Best Credit Card Processing Service

The world of credit card processing might look like a maze of charges, fees, unwelcome chargebacks, equipment, new technologies, and contracts. That’s because it is. There are more than a few players involved (you, your bank, your customer, their credit card’s bank) and the fees are flying everywhere.

When I talked to 30 merchants, I heard a lot about how opaque the industry is. “It actually reminds me quite a bit of shopping for a mortgage,” said Mark Aselstine of Uncorked Ventures, an online specialty wines retailer. “I’m sure there are some back-end payments going on that the average merchant simply cannot be aware of.”

There’s enough happening when you’re running your own business that you can’t afford to get mired down in choosing the best credit card processing service — so I tallied up the fees for 129 different providers, found the standouts, (including my top pick, Payment Depot) and have a few tips on how to evaluate which is best for your own business.

“Trying to figure out the full cost of credit card processing is hard. In the beginning of my business I was lost and had to do the research to understand what each charge was. It can be quite complicated if you are not familiar with the fees and associated terminology. Once you understand the terms, comprehending each statement is so much easier.”
Nicola Ford
HAUTEheadquarters.com

Our Picks for The Best Credit Card Processor

Full disclosure here: There’s no one best credit card processor for everyone. No matter who you are and what kind of business you have, you are going to have to find out the rates and do the math yourself. The coffee shop on the corner and the auto mechanic next door will probably have different “bests” — and that makes sense when you think how much money those businesses are charging, and how frequently. You get to define your own “best” by the nature of your business, but there are a few hallmarks of a great credit card processor: transparent rates, the right equipment, and strong customer service that makes it easy to get set up and just as easy to troubleshoot. In my research, I found five standout services to give you a great starting point:

• Payment Depot, Best for Large Transactions
• Shopify Lite, Best Hybrid: Online & Brick-and-Mortar
• Square, Best for New Startups
• PayPal, Best for Early-Stage Ecommerce Merchants
• Dharma Merchant Services, Best for Established Nonprofits

Know the Players and Their Prices

The essential purpose of a credit card processor is to assess the risk of obtaining cash from a purchaser’s bank on your behalf — it is verifying that there are enough funds to cover the purchase and backing it for a few days. In addition to delivering the funds from the bank to your business, it’s taking on risk.

The bank that issued your purchaser’s credit card is a partner in sending those funds to you; it also works on behalf of the buyer in the event of a charge dispute, refund, etc.

Who’s paying the cost for these services? You, the merchant, in the form of fees (although many will pass those costs onto their customers by building them into the prices).

“It’s nearly impossible to figure out what the full costs of credit are. First, there are many plans. Do I want one with a per-transaction charge or not? How about a monthly charge? How does the percentage rate factor? But it doesn’t stop there. If I do a card-not-present transaction, the fee is greater than a card-present transaction. If I don’t provide the CVV, the fees increase yet again. Foreign transactions also have a different rate. Visa is different than MasterCard is different than Discover. It’s pretty much impossible to figure out the cost of credit for any given transaction, other than on some kind of average over the monthly billing period.”
Tim Thoelecke Jr.
President
InOut Labs

To dissect what it all means — and who pays whom — consider the players in every transaction:

There’s you, the merchant.

You have a product or service that is sold, and that sale is facilitated when you accept a credit card payment.

If item A is $100 with tax, you swipe the customer’s card for $100 and the journey begins.

Then, there’s your customer (or, as the credit card sees them, the cardholder).

Your customer is agreeing to pay pack their credit card company the $100 it fronted them. This can be a pretty good deal for the credit card company: If the cardholder carries a balance, they will likely end up paying more than $100 for that swipe in the long run.

Players #3 and #4 are your credit card processor and bank (also called the “acquiring bank” because it’s the one getting the money, not sending it).

These two guys are closely linked, with your processor doing the work of assessing your business and credit score, setting up your account, and sending you a monthly summary of transactions, charges, and fees.

When a card is swiped, a message is relayed electronically to your customer’s bank (via the Visa Net or MasterCard System, for example) to determine if they are approved for the $100 transaction. If they are, that money is deposited into your bank account.

The final character is the bank that issued your customer’s credit card.

These are the banks associated with the Visa or MasterCard (or Discover card, etc.) and they charge your credit card processor a fee for their service. That’s called an interchange rate. These rates vary by card type and transaction; a Rewards Visa has a different rate than a Visa Debit, and a swipe with a confirmed CVV has a different rate than one without. (Check out the 2016 rates for both Visa and MasterCard.)

If their cardholder (your customer) convincingly claims not to have received a good or service that they paid for, a “chargeback” to the merchant is sent via the issuing bank. The legitimacy of the claim is subject to the merchant’s evidence of delivery or non-delivery of goods (various processors are more successful with chargeback reversals than others).

Your credit card processor pays the interchange fee. It covers that cost — and makes money — by charging you a marked-up fee (and sometimes a membership fee too). It also might lease you the equipment (another ongoing charge), or have you buy it outright.

There are three different pricing structures a credit card processing service can use to mark up its fees and make a profit:

1. Tiered pricing. The credit card processor ranks every type of transaction and sets fees for each one — its fee for a card-not-present transaction, for example, will be different than for a card-present transaction. This type of structure is famously complicated and opaque: Processors don’t share what type of transaction is assigned each rate, or even what those rates are.
   I do not recommend this method. This is the old-school way of doing it, and you’ll find this pricing model at processors like Cayan, Flagship, and Chase Checkout. Under some circumstances, you might be able to score a great rate under a tiered structure, but to do so — and know for sure — requires an incredible about of diligent research. Either of your other two options is likely a far better choice.
2. Interchange plus. The processor charges an up-front fee plus whatever the interchange rate is on the transaction. This fee might be a per-swipe cost (say 25 cents), a percentage of the swipe, or a bit of both. With interchange-plus, you know up front what you’ll be paying each player, but your fees will fluctuate based on card and transaction type.
3. Flat rate. The processor sets a rate that’s the same for every single one of your transactions: say 2.9 percent of the swipe plus 30 cents. These rates are typically higher than interchange plus rates, but they’re always consistent. Every swipe has that same set fee.
   If you go with a flat-rate processor, and it charges 2.9 percent + 30 cents, it’ll take $3.20 of your $100 charge.

