comments, and regularly creating a positive brand buzz.

While there is a high demand for social media managers, the salary is a bit all over the board. Glassdoor maintains the average Social Media Manager salary of around $38,000 to $72,000 annually. However, even this differs based on how a company values social media. We’ve seen part-time social media managers make as little as $5 to add a couple of social media posts to $150,000 annually for companies that actively use social media to promote their brand. Considering the high rise and adoption of social media, we see this position continually increasing in need and value.

7. How To Make Money on Facebook as a Group Moderator

These aren’t people hired by Facebook to moderate content against the company guidelines, but those hired to manage Facebook Groups.

There is massive money in Facebook Groups. These are private groups that focus on anything from car maintenance to cat lovers. Facebook Groups become a forum for people to collaborate and share like-minded information.

Currently, there are 1.8 billion Facebook Groups with audiences ranging from 2 users to millions. There is a Facebook Group called “HAIRSTYLES” that boasts 6.8 million members alone. What makes these groups successful is removing unrelated/dumb comments and maintaining regular positive engagement using great Facebook Group Moderators. Facebook Group Moderators keep the conversation going and maintains the integrity of the groups.

Often the moderators are the administrators who started the group, but sometimes, they are part-time help. These positions are paid by the group’s administers, typically from the revenue generated from sponsored posts. The pay is generally around $5/hr to $20/hr and widely depends on the size and income of the Facebook Group. These positions aren’t advertised but often offered to members highly active in each Facebook Group.

8. Manage Facebook Ads

Facebook is the world’s largest social media network and not-so-secretly the world’s largest advertising network. Users regularly submit personal information and show Facebook precisely their interests. This information is pure gold for advertising companies looking to target their ideal audience.

While multi-million dollar companies use this regularly, Facebook also allows small businesses to tap their deep user information pool. Yet, many small businesses don’t have an understanding of how the Facebook Advertising ecosystem works. They need experts to run campaigns for them and want to see how their campaign is working. Running advertising campaigns is where the growing career of Facebook Ad Managers comes in.

Facebook makes it easy for anyone to become a Facebook Ad Manager. Plus, there are tons of courses on how to run ads successfully. These courses are available to anyone to learn. Once you pick up the basics, you can start tons of ad campaigns for small businesses. The salary for this position ranges from $50,000 to $80,000, according to salary.com. As your own boss, you can make even more.

9. Facebook Content Creator

Let’s not skip past the many content creators/influencers who make loads of money on Facebook. These are people who build large followings on the social network and regularly produce content for their audiences. These are people like Logan Paul (12,800,000 page likes) and Eh Bee (10,300,000 page likes), who rake in millions of dollars through their engaging videos and posts.

Anyone can become a content creator as it requires zero experience. Here are the ways content creators make money on Facebook.

Videos – Facebook allows you to run ads on videos you upload to Facebook, and those ads will generate a nice amount of income. What’s nice about Facebook is that the ads aren’t usually till the middle of the post, unlike the beginning ads of YouTube. According to these ways to make money, you can make around $7 for every 1,000 views.
Sponsored Posts – These usually involve companies partnering with influencers to showcase a particular product with the influencer. Think about influencers pictured with Bose Headphones and the caption “I love these new Bose Headphones.” While it may be true, those influencers are getting paid for the endorsement. You can make around $5 for every 1,000 followers you have for a sponsored post.
Fan Subscriptions – Following in the footsteps of Patreon, Facebook has launched Fan Subscriptions where audience members can pay a monthly subscription to access exclusive content by their favorite influencers. Yes, Facebook will take 30%, but recurring monthly revenue ads up!

How To Make Money on Facebook Marketplace

The Facebook Marketplace has grown dramatically in recent years. It’s best comparable to Craigslist, where users can buy and sell their stuff. Of course, the platform has grown large enough for companies to sell their products here, but it’s still primarily for individual users.

