Plug “personal finance” into your Internet search engine and it’ll kick up enough Web sites to keep you reading until the federal trade deficit is wiped out; ’till the IRS says it’s sorry; and ’till and your kids return all the money they owe you (plus interest).
Virtually all the personal finance magazines, financial software companies, brokerage houses, banks, insurance companies and scam artists have their own Web sites with their own sometimes slanted advice on what you should do with your money.
We waded through the electronic muck to bring you a selection of sites that really can help you make sense of your finances. These sites passed our usefulness test, our not-hawking-too-many-products test and our essential this-site-is-free test. Click on.
FinanCenter (www.finan center.com) has more than 100 “calculators” that let you plug in your own financial stats to examine such issues as whether you’re better off renting or buying a place, how much you should put down on a car, how much it’ll cost you to raise a kid and how your finances would look if your spouse started working. (You may want to try that last one while you’re home alone.)
One of the coolest calculators is called “What will it take to become a millionaire?” You stick in your age, your current bank balance and how much you can save each month, and it’ll tell you how old you’ll be when (or if) the zeroes line up in your favor.
Investor Guide (www.investorguide.com) has info on personal finance (credit, loans, mortgages, banking and savings), investing (mostly stocks and mutual funds, but you’ll also find bonds, futures and options), and learning (basic financial principles and advice, such as be wary of free advice and don’t believe everything you see on-line).
The site offers stock quotes with a 10- to 30-minute delay. It also has tons of links to other mostly free personal finance sites and a huge archive of easy-to-read articles. This is one to bookmark.
When you’re ready to invest in a real-time quote service, check out BrokerLINKS (www.brokerlinks.com). It’s a roundup of such services and their fees. You’ll also find links to a comprehensive list of on-line brokers and a comparison of their trading fees, as well as links to other personal finance Web sites.
CNN’s financial network site (www.cnnfn.com) starts you off with a digestible dose of the latest market and business news. Quotes are on a 20-minute delay. There’s a searchable directory of businesses, so you can find someone who’s selling what you want to buy.
Microsoft Investor (www.investor.msn.com) has lots of data on stocks and mutual funds. You’ll find earnings estimates, company profiles, analyst recommendations, discussion groups and on-line trading through a dozen brokerage houses (trading you have to pay for). You can set up the site to track your own real or imaginary portfolios and the system will quickly e-mail you if any of your holdings move significantly.
If quarterly statements, earnings estimates and balance sheets turn you on, then Morningstar (www.morningstar. net) is a site to behold. You can’t find a better collection of profiles and ratings of thousands of stocks and mutual funds. You can also track your own portfolios here. The “Learn” section also explains Investing 101 for fledglings.
Quicken, the personal finance software company, has a Web site (www.quicken.com) with plenty of stock quotes, news and advice. You can enter the ticker symbols of all those stocks you meant to buy and see how rich you’d be if you had.
The insurance section also provides quotes and advice on choosing from different kinds of policies. The home and mortgage page contains mortgage news and advice on buying, selling and owning a home. You can post your homeownership questions for an expert to answer here. There’s more on retirement, banking, borrowing, saving, spending and taxes. The site also links you to half a dozen on-line brokerage firms.
Before you blow your new inheritance on hot tips, check out Web Investors’ (www.webinvestors.com) “Scary Stories,” true tales of market plunges and worthless stocks. If you’ve got horror stories to spare, e-mail them in through the site.
The Freebies section lists financial newsletters, booklets and videos that are yours for the price of a toll-free phone call. A few recent selections: a video on trading options from the Options Industry Council (800-952-TOOL); a booklet on improving your business e-mail from Fabrik (800-732-2745) and a pamphlet on investing overseas from Invesco (800-525-8085). Log onto this site if your broker is always using big words to intimidate you. There’s an investors’ dictionary that defines everything from ADR to zero coupon bonds.
Another good place for definitions and answers to frequently asked questions about the market is The Investment FAQ (www.invest-faq.com).
Need money for school? The Financial Aid Information Page (www.finaid.com) will tell you who’s giving it away and hold your hand through the application process. The site links you to free scholarship search sites and lists phone numbers for everyone in the financial aid business.
The National Association of Realtors (www.realtors.com) helps you find the house you want, where you want it, with the features you want. You start with a map of the U.S. and keep clicking until you’re narrowed down to a specific neighborhood. Then fill in how much money you’re willing to part with, how many bedrooms and baths you want, and whether you simply can’t live without a fireplace or a waterfront view. It’ll spit out a detailed list of available homes that meet your criteria, along with contact phone numbers.
Ram Research Group’s Web site (www.ramresearch.com) evaluates credit cards and alerts you to those with no annual fees, low interest rates and rebate offers. The rebate card section, for example, lists all the airline affinity cards, their annual fees and phone numbers to apply for them. There’s also info on gold cards, secured cards and credit union cards.
At InsWeb (www.insweb.com) you can input your stats and get automatic quotes on auto, life and health insurance policies from the big insurance companies. You can request applications on-line or, if you prefer, they will have agents contact you. The site can also help you figure out how much insurance you should have.
Even though the IRS Web site (www.irs.ustreas.gov) is annoying and patronizing, we have to admit it serves a valid purpose: providing forms that you can download or have faxed to you at 10 p.m. on April 14.
