Today’s post is from financial expert and Credit Karma CEO Ken Lin. Prior to Credit Karma, Ken built predictive targeting models based on credit data and profitability metrics for Partners First. At the time, Partners First was a top 25 Credit Issuer.

5 favorites – A Web portfolio for managing your financial life online

There are 5 financial pillars that consumers should manage – here’s a quick look at a portfolio of 5 Websites that are up to the task and should be bookmarked as Favorites now. In general, these sites are focused on free tools that allow for anyone to actively manage their financial lives online.

1- Manage your money at www.mint.com – After just a few minutes of set-up, you can access all of your accounts in one place through a single sign-on, track expenses and project your budgeting needs out into the future. Another good option is www.wasabi.com.

2- Manage your credit score at www.creditkarma.com – Credit Karma offers free, unlimited access to your credit score, and useful tools to manage it. Credit is a hugely important component in our lives, whether you’re a student or a homebuyer, your current credit can have effects for 2-7 years into the future. For a full, free credit report, visit annualcreditreport.com.

3- Manage your investments at www.finance.yahoo.com – Yahoo! Finance offers a free resource for managing all of your investments in a single place online. There are other brokerage-specific Websites where you can manage a portfolio of investments, such as www.fidelity.com.

4- Manage your taxes at www.turbotax.com – TurboTax allows users to manage their taxes year-round. It’s amazing what a benefit it can be to have a single place to capture and manage tax information, such as business expenses, IRA contributions and charitable donations, among many other events. Another good option is www.hrblock.com.

5- Manage your insurance at www.insurance.com – Car, health, home, and life insurance options can be vast and complex, so it’s one of the things that many of us put on the backburner. But we shouldn’t, as it’s one of the simplest things we as consumers can do to ensure our financial futures. An insurance company that will actually offer better quotes from its competitors: www.progressive.com.

If you treat each of these 5 pillars of your financial life as equally important, and find sites like those recommended above that allow you to actively manage them, you’ll begin to see improvements that are only achievable with a well-balanced approach. And your financial well-being will become more than just a sum of its 5 parts.

photo credit: timtom.ch