10. Sell Old Items on the Facebook Marketplace

If you’ve ever sold something on eBay or Craigslist, this is the same. To sell something on the Facebook Marketplace, all you need is some lovely photos of the item, a detailed description, and an enticing price. Most of the items sold on the Facebook Marketplace range from free to $200. You’re also responsible meet with the prospective customer or handle shipping, so be sure to include your time in the price you set.

11. Re-Sell Items on the Facebook Marketplace You Bought Elsewhere for Cheaper

Re-selling has always been big on Amazon but continues to bleed into Craigslist, eBay, and now the Facebook Marketplace. People find an item on sale at Walmart (really any place), purchase it, and immediately list it online for a higher price to pocket the difference.

Typically highly in-demand items do great for re-selling, such as the new PlayStation or products usually out-of-stock in most places. Otherwise, if you find a terrific deal on an in-demand product, consider re-selling as a way to make a little extra money. If you want to make this a full-time job, you’ll have to establish a highly efficient process to make it worth your while.

Send Traffic To Your Website/Sales Page

There are a few profitable ways to make money on Facebook, but the most common way people make money from Facebook is by sending those 2.4 billion people from Facebook to their website or sales page. If you don’t have a website, it’s easy to start a blog and immediately monetize it.

12. Share Links in Facebook Groups To Your Site/Services

If you’ve ever been a part of a Facebook Group, you’ve inevitably seen several posts that point to links to someone’s site or services. These are common strategies. Sometimes they work; sometimes, the post is irrelevant, a group moderator will immediately reject the post when you want to post links in a Facebook Group.

Moderators will sometimes accept posts if you’ve already established yourself as a helpful member of the group and your post/link is relevant to the topic of the group. Please know that it has been increasingly challenging to get links in Facebook Groups, so you need to be compelling. If successful, you can add links to your website where users can purchase goods or increase your website ad revenue.

Alternatively – You can use affiliate links to send Facebook Group traffic to a company’s affiliate page, where you can earn a commission if any users make a purchase. Here is a list of the best affiliate programs.

13. Share Links on your Facebook Business & Personal Profile Page To Your Site/Services

It’s infinitely easier to post links to your website or services on your own Facebook Business Page and Personal Profile page. While you won’t likely have as many followers as a Facebook Group, you will have more control of the content and message. Anyone who clicks on your links can travel to your website, where you can monetize their engagement.

Alternatively – You can use affiliate links to send traffic from your Facebook Business Page or Personal Profile Page to a company’s affiliate page. You’ll earn a commission if anyone makes a purchase. If you want to know what that looks like, here are 50 Amazon Affiliate Website Examples that utilize social media to bring people to their money-making sites.

14. Purchase Facebook Ads

We’ve mentioned Facebook Ads earlier, but rather than working for someone else. Consider learning Facebook Ads to help send traffic to your website or company affiliate program. List articles like 37 Fun Facts About Money do exceptionally well. Many companies do this to make more money when people come to their website than their Facebook ads cost.

Consider a Facebook Ad Campaign costs a company $1,000 a month, but the people that click on those ads generate $2,000 a month in revenue. That Facebook Ad Campaign has a profit of $1,000 every month!

You can make a significant amount of money utilizing the highly customizable Facebook Ad platform. These can be for your products, services, or even a simple landing page for affiliate programs to earn an affiliate commission.

This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.

My Financial Spreadsheet: 5 Metrics to Track for Financial Independence

Written by Adam on March 21, 2021. Updated January 8, 2023.
10 min read. Financial Independence, Canonical, Minafi, Blog, Investing, Personal. 30 Comments

Creating your own system to track progress towards financial independence is a rite of passage. If you want to understand how to get there, there’s no better way than understanding your own spending and investment habits over time.

There are a bunch of services that can do this for you – The Mad Fientist has a website for tracking your progress to FI. Mint and Personal Capital both connect to your bank account to pull in your spending and investments. For many, this will be enough. But if you want to fully understand your finances, the only way is to do it yourself.

