Online Tool Reviews

My Best Investment So Far: Lending Club

July 1, 2010

With the volatility of the stock market, I have been interested in other investment opportunities. They can be hard to find.

So far, I am very pleased with the peer to peer lending model offered at Lending Club. I can honestly say that its simple to set up and use, and is providing me an average return of 14% so far. I’m so impressed in fact, that I would like to invest in this option rather than my 401k. At least for a bit.

Diversification always sounds like a good idea, but it isn’t lately in both real estate and no matter what stock or fund I seem to choose. But peer to peer lending feels good because I’m helping out someone with consolidating their debt, and I’m earning a little interest for doing it. A win-win.

Visit their site and find out more for yourself if you haven’t already. Plus, they give great incentives for you to try them out, with $25 in your pocket, and $25 for you if you refer your friends.

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Best Online Goal Tracking Tools for 2010

January 24, 2010

There are many online tools available for keeping track of and measuring progress on your goals. Many corporations have started to incorporate goal systems (Success Factors is one example) and S.M.A.R.T. goals. Not all goal systems utilize this method, however, it is widely accepted as an excellent way to achieve results with your goals. The following is a look at how to measure your personal goals and a review of some of the best online tools for measuring your goals.

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Review of GratitudeLog – “The Happiest Place on the Internet”

January 19, 2010

GratitudeLog.com is a fun social site that takes the basic concept of short updates from sites such as Twitter, and applies it to a specific concept, Gratitude.

You are able to mark someone’s comment as “Awesome!” or reply to it. You can follow people and they can follow you. Beyond that, you can send people “Appreciation” gifts (for free), which are simply little icons with a thoughtful note (like you can send on Facebook).

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Store & Share Family Addresses & Events Online

December 14, 2009

Around the holidays, I always send out emails to family members and friends alike in a frantic attempt to mail holiday cards. Why do I keep repeating this process? Because people move, or I get forgetful and don’t update the many places that I store addresses.

I was thinking about starting a Google Doc to share a long list of family contact information, but before I did, I did a quick search to see if there were any useful online tools that already solve this issue for me.

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Why Does Every Serious Blog Seem to Use Thesis and Is It Worth The Money?

December 2, 2009

My Take on Why Every Blog Under the Sun Seems to be Using the Thesis Theme

When I first decided to start blogging about my financial journey a little while ago, I found blog after blog after blog (and I could keep going) that uses the Thesis theme for WordPress, developed by Chris Pearson. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to fork over the money for a premium theme. A free theme would work right? Sure, but not if you want to do anything slightly custom to the design without editing ALL of the code. And not if you want to stop wasting lots of time tweaking and not actually blogging.

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Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit.com

November 24, 2009

Though Credit.com doesn’t offer as much detail or tools as CreditKarma.com, it did give me a higher overall score, which I found interesting. It ranked me as A to A- for all categories, where as on CreditKarma.com I had D in a few different categories such as length of open debt.

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Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit Karma

November 23, 2009

What I found most interesting was the section called “Report Card”. It ranks certain criteria that is used to determine your credit score from A through F. It was very helpful for me, because I realized something critical in the way I have been managing credit cards and how I will manage them moving forward.

I have to admit, I was one of the typical college students that fell prey to the open 3 or 4 credit cards during the freshman orientation. I didn’t spend a lot on these cards, but when I wised up, I took the advice of someone that I should close any cards that I’m not using as that negatively affects my credit. So, I’ve been doing that over the years. When I don’t want a card any more, I close it. WRONG!

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Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline

November 21, 2009

FiLife, a partnership with the Wall Street Journal, provides an amazing tool for community interaction. From questions posted to the community via Twitter, reviews, comments, a blog and the option to become a writer in your area of expertise, it offers an wonderful and engaging opportunity for people to connect and share information around finance and money matters.

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Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands

November 19, 2009

Last in my series of online budgeting evaluations, moneyStrands, provided by Strands Labs, Inc. (developed social recommendation and personalization technologies), combines a modern approach to personal finance with widget style designs, and a personalize virtual spokesperson, Monica. Its a secure and free online tool, and auto-imports your accounts.

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