“Companies like Shopify Payments, Stripe, and Square decided to step up and say, ‘Forget this, customers don’t understand what the heck this means. Let’s just make it easy for them and charge them one rate for all transactions. We might make a ton of money on one order with a debit card and lose money on a business credit card order, but in the long run we’ll still make enough profit to make it worthwhile for us to stay in business.’

By removing the complexity, business owners can see the cost, agree to it, and move on with their lives. That’s why those processing services are seeing so much success.”
Allen Walton
SpyGuy Security

To choose the rate structure that’s best for you, simply run the numbers.

Let’s look at $10,000 in transactions for two very different companies.

Average Ticket Price	Processor Rate + Fee	Cost	Percent of Transaction
$2 cup of coffee	1.8% + 30 cents	$0.34	17%
$2,000 sculpture	1.8% + 30 cents	$36.30	1.82%

You can see that the transaction fee matters a lot if you’re doing lots of small purchases — taking $0.30 out of a $2 swipe is a much larger percentage than that same $0.30 out of a $2,000 sale. For fewer larger purchases, it’s the rate that’ll have the bigger impact.

Processing equipment (terminals, swipe readers, etc.) can also add costs. If the equipment isn’t free, I recommend purchasing instead of leasing. Arif Gangji (Neon Rain Interactive), president of a Denver-based web development firm that works with a lot of ecommerce clients, agrees: “If a business has an in-store point-of-sale system, they are sometimes contractually tied to their processor long-term if they lease the unit,” he says. “Processors love leased credit card machines because that binds the client. Plus, it is primarily all profit for the processor after the first few months.”

Price matters, but it might not mean everything.

I found across the board that no merchant was happy with unclear fees or murky rates. Everyone simply wanted to know what they were paying. In fact, there were a number of merchants who said they’d rather pay more just to know what they were getting, and not having to stress over whether or not they were being swindled.

The Best Credit Card Processors

Payment Depot
Overall Best for Large Transactions

Payment Depot de-complicates its rates with a simple pricing structure: the interchange fee plus between $0.05 and $0.25 per transaction and a monthly fee of $29 to $99. (The higher your monthly fee, the lower your transaction fee.) The big standout here: It doesn’t charge any additional percentage of the swipe fee. That said, it includes a slew of lower-price, mass-consumer clients including Subway, Domino’s Pizza, and Fantastic Sams — but if you’re a small business, Payment Depot is a good choice if your business model is based on fewer, larger purchases.

Going beyond price, Payment Depot does a good job educating customers on how the credit card processing industry works. It provides 24/7 customer support, intuitive website navigation, plus the full range of equipment options: a Verifone terminal; Clover for POS, chip, and contactless payment stations; and mobile options. There are no service contracts and no cancellation fees, and the company will either reprogram existing terminals you already own or sell equipment outright at wholesale pricing.

“Payment Depot charges a flat yearly ‘membership fee’ based on the annual credit card charges you will run, (mine is $700) and that is how they make most of their money. My credit card charges went from 3.5 percent to 1.6 percent by switching to Payment Depot. With my past processor, each month I was handing over almost 2 percent of my profits.”
Ryan McEniff
Minute Women Home Care

Shopify Lite
Best for Hybrid Online & Brick-and-Mortar Merchants

This is a great credit card processor for businesses that have customers in both online and in-person retail environments. Even if you are in one but might expand into the other, Shopify Lite is worth a good look.

Shopify excels at the online space, but it understands the fluidity of retail. If you have a store that, for example, might expand for just a season into a pop-up shop, it provides an extensive tutorial explaining how that might work — even for merchants who have never ventured offline before.

“If you need a full service website, shopping cart, and credit card processor, Shopify is a great option to get up and running quickly without needing a lot of technical experience.”
David Batchelor
DialMyCalls.com

That service-simplicity factor is evident in many other respects. Even with the Lite plan (other plans are Basic, Pro, and Unlimited) there is 24/7 support, including live chat. In my chats, the customer service was extremely friendly, helpful, and patient. The Lite plan doesn’t limit how many products you can sell or how much file storage you get. The website is simple to navigate (with lots of educational information and an FAQ section) and has easy-to-understand terms of service.

The pricing structure – 2.7 percent + $0 (in person) and 2.9 percent + $0.30 (online), with a $9 monthly fee — likely won’t beat out an interchange plus model, but you’ll always know how much you are paying with every swipe. For equipment, a simple $19 card swiper can be purchased (the first one is free); its NFC (near-field communications) chip reader costs $149.

The downsides: Shopify is designed to process credit cards, not debit cards. Some debit cards can be processed as credit, but an extra (more expensive) terminal has to be added to accept them all. Shopify also has a reputation for being unwieldy when contesting chargebacks. If you expect a lot of them, opt for Square, which has a similar pricing model, but $250 in chargeback protection each month.