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Top 21 Zip Codes for Real Estate Investing in 2021

Written by Adam on March 19, 2021. Updated March 31, 2021.
4 min read. Spotlight, Investing.

This is a special post by my friend Tyler Weaver from Relentless Finance. Minafi readers may know that I’ve had some problems with real estate. For many people though, it can be the largest driver of wealth! If you’re thinking about investing in real estate, these are the cities you may want to consider.

Real estate investors may need to broaden their search to additional markets with real estate inventory currently at record lows. When searching, remember that not every property provides good returns, with some cities faring better for investing than others. We’ve determined the top 21 zip codes for real estate investing in 2021.

5 Factors to Determine Hot Cities for Real Estate Investing

Real estate investments should grow in value over time and offer positive cashflow. If your property does not provide cash flow, you will have to inject money into the property continually. If it does not increase in value, you miss out on a great way to build wealth through real estate – capital appreciation. Before making an offer on a property, make sure you run the investment numbers in each of the following five areas.

1. Rental Growth

Rental growth is a powerful way to balloon your cash flow from a rental property. Here is why it works: Your mortgage is a fixed rate, and the rent is going up over time. If you purchased the property with a modest cash flow at the beginning, you have the potential to double your cash flow quickly.

For example, if the monthly rent is $1,000 and the cash flow is $200, a 20% increase in rent would double the property’s cash flow.

2. Appreciation

Some of the zip codes analyzed had over 100% appreciation in a short amount of time. This increase in home value would vastly outpace the cashflow received from a property in that period. Relying solely on appreciation and not cash flow can change a solid real estate investment strategy into speculation. It is essential to focus on a mix of growth and cash flow in an investment property.

Usually, markets with solid historical appreciation have plenty of opportunities for forced appreciation through renovations. Appreciation gives investors the advantage of leverage. Even though you only have a percentage of the equity in your cash, you take 100% of the benefit of the property’s growth through leverage to purchase another property.

3. Cashflow

You may have heard the expression “cash is king.” If you are using real estate to advance your portfolio for retirement or financial independence, then your mantra should be “cashflow is king.”Cashflow provides a margin of safety as an investor. It allows you to save money towards capital expenses, future renovations, and unexpected emergencies.

When analyzing zip codes for this article, if properties did not provide enough cash flow to cover the estimated expenses, they were omitted. It doesn’t matter how much appreciation is predicated if you cannot afford the mortgage, maintenance, and tax payments.

4. Long Term Leverage

Over time, real estate builds wealth for its owner through the principal paydown of the mortgage. One way to think of the principal paydown on a mortgage is as a forced savings plan that your tenants fund. Ensuring a property cash flows is the key to long-term leverage. It’s a one-two punch as they compound off each other.

5. Market Heat

Lastly, this list was created by looking at the previous rental and appreciated growth over the past five years. When evaluating properties for sale in these zip codes, look at average days listed, listing interest, sold price vs. for sale price for a sense of market dynamics.

Top 21 Zip Codes for Real Estate Investing in 2021

To find the zip codes with the highest rental growth, we compared the Zillow average rent change from the last five years for that specific zip code.

1. Louisville, Kentucky40212

Median 3br Home Price: $76,156
Average Rent: $878
5 Year Rental Growth: 30%
Rent to Value Ratio: 1.1%
5 Year Appreciation: 31%

2. Forest Park, Georgia 30297

Median 3br Home Price: $100,816
Average Rent: $1,117
5 Year Rental Growth: 54%
Rent to Value Ratio: 1.1%
5 Year Appreciation: 117%

3. Jacksonville, Florida 32219

Median 3br Home Price: $169,070
Average Rent: $1,519
5 Year Rental Growth: 29%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.8%
5 Year Appreciation: 70%

4. Lakeland, Florida 33805

Median 3br Home Price: $171,384
Average Rent: $1,142
5 Year Rental Growth: 40%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.6%
5 Year Appreciation: 104%

