Websites Worth Checking Out

Well, the semester has once again come to close, believe it or not. Now, don't worry, I won't bore you with another nerd post, like I did at the end of last semester. But, I had this cool consumer finance class where I learned about 4 really awesome websites that are handy tools to help people make better financial decisions. Check them out--they're worth it! As a bonus, I'll give two non-financial sites at the bottom. :)

1. Mint.com: The best personal finance site out there. Basically, you enter in all of your bank accounts, loans, mortgage, retirement savings, and credit cards, and it keeps tracks of your entire financial position automatically for you! It automatically categorizes your expenditures into different categories, so at a glance you can see how much you spend on food, housing, travel, autos, etc. It tracks your 401(k), your loan balances, net worth, and makes recommendations on ways to save money. You can make your own budgets on there, and it will alert you if you go over the limit. Basically, it's like Quicken or Money if you've heard of those, but it's free. And yes, it's completely safe. Very highly recommended.

2. CreditKarma.com: A site that will (really!) give you your credit score for free. What's more, they'll also tell you how your score stacks up to the rest of the country, and they give you a grade on various aspects of your credit so that you know exactly what you can do to improve it. Definitely worth checking out if you're considering getting a loan anytime soon, and good to look at periodically just to make sure everything is in line.

3. LendingClub.com and Prosper.com: These are peer-to-peer lending websites. Basically, a borrower can go on one of these sites and ask for a loan. Lenders look at all of the listings and choose people that they want to lend to. What's so cool about that? It takes the bank out of the equation, so borrowers get low interest rates while lenders get high returns. Over the past 3 years, lenders have averaged about 7%-9% returns on these sites. That sure beats the 0.25% you're getting in your bank account right now. If you're interested in trying this, send me an email first and I'll give you more info!

4. Zillow.com: Type in any address, and it will give you an estimated house price for that home. Prices are estimated based on recent sales in the area, as well as number of bedrooms, plot size, etc.

Okay, now on to the non-financial sites... :)

5. Fitday.com or MyFitnessPal.com: I'm anti-diet. Completely. They never seem sustainable, so then I always think, "Why even start, if it's not going to work?" Thus, I've never been on one yet. Unfortunately, Jenn's pregnancies were unkind to me. She was lucky, because at the end she got to have the baby and then nurse it for months afterwards. I, on the other hand, just took part in the weight-gaining festivities (she's having ice cream, so I guess I can!), but not the weight-loss part. The end result has been a 10 lb. gain with each kid. But in January, my brother-in-law showed me his cool iPhone app that kept track of your calories and told you how much you could eat in order reach your weight-loss goal. Lose weight, play with gadgets, and make cool graphs? I'm in! So, I signed up with Fitday to give it a try (My Fitness Pal is another site that does the same thing). Basically, you tell them how much you weigh now, and how much you want to weigh by a particular date. Then they tell you how many calories you can eat per day to reach your goal. Call it a diet if you want, but I like it because I can eat whatever I want (just not as much as I want), and it gives me an incentive to exercise since I get extra calories if I work out. The result? I've lost 15 lbs. since January (just 5 to go!). Even better, my weight has tracked the intended weight-loss line almost exactly on the cool graph! It really works just like they say it will. And when I'm done, I can keep using it, and it will tell me how many calories I can eat each day to maintain my weight after that. Pretty cool.

6. Sparkpeople Recipe Calculator: The only downside to Fitday is that it can be kind of a pain to enter in all of the food that you eat. (Sidenote: Perhaps one of the most effective aspects of Fitday is that it does make you enter in all of your food. Just realizing how many calories you use up on those handfuls of jelly beans can be a bit of a shock, in a good way! And sometimes, I'll skip that handful just so I don't have to go to the trouble of entering it in to the food log.) Fitday has a large bank of foods and recipes already in there that you can look up, but sometimes you're just not sure how many calories were in that Cuban Braised Beef that your wonderful wife made. Enter Sparkpeople Recipe Calculator, which will give you the full nutrition facts for any recipe that you enter in. Very handy.

Alright, I've shared mine. What sites do you use that we should know about? Leave us a comment with your favorites!