Resources

Summer 2016.

Travel Resources:

Here are a great list of travel blogs and sites that you may enjoy in regards to traveling, specifically with a family.

Want to learn about points and miles? Check out Million Mile Secrets and The Points Guy.

Overwhelmed with credit card/miles and don’t know where to start? I started with Marriott Card (best benefit is 7 nights + x amount of miles to most major airlines), Chase Sapphire Card and Starwood American Express (not sure how much longer this one will be around). These seemed the most flexible for me until I learned more.

Hotels.com and Rocketmiles.com for hotel reservation if you are not using a specific travel rewards card or hotel chain.

Car rental? Try  Autoslash.

Different ways the world talks about Continents. The 5 to 7 Continent models.

College Planning:

If you are just getting started investigating 529s and general cost of college, I encourage you to start here. Probably the best site I found so far. It helped me a lot with my initial planning.

Financial Independence:

Getting started on your own path to financial independence? I encourage you to watch this eye opening PBS documentary called The Retirement Gamble. Then, take a read through these articles, which I re-read often for encouragement. Why “Earn More” vs “Save More” Is The Wrong Debate, The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Retirement, Zero to Millionaire in Ten Years, How We Reached Financial Independence in Our 30s, and A Millionaire Is Made 10 Bucks at A Time.

The blogs that I mention here are the ones I most often read regarding early financial independence.

For a very simple how to guide for saving and investments, I really love this The Simple Path to Wealth. I particularly love that he is writing this to leave as a manifesto for his daughter. He also writes about rent vs own issue very eloquently. Another excellent article on rent vs buy by Afford Anything blog here.

The Mad Fientist is also filled with all sorts of great information and tools. And this blog post on The Road to financial independence is a great read.

Financial Management:

I use mint.com to track my day to day spending and Personalcapital.com to track my investments and assess my 401k plan fees.

As for investing, I am partial to Vanguard index funds.

Simple yet effective interest calculator.

Inflation calculator.

Teaching kids about money resources