There is a very real argument that flat-fee processors like Shopify Lite, Square, and PayPal are, bottom line, more expensive than interchange-plus processors. That’s because interchange rates swing from 0.005 percent to more than 3 percent. In the lowest transactions, flat-fee processors still charge their same amount: between 2 and 3 percent. (Conversely, they lose money on transactions with higher interchange rates.)

If you sign up with a flat-fee processor, you’re paying for the convenience of clarity — and for a lot of small business owners, it’s worth it.

“Using Square, I know it costs X amount when I swipe a card through my reader, and X+Y if I type in the credit card number. It’s super simple for me to understand with Square versus other credit card companies. With others, there were a lot of hidden fees and agendas that make trouble for a small business owner who, at the end of the day, is just trying to make a living.”
Danita M. H.
Rated M Wine Infused Foods

Square
Best for Startups

You’ve likely seen the evidence of Square’s success: Its square card readers seem to be the way to pay at just about every food truck and farmer’s market stand these days. Square has proprietary-design equipment that is cool (both aesthetically and in function) and free when you sign up. But the real advantage is for new businesses, which often lack a credit history to qualify for other services.

Square also charges no ongoing monthly fees, which is really great if you’re running a seasonal business or a side gig, and no maintenance fees. You only pay when you make a sale.

Pricing is a flat-fee of 2.75 percent to 3.5 percent + 15 cents per transaction. That includes $250 in monthly chargeback protection, as well as inventory-management features, payroll functions, and online support. All of this is succinctly explained on an easy-to-read, easy-to-navigate website. For businesses that grow, Square is also willing to negotiate its fees to keep you on as a client.

I talked to Shaun Eli Breidbart, a performer with Liberty Comedy Corp, who depends on advance payments to secure performance gigs — he said price isn’t his biggest consideration. “With Square, I can send a payment link to the client and they can pay the deposit by credit card when signing a contract,” he explained. “I’m not super thrilled to give up 2.75 percent, but it does speed things up and makes clients more secure about paying 50 percent in advance. I’m sure that some rush to pay because they want the credit card rewards.”

PayPal
Best for Early-Stage Ecommerce

While PayPal is making headway into brick-and-mortar retail by providing card-reader equipment for in-person transactions, online transactions remain its core business and strength — and boy does it have that down.

PayPal’s payment portal integrates easily with websites. Customers can pay via PayPal with one click, and funds from one PayPal account can easily be transferred to other business accounts. It also easily integrates with accounting software like Xero. “Workflow and avoiding double entry are important to me,” says Thoelecke. If your credit card processor helps decrease time spent in the back office, then it may be saving you money through time and salary cost even if its rates are a bit higher.

Speaking of rates: PayPal’s are a straightforward 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction (a higher 3.9 percent plus a variable fixed fee is charged on international transactions). But, like Square, there are no fees charged for startup processes, no monthly costs, and there are no termination fees if you decide to go with another provider. It even has an invoice-creation system that works with a Microsoft Excel template and facilitates a direct payment from those invoices.

The PayPal website is a clean interface with lots of good educational materials, however 24/7 live chat and phone support are not provided.

Dharma Merchant Services
Best for Established Nonprofits

No processor that we could find works exclusively with nonprofits, but several offer special rates. The credit card processor that rose to the top in fundraising transactions is Dharma Merchant Services.

Dharma is a B Corporation, a distinction for its work with cause-related enterprises. It places equal emphasis on people and the planet as much as profit. In 2015, the company contributed $175,000 – 50 percent of its own profits — to nonprofit causes.

Dharma’s $15 monthly fee added to its low per-transaction fees – 0.25 percent + interchange + 10 cents (in person) and 0.35 percent + interchange + 15 cents (online) – are competitive, but they’re even lower for nonprofits: 0.2 percent + interchange + 10 cents (in person) and 0.3 percent + interchange + 15 cents (online). Compare these to PayPal (also popular with nonprofits), which has a flat nonprofit fee of 2.2 percent plus 30 cents.

These rates are still subject to variable interchange rates, of course. But as co-founder and president Jeff Marcous told us, Visa and MasterCard also have lower interchange rates for nonprofit transactions and donations. Dharma turns away for-profit and nonprofit clients with transactions totaling less than $10,000 per month, as well as those without an established credit history. Those restrictions enable them to provide a high level of customer service. “The idea is we want to build a community,” he says. “We have a high retention rate because we try to be present for our merchants.”

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Shopping for Credit Card Processing Service

Credit card processors are not a one-size-fits-all matter. Before you look at what the credit card companies offer, spend some time detailing the transaction of your business.

• Are you a startup or are you established?
• Are you selling online or by other means: over the phone, with a mobile reader, or at a cash register in-person?
• How many transactions to you process a month, and what is your average ticket cost? Do you make 5,000 transactions at $6 each, or 6 transactions at $5,000? Or 5,000 transactions at $5,000 each?
• Do you want to be able to track your cash payments in the same system, and do you want integration with your accounting software?
• Are you a nonprofit?
• Is your business high-risk? (Some businesses like gun sales, airlines, and even selling on eBay or Amazon as a third-party can be considered high-risk, so not every credit card processor will accept your application.)

Take Action

• Assess your business. What is the range of transaction sizes and with what frequency do small, medium, and large transactions occur? Got it? Now, run the math on the credit card processors you’re considering. With transparent pricing, it’s easy to see what you’d be charged. You can see who charges the lowest rate for your transaction mix and weigh that against each company’s perks.
• Do the math on your current plan (if you have one). Look at statements from your current provider and see if its fees and charges are as expected. Are the rates transparent? If not, it’s time to switch processors.
• Start accepting chip cards. As of October 2015, if you’re not accepting chip cards with a chip-card reader, you are on the hook for any fraudulent charges. This liability shift was created not by law, but by the banking and credit card processing industries to put more pressure on merchants to prevent fraud. If you don’t have and use an EMV reader on a “dip chip” card, you accept full responsibility for any fraud.
• Do a semi-annual checkup. Just like last summer’s clothes don’t always fit the following spring, your business may have changed enough that you need a new credit card processing service. Time to start negotiating!

