What are your biggest personal finance pain points?

[Chandan Lodha]

What are your biggest pain points with personal finance? What problems do you have that you wish someone would solve?

Some of mine are:
- Splitting recurring expenses with roommates (e.g. rent, utilities, internet, etc.)
- Figuring out how to invest my money and how much to save
- Figuring out what to put into retirement savings (e.g. 401k)
- Setting up a budget and adhering to it

[David Hanson]

@Chandan Lodha
This is one of my favorite topics. Mint.com is a great resource to get started. Setup all of your accounts and start categorizing your expenses. It will start to learn your habits and get easier and easier. Most banks and credit cards now have some of these features built in. I try to never have cash and only use credit. Many people are afraid of credit. This comes down to self control and when it comes to investing in real estate, smart credit is your best friend. The bank is willing to loan you money on a monthly basis for free and most even give you rewards on top of that. Cash back, air miles, points, etc. 5% off groceries, gas, restaurants, 2% cash back on everything, double or triple points on airlines and travel. I have 33 credit cards and each has a purpose. I don't carry them all around like George Kastanza but I do keep my everyday card, gas card, and restaurant card with me. I have all of them attached to http://bit.ly/ACORNZZ. I use acorns for investing my spare change off of every transaction. It rounds all your purchases up to the nearest dollar amount and then invests that money in stocks and real estate on your behalf. Also when making large purchases you can use cash back websites. My favorite is http://bit.ly/TopCashbacks. You basically go to any site and add your items to the cart then before checking out sign into your cash back website and search the store your buying from. Then click cash back it will redirect you to the site and just check out. They act as an affiliate middle man and pay you a percentage of your total purchase back. So for example. You shop on amazon and spend $100. Use your amazon store card and get 5% cash back and use cash back website for an additional 3% back and you just saved $8 just for using your tools. You can also stack these with coupons for more discounts and you can purchase gift cards at a discount and then really stack it up. I used to do retail arbitrage and I could save tons of money this way. You can save around 55% at kohls.com all year if you know the correct steps. So be smart and selective and dramatically cut down on your monthly spending is the first step. Get all of your roommates to make a house budget on google drive then share it amongst everyone. Maybe even volunteer to be the one who purchases all house consumables and then have them pay you a reimbursement based on normal value + tax and then use the strategy I just mentioned to save around 10% on trash bags, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc. now your making money and you get to choose what your buying. Let me know if you have any questions. I love this stuff