When I started my journey to Financial Independence in 2016, I found it difficult to find resources that actually provided any value to me (there’s a lot of crap out there).
That is why I created this page. I wanted to catalog the resources that I actively/personally use that have helped me in one way or another.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the resources below offer referral commissions while others do not. Whether a company offers a referral link or not ultimately does not affect my decision for listing it here. Any resource listed is based solely on the value that I have personally gotten out of it.
Data Visualizations
Tableau Public
Do you run a website/blog that could benefit from data visualizations that tell a story? I publish all the data visualizations that I’ve created for this blog on my Tableau Public Profile. If you are interested in any of those visualizations, you can go ahead use them via the following steps:
- Click on whatever visualization you are interested in
- If you are looking for an interactive HTML visualization…
- In the upper-right hand corner, click the ‘Share Icon’ (third from the left)
- Copy & paste the embedded code into a ‘Custom HTML’ block (if using WordPress)
- If you are looking for a static image of the visualization…
- In the upper-right hand corner, click the ‘Download Icon’ (third from the right)
- Click ‘Image’ and a .PNG image will download
If you do leverage any of my visualizations, all I ask for in return is a Dofollow link back to this website. That’s it.
Furthermore, if you have an idea for a visualization, I would be more than happy to create it for you at no cost. Again, the only thing I ask for in return is a Dofollow link back to this website.
If that is something that you are interested in or if you have any questions, drop me a line @ timevaluemillionaire[at]gmail[dot]com.
I will do my best to get back in touch with you as soon as possible.
Investing
Vanguard
Founded in 1975, Vanguard is an American investment management company that has become the go-to brokerage firm for those in the FI community. This is primarily due to their mutual funds offering some of the lowest possible expense ratios in the business. They accomplish this in part because of their unique business structure; Vanguard is owned by the individuals who own their mutual funds and NOT private shareholders. If you want to start investing and don’t know where to start, Vanguard’s index funds are an amazing place to begin.
Financial Tracking
FI Calc
One day I stumbled upon this post upon on the Financial Independence subreddit. A user by the name of u/james_please created this absolutely epic FI Calculator application. If you are looking for an easy to understand application to evaluate your Financial Independence options, look no further then here.
Portfolio Visualizer
Portfolio Visualizer is a website that allows you to evaluate investment decisions using over 30+ different mathematical models. The true value of this website lies in the ability to create fully customizable models that tend to be more accurate then similar simulations offered by tools like Personal Capital. From a FI perspective, I have found the the Backtest Portfolio and Monte Carlo Simulation models to be the most valuable.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a secure online application that allows you to track your overall financial health in one convenient location. The tool itself can provide you with automated financial dashboards that track your budgeting, net worth, entire investment portfolio, and can even run basic retirement simulations. I primarily use it for monitoring my net worth as well as the convenience to view all of my individual accounts in one place.
Lifestyle
Amazon
Let’s be honest, you can find almost anything on Amazon. I have even found live lady bugs that I plan on purchasing in order to deal with aphids in my garden! It is hard to beat the convenience of being able to order anything (like lady bugs) with a few taps on your phone. If you want to support this blog at no additional cost to you, I have included my referral link above.
Blogging
Bluehost
I currently use Bluehost for hosting Time Value Millionaire and could not be happier with their service. I was initially drawn to them because of their reputation for making it easy to set up a website (it was). Given that I had zero prior experience with creating websites, this was very important to me. The other important factor was that their hosting plans are relativity affordable. So if you are looking to start your own blog or website, I would definitely recommend them.
Genesis Framework
When I had first had the idea for Time Value Millionaire, I swore to myself that I would use one of the free themes offered by WordPress. However, after searching through the different themes, I couldn’t quite find one that fit the design that I had in mind. After some research, I settled on leveraging the Genesis Framework for TVM. Not only did I find a theme that matched what I was looking for, but have also enjoyed the overall performance of Genesis.