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The Best Cheap Home Insurance

Finding the best cheap home insurance should be easy. Just call up some providers, compare prices, and pick the lowest one, right?

Not quite. Price isn’t always the best measure for comparison because insuring your home is a big deal: It’s not just protecting the four walls and the roof, but also all of your belongings and yourself too, in case someone slips on your front steps or is bitten by your dog. As such, stability and quality of service need to factor into your decision. Chances are you won’t care that you saved $10 a month if your insurer drops the ball after a burglary, or can’t deliver on a claim post-hurricane.

The hardest part of finding cheap homeowners insurance is doing your due diligence: getting quotes from a handful of providers to find which ones have the best rates for you. Rates vary widely from person to person, house to house, and location to location, and unexpected things can affect yours: basic demographics, home-specific upgrades, swimming pools, and certain dog breeds — even your credit score.

The Simple Dollar’s Picks for Cheap Home Insurance

Your rate will be different from your neighbor’s rate, even if you live in identical subdivision homes. At the nationwide level, we found a few companies that stood out from the rest, blending service, stability, and value.

• Amica
• Liberty Mutual
• Allstate

Now it’s up to you to compare their rates with the providers in your area. Pop your ZIP code into our quote generator to get started.

Compare Home Insurance Rates Enter your zip code below to find the cheapest home insurance rates for you.

How We Chose the Best Cheap Home Insurance

We used two criteria to assess the best cheap insurance companies: their services and price-related factors. We looked at each insurer’s availability (discounting companies that did business in fewer than 35 states); financial strength, as measured by independent agencies such as A.M. Best; customer satisfaction, as reflected in studies by J.D. Power and Consumer Reports; and whether the company offered the popular “open perils” coverage also known as HO-3.

To assess price, we looked at the number of discounts offered that can lower premiums, as well as customer satisfaction with their price (measured in the J.D. Power and Consumer Reports studies, as well as Insure.com rankings). Individual quotes, which can vary so widely from person to person, were only given weight in the case of a tie.

Amica

We’re big fans of Amica, and so are its customers. The company reigns in customer service studies, which means you’re less likely to encounter any runaround after submitting a claim. Customers are also very happy with their premiums relative to the level of coverage and service they receive. When we hunted down quotes in our all-up review of best homeowners insurance companies, Amica consistently came in cheaper than other insurers.

But will Amica be cheapest for you? Maybe; maybe not. Admittedly, the company doesn’t offer as many discounts as some of its competitors, which will dole out better rates for everything from storm shutters to deadbolts. However, because it sells direct to customers, local agents aren’t taking a cut of profits via commissions, which means the company can pass those savings onto you.

Liberty Mutual

Liberty Mutual really shines when it comes to discounts: You can save for all sorts of reasons, including bundling your home insurance with (for example) auto insurance, staying claims-free, purchasing a new home or renovating an old one, and getting a new quote before your old policy expires.

Compared to Amica, customers aren’t quite as satisfied with Liberty Mutual’s value. They may pay less, but some customers feel they don’t get as much for their money. For homeowners who never have to make a claim, that’s no biggy. But who ever plans on making a claim? That said, getting a quote will help you see whether Liberty Mutual’s discounts stack up significantly for you.

 Allstate

Like Liberty Mutual, Allstate has a wide range of home insurance discounts. They include popular price breaks for bundling policies and staying claims-free, as well as not-so-common discounts for not smoking and for being a new customer.

Also like Liberty Mutual, customers are divided on whether Allstate is a good value for the money: Some are satisfied; others aren’t. You’ll need a quote to see whether Allstate can deliver you the lowest rate.

Other Companies to Consider

We only considered companies that had a nationwide (or near-nationwide) reach, but customers are also big fans of smaller companies such as Erie, Auto-Owners, and Auto Club of Southern California (AAA). If they service your region, definitely get a quote. If you’re military, check out USAA, which customers routinely laud for its value and service.

Compare Home Insurance Rates Enter your zip code below to find the cheapest home insurance rates for you.

7 Steps to Avoid Overpaying for Homeowners Insurance

Several factors influence your home insurance rates. The most obvious include your home’s location, age, and construction type. Newer homes in areas with a low risk of natural disasters or crime are the cheapest to insure. But the list of things that affect what you pay goes on and on, which is why it’s especially important to get more than one quote.

Unfortunately, most of these things are beyond your control (unless you want to move). But there are still a few strategies you can use to reduce your home insurance bill.

Step 1: Buy Only What You Need

First, you’ll need to calculate the full cost of replacing your home in the event of a total loss. This is the amount it would cost to rebuild your home in the same location using similar materials at current labor costs. This number could be vastly different than your home’s market value, experts warn. A professional estimate can help if you’re unsure.

Second, you need enough to cover your possessions. A rule of thumb is a dollar amount equal to between 50 and 75 percent of what it would cost to replace the structure of your home. So, if you figure rebuilding would cost $250,000, you’ll want at least $125,000 to cover your belongings. Conducting a home inventory by listing important items and their values can help you arrive at a more exact number, and remember expensive possessions such as jewelry and fine art may require add-on coverage.

