The Financially Free Blog

Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

How to Choose the Best Rewards Credit Card for You

Deciding on your first rewards credit card is exciting, but it can also be tricky. All of your friends (and everyone on the internet) have an opinion about what is “the best” rewards credit card—but what is right for others may not necessarily be right for you. Consider these three questions before you jump on applying for your first rewards credit card.

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

How to Support The LGBTQIA+ Community With Your Dollar

Pride is so much more than partying, speeches about equality, rainbows, and lots of Gaga.

Money can be such a powerful tool when voting with your dollar. Here are a few ways you can support the LGBTQIA+ community with your dollar with an emphasis on Queer BIWOC owned businesses.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

3 Ways to Think About Your Expenses

What comes to mind when you think about your expenses? Maybe rent, food, transportation, shopping, personal care, and so on. Your expenses are anything that you spend money on and they are the main building blocks of a budget. But before you create a budget, you need to fully understand what your expenses are, and — just as importantly — how they impact your budget differently.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

How to Automate Your Savings

We all wish there was an “easy button” when it comes to saving. While we don’t have that (at least, not yet!), we do have the next best thing: automation. Automating your savings takes the guesswork out of whether and how much to save. We only have so much time, attention, and focus.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

What is Cash Stuffing? And How to Make it Work Today

As many people’s budgets have gotten tighter over the past year, there has been a resurgence of interest in simple but effective ways to manage money. One of those trends you might have caught in news headlines or on TikTok is cash stuffing. 

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

How to Talk to Your Friends About Money

Our closest friends are those that we feel comfortable talking to about anything and everything! Conversations between good friends can easily flow from fascinating projects at work, to latest updates on our dating lives, to a good book we just read. And yet, one topic tends to remain taboo among even the best of friends, and that is money!

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Salary Negotiation Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Salary Negotiation Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

3 Ways to Keep a Job You Love When You Aren’t Being Paid Enough

We’ve all heard the saying, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Securing your dream job can feel like winning the lottery—unless you aren’t getting paid enough. If you are struggling to live your best life on your salary, you have a few options for trying to make it work.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

What You Can Learn About Organizing Your Finances From the Home Edit

The popularity of The Home Edit Netflix show has proven that there is something widely appealing about getting organized. Organizing your finances feels just as good as organizing your physical space. Follow the four step organizing method from The Home Edit organizing pros to get your finances in order: edit, categorize, contain, and maintain.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

6 Options for Affordable Mental Health Care

When you’re struggling with your mental health, dealing with your finances feels exponentially more difficult. If you feel anxious about your debt, you may avoid opening bills and rack up late payments. Ironically, even though mental health challenges can make it harder to address financial issues, the expense of getting mental can be a barrier in and of itself. If cost is standing in your way of getting therapy or other mental health care, consider these options.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

When Should You Use Your Emergency Fund?

So many personal finance experts (us included!) preach about the importance of having an emergency fund. We do this for a reason! A recent survey found more than two-thirds of Americans worry that their emergency savings would not even last them one month. But sometimes, we focus so much on the why and how of building an emergency fund that guidance about how and when to use your emergency fund falls by the wayside. 

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Elizabeth Landau, COO of GreenPortfolio Elizabeth Landau, COO of GreenPortfolio

Is ESG Investing the Same as Impact Investing?

As awareness and anxiety over climate change, human rights, and other social issues increases, financial products are increasingly called upon as drivers of change. According to a 2021 report from Morgan Stanley, 99% of millennials are interested in sustainable investing.

Unfortunately, it may not be immediately clear how to green your portfolio. 

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

3 Things Holding You Back from Getting Help With Your Finances

Many people struggle with their personal finances. In fact, according to a recent survey, more than three-quarters of Americans feel anxiety about their financial situation. Action is the antidote to anxiety—you have to address your finances head on to see improvement. But sometimes, you don’t even know where to start.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

How to Manage Your Finances Through Mental Health Challenges

We’d all love to be on top of our finances, but we are not always in the right headspace to do that—especially if we’re facing mental health challenges. Mental health and financial health are so intertwined. Financial stress can be the source of mental health challenges and mental health challenges can cause financial stress. Either way, you need to focus on what is causing the stress first.

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

How Do You Achieve FIRE?

Want to retire early? Who doesn't!? Follow these five steps and you’ll be on your way to achieving financial independence.

First, let’s define our terms. FIRE is an acronym that stands for Financial Independence/Retiring Early. Typically people working towards FIRE aim to reduce expenses and/or increase income so that they can invest enough to live off of their savings before they hit “traditional retirement age.”

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

Brokerage Account Vs Retirement Plan: Which is Best

So you’ve successfully saved for an emergency fund and now you’re wondering: what next?  Knowing where to focus most of your money depends largely on your personal goals and the amount of risk you’re personally willing to take on in your investments. Here’s how to weigh your options and decide how to focus your resources. 

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

What is the Stock Market and How to Invest

If you’re not a seasoned investor, the world of investments can seem intimidating. Between the confusing jargon and the constantly changing nature of the markets, many people choose to put off investing.

Here's an investing 101 guide to get you started.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

8 Environmentally-Friendly Moves & How They Affect Your Finances

It’s no secret that human behavior is altering our environment, and it’s only natural to want to help, but figuring out where to start can feel overwhelming—especially when changes to help the environment come with an added cost. Luckily, there are a lot of environmentally-friendly moves you can make that will actually save you money.

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The Financial Gym Team The Financial Gym Team

7 Trainer Recommended Weekly Spend Tracking Techniques

Tracking your weekly spending is an essential part of sticking with your Financial Plan! Just like diet and exercise, there are a million different ways to go about it. With each method, you will see great success stories and great failures. There is no right or wrong way to do it, but you do the work to experiment and find the right system that works and is sustainable for you.

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Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer Kylie Lipinski, A Certified Financial Trainer

The FinGym Budgeting Method (And Why It Works)

At TFG, we’re focused on giving you a great financial foundation and helping you accomplish your life goals. For this reason, we follow a goals-based budgeting method. Goals-based budgeting focuses on determining how much you need to save each month to achieve your goals on a specific timeline. Learn about our budgeting method at the Financial Gym and why it works.

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