My Recommendations

Optimal index fund investing – done for you.

Betterment is my top pick for brokerage firms, and I’ve written about them extensively as a result (and only slid into their DMs a zillion times before procuring a community link!). I am especially partial to their Safety Net account, but recommend them for Roth IRAs and General Investing as well. Betterment guarantees you have great diversification.

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Private real estate investing – via crowd-sourced funds.

Fundrise enables individual investors to participate in large real estate deals, which means your investment actually goes to purchasing real estate with a very low correlation to the stock market (vs. a REIT, that behaves like a stock). Returns come from appreciation and rents. Fundrise is best for money that you’re comfortable locking up for 5 or more years.

Effortless, free 401(k) rollovers handled for you.

My preferred partner for 401(k) to IRA rollovers. Capitalize handles the rollover for you – you simply tell them where to find your old 401(k) and choose a home for your new IRA. The brokerage firm pays Capitalize, so the service is free to you. I used Capitalize to rollover two of my old 401(k)s and it was seamless.

CODE: KATIE2 | What I use for day-to-day, automatic tracking of transactions.

Copilot is my preferred budgeting app because it works seamlessly with my 22 different accounts — that way, I don’t have to manually track each and every expenditure. The code KATIE2 will double your free trial for Copilot if you want to give it a spin (ordinarily $5.99/mo. for an annual plan or $8.99/mo. for a monthly plan).

What I created to use for long-term monthly and annual planning.

The Wealth Planner is a robust planning tool for overall strategy: Think about it like the overall roadmap, while Copilot is the turn-by-turn navigation. The Wealth Planner helps you set goals and make a plan to get there, 12 months at a time. You can learn more here.

This was my gateway drug to financial independence. They cover a wide variety of topics and are beginner-friendly. You can listen here.

Nick Maggiulli is one of my favorite money writers because his work is steeped in — you guessed it — data. You can read his work here.

This podcast is a little more dense, but these two wealth managers from Canada break down complex investing topics. You can listen here.

Finally, I found a great solution for cheap, unlimited data. I recently switched and will never look back. I have the $30/mo. unlimited plan (12 months).

My brutally honest personal finance book reviews live here. My favorite? Quit Like a Millionaire.

The O.G. tax-hacking legend — a lot of my introduction to the idea of tax optimization was born on Brandon’s site. You can read his work here.