Third, you’ll need to think about liability — that is, what you’ll be responsible for if someone is hurt on your property. The minimum typically included in a standard policy is $100,000, but experts often recommend $300,000 to $500,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Finally, think about special situations, like where you would live if a natural disaster destroys your home. A standard policy might provide 20 percent of your rebuild cost for you to use on temporary housing, but you may have the option to add coverage. Also consider whether your home is at risk for disasters not covered by standard home insurance: Floods and earthquakes are often left out. In these cases, you’ll need separate policies to protect your home.

Step 2: Be Careful of ‘Actual Cash Value’

Even after you’ve determined a dollar amount for coverage, you’ll need to choose among three standard coverage levels for your home insurance policy:

• Actual Cash Value. This is the least expensive level of home insurance because it factors in the depreciation of your home and belongings, decreasing what these things are worth.
• Replacement Cost. This type of home insurance doesn’t factor in depreciation, but payouts are subject to policy limits.
• Guaranteed Replacement Cost. Like replacement-cost insurance, guaranteed replacement doesn’t factor in depreciation. However, it does allow you to exceed your policy limits, paying whatever it takes to replace your home and belongings. These policies are the most expensive and might be hard to find. Some insurers offer “extended replacement cost policies” instead, which pay up to 120 percent or 125 percent of your coverage amount.

Choosing actual cash value can indeed save you money on your premiums, but it could be at a steep cost in the event of a claim. Think about the shiny new TV you bought a few years ago. It’s still your pride and joy, but because it’s a few years old, your insurer isn’t going to pay you anything near what it costs to replace it with a new one in the event of a claim. Extend that principle to all of your other belongings and you’ll know why most experts recommend a replacement-cost policy instead.

Step 3: Lower That Deductible… Maybe

As with most types of insurance, the higher your deductible, the lower your monthly bill. When you make a claim, your deductible is the amount you agree to pay your insurance company before your coverage kicks in. Going as high as you can comfortably afford in the event of a claim can mean major savings. Raising your deductible from $250 to $1,000 can save you as much as 24 percent, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. A $5,000 deductible can save you as much as 37 percent.

Just remember that raising your deductible only makes sense if you have savings to pay the higher amount in the event of a claim. Hello, emergency fund.

Step 4: Think Discounts, Discounts, Discounts

No, there aren’t as many home insurance discounts as there are car insurance discounts, and the ones that do exist may not be heavily advertised. Make sure you ask if all applicable discounts have been applied when you’re getting a quote.

The most common discount is for multiple policies, otherwise known as bundling. Your insurer would love all your insurance business — home, auto, and life — and may give you a break on each policy because of it. But don’t assume that staying with the same company is automatically your cheapest option. Compare whether you’ll actually be paying less overall with the same company than you would with policies elsewhere. (You guessed it: Get some quotes!)

Step 5: Make Your Home a Safe Haven

You may feel safe at home, but it’s time to think like an insurance agent. That means adding as many safety features that are reasonable and eliminating risky elements.

Standard safety features such as deadbolts, smoke detectors, carbon-monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers may earn you a small discount. A security system can save you even more, depending on your insurer. Of course, security systems aren’t cheap, and you’ll want to balance the price of having one with any potential break (if there is one) on your insurance premium.

If your home is in a disaster-prone area, check on special modifications you can make to further reduce your premiums. Adding features such as storm shutters, storm-resistant garage doors, a stronger roof, and shatter-proof windows can help you save, too.

Finally, you may want to avoid the things that make insurance agents wake up in a cold sweat: swimming pools, pit bulls, trampolines, etc. The best things in life can actually be liabilities, and while they may be worth it, they will raise your rates.

Step 6: Polish That Credit Score

We love to preach the importance of a good credit score at The Simple Dollar, and we’ll do it some more.

Unless you live in the few states that prohibit it (California, Maryland, and Massachusetts), most insurers consider your credit score when calculating your premium — often with dramatic results. It’s a controversial practice, but the logic is if you have excellent credit, you’re less likely to file a claim and are rewarded with lower premiums; if you have bad credit, you’re seen as a greater risk.

Unfortunately, building good credit can be a time-consuming process, and it won’t be something you can do at the last minute before you buy insurance. However, given the range of financial dealings your credit can impact, it’s worth it to keep working on it.

Step 7: Always Shop Around

You’ll need to shop around to find the cheapest home insurance. Don’t assume a certain provider will be the cheapest home insurance company just because it was for your family or friends. Your home and circumstances are different and your bill will be different too.

Some companies will require you to call. Don’t be shy — it typically doesn’t take very long. Online quote tools will help you save time everywhere else, and some (like ours!) even allow you to compare quotes from several companies at once. Happy quoting!

Compare Home Insurance Rates Enter your zip code below to find the cheapest home insurance rates for you.

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The Best Online Personal Loans

If you’re thinking about taking out a personal loan, you’re in good company: CNBC reported in February 2016 that the number of people taking out unsecured loans jumped close to 30 percent in recent years, from 10.57 million in 2013 to 13.72 million in 2015, and another 24 million Americans are likely to take out a personal loan this year alone.

You’re also making a good financial move. (Yes, really!) But when you’re looking for a loan online, you’re faced with an onslaught of candidates ready to fork over cash in exchange for regular monthly payments — plus interest of course. With the best online personal loans, that interest will be fixed, with no fees tacked on and with low APRs. The loans themselves will come from reputable lenders, like my top pick Discover, so you can trust your money will come from, and return to, good hands.

The Simple Dollar’s Online Personal Loan Recommendations

After over 30 hours of research on 40 different companies, I found four online personal loan issuers that all offer the four key features of a good personal loan: no fees, fixed interest, low APR, and Member FDIC. These guys are a great place to start shopping — but be aware that your individual APR will vary depending on your credit score and other factors, so you might not get the lowest rate these loans offer. However, you’d still get a no-fee loan with a fixed interest rate.