5. Riverdale, Georgia 30296

Median 3br Home Price: $156,978
Average Rent: $1,400
5 Year Rental Growth: 58%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.8%
5 Year Appreciation: 136%

6. Holiday, Florida 34690

Median 3br Home Price: $162,770
Average Rent: $1,209
5 Year Rental Growth: 49%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.7%
5 Year Appreciation: 150%

7. Decatur, Georgia 30035

Median 3br Home Price: $173,356
Average Rent: $1,440
5 Year Rental Growth: 56%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.8%
5 Year Appreciation: 128%

8. Atlanta, Georgia 30349

Median 3br Home Price: $159,088
Average Rent: $1,451
5 Year Rental Growth: 47%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.9%
5 Year Appreciation: 111%

9. Jacksonville, Florida 32208

Median 3br Home Price: $123,485
Average Rent: $991
5 Year Rental Growth: 23%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.8%
5 Year Appreciation: 274%

10. Memphis, Tennessee 38127

Median 3br Home Price: $69,482
Average Rent: $801
5 Year Rental Growth: 26%
Rent to Value Ratio: 1.2%
5 Year Appreciation: 135%

11. Conley, Georgia 30288

Median 3br Home Price: $137,071
Average Rent: $1,311
5 Year Rental Growth: 47%
Rent to Value Ratio: 1.0%
5 Year Appreciation: 136%

12. Memphis, Tennessee 38141

Median 3br Home Price: $147,469
Average Rent: $1,305
5 Year Rental Growth: 28%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.9%
5 Year Appreciation: 61%

13. Dearborn Heights, Michigan 48125

Median 3br Home Price: $117,780
Average Rent: $1,121
5 Year Rental Growth: 36%
Rent to Value Ratio: 1.0%
5 Year Appreciation: 99%

14. Port Richey, Florida 34668

Median 3br Home Price: $169,352
Average Rent: $1,270
5 Year Rental Growth: 49%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.7%
5 Year Appreciation: 142%

15. Lincoln Park, Michigan 48146

Median 3br Home Price: $112,948
Average Rent: $1,028
5 Year Rental Growth: 26%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.9%
5 Year Appreciation: 109%

16. Maricopa, Arizona 85138

Median 3br Home Price: $249,365
Average Rent: $1534
5 Year Rental Growth: 72%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.6%
5 Year Appreciation: 72%

17. Independence, Missouri 64052

Median 3br Home Price: $129,994
Average Rent: $935
5 Year Rental Growth: 27%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.7%
5 Year Appreciation: 92%

18. Dallas, Texas 75241

Median 3br Home Price: $165,020
Average Rent: $1,434
5 Year Rental Growth: 39%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.9%
5 Year Appreciation: 169%

19. Phoenix, Arizona 85009

Median 3br Home Price: $197,144
Average Rent: $1,077
5 Year Rental Growth: 86%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.5%
5 Year Appreciation: 156%

20. Tolleson, Arizona 85353

Median 3br Home Price: $273,175
Average Rent: $1,774
5 Year Rental Growth: 69%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.6%
5 Year Appreciation: 94%

21. Cincinnati, Ohio 45219

Median 3br Home Price: $174,650
Average Rent: $1,414
5 Year Rental Growth: 47%
Rent to Value Ratio: 0.8%
5 Year Appreciation: 95%

Once you complete the purchase of a rental property and build home equity over a year or two, you can deploy the BRRRR method to redeploy your capital from this property into another one.

This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.

How Many Stocks Should You Own In Your Portfolio?

Written by Adam on March 14, 2021. Updated January 8, 2023.
9 min read. Canonical, Minafi, Blog, Invest. Leave a Comment

Once you start trying to grow your money in the stock market, one of the very first questions you’ll ask is “what should I invest in?”. Hidden in that question is another one – “how many stocks should I own?”. The answer is likely fewer than you think.

When I started investing I put $100 into an account. I chose 5 different investments and put $20 into each of them. What I didn’t realize at the time is that I was overcomplicating investing. A lot.

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