How Nerdwallet Can Help You Save Money: A Comprehensive Review

NerdWallet is a personal finance website to help consumers and small businesses make financial decisions with confidence, provides financial guidance, and is very informative.

The website attains this goal through two main forms: well-written articles about finance, better loan rates, and various offers for financial products like credit cards. The website is also a finance app that allows you to track your net worth and cash flow, as well as get to know about your score.

The website is completely free and easy to use and is supported by offers and recommendations from providers. It gives a lot of insight into financial information. and through financial guidance that is given out on the website, consumers need to make rational decisions on matters of finance.

While the website shares some features with Credit Karma and Mint, it is not as sophisticated as the latter when it comes to account management.

Nerd Wallet has recently undergone changes that have made the site more streamlined and organized. This addresses previous criticisms of it being too sprawling.

The website has a five-star rating and added enough new content. There are tools to earn four out of five ratings as many users can now access the website through affiliate links.

One of the ways that make NerdWallet stays on top is through its extensive library of articles on finance. These articles cover a wide range of topics, from how to save money on groceries to the basics of investing. The articles are well-written and offer clear, actionable advice. This helps readers improve their financial literacy.

The website offers a variety of financial calculators. It also has tools that can help consumers make better financial decisions. These tools include a retirement calculator, a mortgage calculator, and a credit card comparison tool.

Each tool is easy to use and provides helpful information that allows consumers to make proper financial decisions.

NerdWallet’s website has recently gone through a redesign. Its new homepage features separate boxes for your cash flow, and net worth. This change has made the website less busy. And is now more focused on what’s important.

The website allows you to link to various financial accounts, including checking, savings, investments, and credit cards/loans. You can easily keep track of what’s happening in each of your accounts.

Nevertheless, there can be issues with the third-party service Plaid, which is responsible for securely handling connections for many sites. If you have a problem receiving a verification code from Plaid, the problem may lie with the source of the information.

In this case, you may need to log in to the bank site and update your contact information like a phone number and email to resolve the issue.

One of the things that set NerdWallet apart from other similar sites is that it doesn’t immediately inundate users with ads for financial products.

Generally, NerdWallet’s redesign has made the site more streamlined and user-friendly, with a focus on the most important aspects of personal finance.

The site’s ability to link to multiple financial accounts is a helpful feature. However, there may be occasional issues with third-party services like Plaid.

In terms of safety, NerdWallet is a secure website to use. It is important to take the necessary precautions. Users are encouraged to use a strong and unique password. They’re also asked to enable multi-factor authentication where possible to avoid fraud

NerdWallet partners with third-party platforms, including Plaid and Yodlee, to connect to users’ financial accounts securely. The website also employs industry-standard security controls and encrypts users’ financial data using 128-bit encryption.

I think this will keep off strangers who want to log into my account without my consent.

Consumers are advised to avoid the disclosure of their logins to strangers. Users are also advised to avoid any information on the website that may contain suspicious entries or that they feel could be useless.

NerdWallet’s user experience has gone a notch higher with its recent redesign, making the site more streamlined and easier to navigate. While the site can still feel sprawling at times, the dashboard has been cleaned up and organized logically.

The site’s content is divided into three primary areas: Our Top Picks (financial product reviews and recommendations), Guides & Tips (editorial content on various product areas), and Calculators (which cover a wide range of product types).

The My NerdWallet section, accessible through a link in the upper right, offers links to My Money (dashboard, credit score, and more), My Saved Items (offers saved by the user), and My Info (settings, password, and sign-out options).

The site’s improved organization and extensive content have contributed to NerdWallet’s four-star rating, up from its previous rating of three and a half.

NerdWallet is a free website that makes money through partnerships with financial product providers. These providers reward NerdWallet in exchange for promoting their products to users.

NerdWallet maintains that its reviews and advice are based on research conducted by its staff. They say that its partners have no influence beyond the promotion of their products. 

For users who want to take a deeper dive into their finances, My NerdWallet is the section to explore. Under the My Info link, users can find the Net Worth section, which displays a user’s net worth number at the top of all their financial accounts linked. If not, users can connect their accounts from this page.

The Net Worth section also features a graph illustrating a user’s net worth over various date ranges. You also see charts for individual elements of their net worth, such as cash, investments, property, credit cards, and loans.