• Best Online Personal Loans: Avant, Citizens Bank, Discover, LightStream
• Best Overall Experience: Discover
• Honorable Mentions: Earnest, SoFi, Wells Fargo

Personal loans are a really smart alternative to credit card debt.

A personal loan is often called an “unsecured loan,” and that’s exactly what it means: A bank or a private lender loans you money without securing collateral. If you were applying for a mortgage loan, for example, the collateral would be your house; if you could not make the payments, the bank could foreclose on the house and repossess it.

With a personal loan, there’s nothing to repossess. Either you make the payments, or you start racking up late fees and debt collection calls. Because of this, unsecured loans usually have higher interest rates than secured loans; the lending institution wants to make sure it’ll make good on its investment. However, even these higher interest rates are often several percentage points lower than credit card interest rates, making personal loans a less expensive way of borrowing money.

A personal loan can help you consolidate and pay off high-interest credit card debt, allowing you to pay down your remaining debt balance with a lower interest rate. You can also use personal loans for expenses that you might otherwise put on a credit card, such as wedding or vacation expenses, and pay lower interest over time. Best of all, personal loans can even help your credit score.

Studies have shown that many individuals without a personal loan (which is considered installment debt) see an improvement in their score with a new loan. If you’re using the loan to pay off credit card debt (which is considered revolving debt), there’s a possibility that your score may increase substantially, especially if your credit utilization rate is high on the credit cards. However, the more installment loans you get, the more it may lower your score.
Adam C. Hagerman
Financial Coach and Certified Financial Planner

That said, not all personal loans are worth the money they loan you. High-interest loans with high fees can set you back financially instead of helping you move forward. When you’re shopping for personal loans, you want a no-fee loan with a fixed interest rate and a low APR.

The best online personal loans have five things in common.

They are available nationwide — or close to it.

For the purposes of this research, I only considered lenders that offered personal loans in at least 35 states. After all, I wouldn’t want to list a “best personal loan” that was only available to readers in a few geographic areas, right?

The best customers get APRs below 10 percent.

APR stands for “annual percentage rate,” and it designates the percentage of interest that you pay on a loan. Right now, Bankrate puts the average personal loan interest rate at 11.3 percent APR, but I reached out to John Ulzheimer, a credit expert who has worked for both Equifax Credit Information Services and FICO, and he told me that for people with good credit, the interest rate on a personal loan can be less than 10 percent. (Comparatively, credit card interest rates average at around 15 percent and retail credit cards often charge 20 percent APR or more.)

If you want below 10 percent APR, you have to sign up with a personal loan company that offers it first. I eliminated any company that didn’t — but remember that just because a personal loan company offers rates below 10 percent APR, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get that rate.

They offer fixed interest rates.

Interest rates come in two forms: fixed and variable. Fixed interest rates cannot change over the life of the loan. Variable interest rates can change at the discretion of the loaning institution. If you have a loan with a variable interest rate, your interest can go up — which means you’re paying more money to pay back your money!

They don’t charge fees to borrow.

Some unsecured loan issuers include what they call “origination fees” or “closing fees.” These are extra fees you pay in exchange for the privilege of taking out the loan. Lenders might also include “prepayment fees,” which are fees they charge if you pay back the loan early (because if you pay off the loan early, the loan companies lose out on interest).

You could consider these fees “the cost of doing business,” or you could look for personal loan issuers that don’t include these fees, which is what I did.

They’re backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

When you’re dealing with large sums of money, you want the FDIC to have your back. So I looked into each of our remaining seven lenders to determine if they were Member FDIC; two weren’t.

If an FDIC-insured bank fails, the FDIC will step in until a buyer for the deposits/loans is found. Payments would continue during that process. If your bank is purchased by another bank or merges with one, you’ll typically be unaffected. During the transition, you may need to change where you mail your payments or send your automatic, electronic payments.
Adam C. Hagerman
Financial Coach and Certified Financial Planner

This left me with four finalists.

• Avant
• Citizens Bank
• Discover
• LightStream

Each of these institutions is a great place to begin looking for an online personal loan. Shout out to Wells Fargo, which has the qualities of a great personal loan issuer, but can only give them to non-members over the phone — its online application is available to people who are currently Wells Fargo customers.

I also gave Honorable Mentions to two private lenders that didn’t make the final five: Earnest and SoFi. These lenders fulfilled nearly all of the qualifications: low APRs, fixed interest rates, and no fees. However, since these two private lenders are not associated with banks, they are not Member FDIC. I still consider them worthy contenders for online unsecured loans, but be aware that you will not get the worst-case-scenario benefits of Member FDIC institutions.

Testing the Best Online Personal Loan Companies

I wanted an easy-to-use, informative website.

Online personal loans take place — obviously — online, and I evaluated each lender’s site on the following criteria:

• Was it easy to navigate?
• Was the loan process made clear before I began the loan application?
• Did the website provide additional resources to help me understand how taking out a personal loan would affect my finances?
• Were there any special features that made the experience stand out?

Clean meets streamlined. Citizens Bank — along with all of our finalists — had intuitive, easy-to-navigate websites.

I really liked all four lenders’ websites, which clearly explained the process of taking out a personal loan. They all had thorough FAQ sections, and Discover had an entire article titled “Taking the Taboo out of Personal Loans” that explains the benefits of personal loans and helps put prospective loan shoppers’ minds at ease:

“But if you dive into the numbers, taking out a personal loan to pay for expenses like revolving credit card balances can make significantly more sense than the common back-up plan of continuing to put everything on multiple credit cards. You’ll trade multiple payments at multiple interest rates for one fixed interest rate and a single monthly payment.”

