Financial Planning

Online banking has changed banking forever. It’s now it much easier to pay your bills, track your spending and even increase your savings. An online bank account can be a life-changer when it comes to achieving your financial goals.

To help you master your understanding of online bank accounts, we’ve compiled the following tutorials.

Note: This article series is still being written. This means you should subscribe by giving me your email in the box on the upper right — I’ll send you future articles.

Managing Your Money

An online bank can send you email notifications when your online bank account runs low on funds, let you pay your bills online, allow you to instantly see how much money you have at any given time, and even hook your bank account up to your financial software to make your financial planning easier.

1. Why You Should Open an Online Bank Account
2. How to Use Quicken Online to Manage Your Money

Note: You don’t have to give up your traditional “brick-and-mortar” bank accounts. You can hook them up to an online bank, getting the benefits of both the traditional banks and online banks.

Savings Accounts and CDs

An online bank account isn’t just for managing and holding your money. You can also make your savings completely automatic by having the money electronically siphoned from every paycheck — out of sight, out of mind. You can also get way higher interest rates with an online bank CD or savings account.

1. How to Save Money Automatically
2. The Best Online Savings Accounts
3. The Best Bank CD Rates

Online Bank Account Reviews

There are plenty of internet banks for you to choose from. I’ve reviewed some of the more popular accounts for you to consider — this will insure you have enough information to make a rational decision regarding where you’ll put your money.

But, after going through them all, I finally decided to just throw my support behind ING Direct. They’re the bank that I do all my online banking with, and I don’t think I can find a better bank. They currently offer the second highest interest rate I’ve found for savings account, and their ease of use and costumer service is just… out of this world.

1. Main URL: ING Direct’s Website
2. Review: ING’s Online Bank Account

An online bank can help you keep up, manage and increase your money. The old days where a bank was just a place to store money are over — banks are much more than that.

How to Learn Financial Planning

Banking is just a small part of financial planning. Tragically, this is about as far as a lot of people get — leading to their financial downfall.

Financial security and happiness are a direct result of good financial planning. Check out our introductory series on topic, aptly called, “Financial Planning 101“. It’ll give you a quick overview of the basic pillars of a strong plan for your financial future.

You can also read our articles series on How to Make Money — this is our most politically incorrect articles series, by far. We take on the corporate myth that the only way to make an income is working for corporate America. It’s a must read.

Getting debt free is one of the most important achievements you can have on your financial journey. That’s why we wrote How to Get Out of Debt. You can learn how to take a simple, 5-step plan for ridding yourself of debt forever. A must-read.

Also, one of our most popular article series is on managing your own budget. Budget Planning 101: How to Budget Your Money explains how you can use free software to plan out every dime you’ll spend, making sure that you don’t accidentally ruin your financial future inadvertently.

If the above article series seem a bit too long for you right now, and you only have a few minutes to get something done, then read Financial Tips for Right Now or How to Save Money Automatically. Both show you how to change your entire financial life in just a few minutes.