This information is important to those looking to understand their overall financial situation and plan for the future. You get help in tracking your cash flow, credit score, and report.

On the dashboard page, users can access their bank account, divided by type, along with their balances. Clicking on individual accounts takes users to their account details page.

Here, you’re offered offers the option to hide the account from the net worth total and all calculations and other screens.

It is also easy to set up an account. 

Clicking on the Transactions tab leads users to the account register. We like this as it is more graphical and aesthetically pleasing than traditional paper account registers. Clicking on a transaction opens a window that displays its Account, Date, Amount, Place, Type (spent or received), and Category.

Transactions can be edited if needed. But NerdWallet does a good job of automatically guessing and assigning categories. However, the category list is very basic and cannot be edited by any editor. Mint, for example, allows users to create their subcategories.

Users can also hide individual transactions from calculations.

NerdWallet’s transaction management is fairly basic and lacks some options that competitors provide. Add the ability to flag a transaction, split it across categories, add tags, and include an attachment.

Nevertheless, users can manually add transactions, which can help track cash-based transactions.

The Cash Flow page is the second major topic covered in My NerdWallet. The page displays a user’s estimated income. You can add or change this, along with totals for what has been spent so far in the current month.

And any upcoming bills that NerdWallet knows about.

Users can also add their bills for tracking purposes. But cannot pay them through the site as is possible with Quicken Deluxe. The final number shows what is left to spend for the month.

The right side of the Cash Flow page displays graphs comparing a user’s income. Users can also click a link to see related transactions.

The page also includes spending details, such as top expense categories and places where the user has spent the most money.

The estimated income may work well for W-2 employees, but it may not be as accurate for self-employed people. However, having an estimate can still be useful.

NerdWallet’s third major element is a user’s credit score, which is provided with a graph showing where the score falls across the possible range of 300 to 850 for TransUnion, which is what NerdWallet uses.

A historical line graph also shows how the credit has changed over time, for example from 2022, and can be viewed within date ranges from one month to two years.

Below this score, users can find suggested credit cards, as well as a list of the factors that contribute to the score. Clicking on each factor allows users to read more about it.

NerdWallet also provides tips and answers to common questions related to scores and finding the best credit card.

Users can access additional data, such as their complete TransUnion credit report.

Consumers who operate higher-earning bank accounts are more likely to have a good score. Having a good score can be very fulfilling for users.

NerdWallet’s interactive tools are planned to educate users about how scores work. For example, the Credit Simulator estimates how a user’s score would be affected if certain financial steps were taken.

Those steps include things such as decreasing credit balances. Or letting a certain number of accounts go past due.

Finally, users can join an online community on the site.

NerdWallet’s mobile app for iPhone and Android is visually attractive and user-friendly. The app lacks most of the calculators and educational content found on the website.

The good news is that it does include the most important information a user would need on the go.

The Home button leads to a display of a user’s net worth. You can also see cash flow, with links to credit reports, popular calculators, financial products, and editorial content.

The Credit button takes users to their Credit page. On the other hand, the Cash Flow and Net Worth buttons open screens similar to those on the website.

The Marketplace icon takes users to a screen where they can browse and search for financial products, and the app does not bombard users with offers, which is a nice feature.

A link in the upper corner opens a menu of housekeeping functions, including information about linked accounts, support, and settings such as notifications.

Users can choose to be notified when their score is updated. Or when there is unusual activity in their spending.

Many users, including ones who got to know the website through referrals, can attest to the fact that this website works well for them.

NerdWallet is a comprehensive site that offers a wealth of financial advice articles, tools, and reviews for free. The site’s pages are visually appealing and the recent redesign has made the site more user-friendly.

NerdWallet offers users a combination of guidance, account access, credit score information, and suggestions for improving credit. The site has grown significantly over the last year.

While NerdWallet offers product-oriented educational content and tools, it does not offer the income and expense management that Mint and Quicken Deluxe provide.

Both Mint and Quicken offer credit scores, budgets, reports, and related guidance, as well as exceptional user experience.

Users may choose to use NerdWallet in conjunction with Mint or Quicken to achieve a comprehensive financial service experience.

Please let us know from this review what you’ve gathered that can also be helpful to other users.