Discover even offered a monthly payment estimator tool that helps you plan how your monthly payment might change depending on your personal loan’s amount and term length. A $5,000 loan at a 36-month term with an 8.99 percent APR would include a $159 monthly payment; that same loan at a 72-month term would only require a $90 monthly payment. (Keep in mind, though, that a 72-month loan would accrue more interest than a 36-month loan, and in this example you’d pay nearly $700 more in interest if you chose the 72-month loan.)

Discover’s payment estimator tool helps you predict your monthly costs before you even get your loan.

LightStream also had a few special features that made the experience stand out. If you receive an unsecured loan at a lower rate from another lender, LightStream’s Rate Beat Program will beat that rate by 0.10 percentage point (terms and conditions apply, of course). LightStream also lists multiple ways in which people can use their unsecured loans, including adoption funding, wedding expenses, and — my favorite — tiny home financing.

Lastly, LightStream promises that it’ll plant a tree for every personal loan it grants.

All four personal loan issuers passed the website test, with extra points going to Discover and LightStream for their additional features.

The application process had to be fast.

Applying for a loan was the most important test of all. I ranked each application process, looking closely at:

• Was the application easy to complete?
• How long did I have to wait before learning my application status?
• Were there any additional steps involved, such as phone interviews?

I’ll give you a few Spoiler Alerts right now: Three of the Top Four lenders approved my application, and the fourth lender denied my application. The three approving lenders each gave me slightly different rates. Expect your experience with these lenders to include similar variations. I didn’t rank the lenders based on the rate they offered me; just because I got a lower rate with one lender doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a lower rate with that same lender. Instead, I gave the lenders pass or fail scores based on my experience during the application process.

All four application processes took only a few minutes to complete, and all four lenders also immediately followed up with the next step. Avant and Citizens Bank gave me their application decisions right away. LightStream and Discover asked me to call a loan specialist for a quick interview before they made their decisions.

I know that an interview with a loan specialist sounds nerve-wracking — and believe me, I did not want to make those calls — but the interview process was actually what convinced me to give Discover the “best overall experience” ranking.

LightStream’s loan specialist interview was short and simple. The loan specialist asked me to confirm my address, my income, and the purpose of the loan. Following the conversation, I immediately received an email from LightStream with my acceptance status.

Discover’s loan specialist interview was much more thorough. The loan specialist took the time to ask me questions about my debt, my income, the current interest rates on my credit cards, and my plan for paying off the cards. The loan specialist also advised me to apply for a smaller personal loan and pay off my 0.00 percent interest credit card before the promotional rate ran out, and really pushed me to consider whether a personal loan was the best solution to paying off my current debt. They were right — a personal loan really isn’t the best option for me, and the Discover loan specialist wanted me to consider that fact before making any decisions.

Although I believe that all four of these lenders provide excellent personal loan options, and I had no issues with any of their application processes, I have to note that Discover was the only lender to counsel me on whether a personal loan was the right choice. For this test, I gave all of the lenders a passing score and gave Discover a significant bonus.

And customer service had to be the very best.

If you’re planning to take out an unsecured loan, you probably have a lot of questions. (If you don’t have a lot of questions, you might not be thinking carefully enough about what you’re planning to do.) I hope I’m answering many of them, but I also know you might have a few questions specific to your unique financial situation. If that’s the case, you’re going to need to contact customer service, and you’re going to want that interaction to go as smoothly as possible.

I contacted each of the top four candidates’ customer service departments. I asked them all the same question (“If I apply for a personal loan, will you do a hard or a soft pull on my credit report?”) as well as a few questions specific to each application process. I evaluated the lenders as follows:

• Was it easy to reach the lenders?
• Did I have to wait very long (on hold or over email) to get my answers?
• Were the answers thorough and understandable?

Avant customer service is reachable through a form on the Avant website as well as through its 800 number. I got nearly immediate responses via both email and phone with thorough answers to my questions.

Citizens Bank customer service is also reachable by email or 800 number. I received an email response the next day with lots of information. However, the phone call was less successful. Its phone tree included options to apply for a personal loan or to check the status of a pending loan application. There was not an option to ask general questions of a representative. I tried pressing 0, but nothing happened.

Discover does not offer customer service via email, but they can be reached by phone. I waited on hold for nearly three minutes before being connected to a representative, but once I was connected, the representative answered my questions well.

LightStream does not offer customer service via phone, but there is a customer service form on the LightStream website. When I asked a question via the form, I got a nearly immediate email response with thorough information.

All four lenders received a passing score on the customer service test, with a bonus to Avant because it was the only Top Four lender to provide two successful methods of contact.

5 Things to Know Before You Start Personal Loan Shopping

Your Current Debt Load and Interest Rates

The best unsecured loans offer less than 10 percent APR to their best customers. However, that number doesn’t mean anything unless you know your current debt load and the interest rates you’re paying on that debt.

Let’s use my current debt load as an example. Right now I have:

• $2,591.36 on a Commerce Bank card at 9.24 percent APR
• $3,797.23 on a Discover card with a 12-month 0.00 percent APR promotional interest
• $4,000 outstanding on a zero-interest loan from my parents

This means that, in my case, I need a personal loan that can beat the 9.24 percent APR on my Commerce Bank card. If the personal loan charges higher interest, it is not to my financial benefit to take out the loan.

Likewise, it makes no sense to take out a personal loan to pay off my zero-interest debt (thanks mom and dad!). If something happens and I am unable to pay off my 0.00 percent APR Discover card by the end of the year, it might make sense to consider a personal loan as a debt-consolidation tool next year, depending on the new interest rate on the Discover card.

However, it’s my goal to be debt-free by the end of the year. I’m currently putting 20 percent of my income toward debt repayment and I am knocking those balances down month by month. In my case, taking out a personal loan with a repayment term longer than one year might keep me in debt longer.

These are the kinds of factors you should consider before you take out a personal loan. Ask yourself:

• What is my current debt burden?
• What interest rates am I paying?
• How long do I think it will realistically take me to pay off this debt without a personal loan?

Knowing the answers will help you make smart choices about which loans to pursue and which ones to ignore.

This applies to personal loans for bad credit, too. You probably aren’t going to get that coveted less-than-10-percent APR, but if a reputable lender offers you an APR that’s lower than the interest rate you’re currently paying on your credit cards, it might be a good loan for you. Just remember to read all of the terms and conditions carefully and know exactly how much you’ll be paying, how long it’ll take you to repay the loan, and how much interest you’ll be charged before making your final decision.

The Difference Between “Soft Pulls” and “Hard Pulls”

When you apply for an unsecured personal loan, the loan company checks your credit score in one of two ways: a “soft pull,” which does not affect your credit score; and a “hard pull,” which might affect your credit score.

I reached out to each of my top four lenders to confirm whether the companies did soft or hard pulls as part of the application process.

Hard Pull: Citizens Bank, Discover, LightStream
Soft Pull: Avant

If you’re worried that applying to multiple personal loan issuers at once will look bad on your credit report, rest assured that in many cases the hard pulls will be treated as a single inquiry:

If the hard pull is through a bank or a credit union, then the inquiries are not treated as individual searches for credit. Certain types of inquiries that are within 45 days of each other are counted as one. The assumption is you’re interest rate shopping.
John Ulzheimer
Credit expert, formerly of FICO and Equifax

Also, keep in mind that the hard pull on your credit isn’t going to significantly drop your score. I can’t give you an exact amount because it’s going to be different for everybody, but your score might go down by 3-5 points for a little while. Keep practicing good credit habits and you’re likely to see it rise again.

Avoid Payday Lenders

You’ve probably seen those “payday loan” commercials on TV or driven by payday loan businesses in strip malls. It turns out that payday loan companies are online too, and they are ready to take your money at ridiculously high interest rates.

Slimy payday and hard money lenders charge outrageous rates of interest. They sneak in weird fees and harshly unreasonable consequences for late payments or other infractions. Read the terms and conditions carefully and count the gotchas.
Mary Hunt
Founder, Debt-Proof Living

I did not consider payday loan companies when I created my list of personal loan contenders, and I would urge you not to consider them either. The Simple Dollar has written about the dangers of payday loans before:

You could pay $10 to $30 to borrow just $100 with a typical two-week payday loan, according to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. In fact, the average APR is just shy of 340 percent.

But wait: The payday lender will let you simply pay the interest and roll over your loan so you can get more cash. Sounds nice, but many borrowers become dependent on the payday loan, rolling it over indefinitely since they can’t afford to pay back the principal. A quarter of borrowers owe payday lenders for 80 percent of the year, the CFPB has found.

Consider Loan Matching Services If You Want Help Finding a Lender

A lot of people use what are called “loan matching services” to apply for unsecured loans. These are sites like Lending Tree or Guide to Lenders, which take your application and then give you a list of lenders willing to offer you a loan.

I did not include loan matching services when we reviewed personal loan contenders because I wanted to focus directly on companies that provided loans, not companies that helped match you to loans. If you decide to use a loan matching service, examine the matching lenders carefully before accepting a loan. Use the criteria I’ve set out — low APR, no fees, fixed interest, and reputability — to determine whether a matched lender is a good choice for you.

Don’t Forget Your Local Bank or Credit Union

Sometimes the best unsecured loan is the one offered by your local bank or credit union. If you’ve already built a relationship with a bank, it may be more likely to offer you a low interest rate on an unsecured loan. Check your local bank or credit union’s website to see if it offers personal loans, and remember the four criteria you’re looking for: low APR, no fees, fixed interest, and reputability. If a local bank or credit union is offering no-fee unsecured loans with fixed interest rates below 10 percent APR, consider giving it a try.

Is a Personal Loan Right For You?

At this point you have a lot of information about personal loans, as well as the online personal loan process. You probably also have a few remaining questions about whether a personal loan is really the right choice for you. I did too, so I reached out to a group of financial experts to get some answers.

When should I take out a personal loan?

As a financial coach, I’m not the biggest fan of using personal loans to purchase items unless it’s an immediate need and you have no other option to finance it. For example, if your refrigerator breaks and your options are to either purchase a new one using a store card with an interest rate of 22.9 percent or take out a personal loan at 12.9 percent, I’d obviously suggest the personal loan. A nice feature of a personal loan is that it’s an installment loan. That means you’ll have a set time period to pay it back and cannot access additional credit once you begin paying it down. If you’re someone that sees available credit and immediately wants to spend it, a personal loan is an attractive option.
Adam C. Hagerman

With any consumer borrowing vehicle, it’s important to be extremely cautious. Holding no or low consumer debt is a pillar of financial wellness and paying off high interest debt can be your best investment. Ask yourself these questions if you are considering taking out a personal loan:

Do I have any other sources of funds to meet this cash flow need besides borrowing (e.g., selling something, taking a side gig, cutting expenses, etc.)?

What is the interest rate on the loan, and is it fixed or variable? Personal loan rates are often higher than a home equity line of credit rate, but for those with good credit can be favorable to credit card rates.

Is the lender reputable? Have I heard of them before, or do I know someone who’s used them?

Can I negotiate the expense? For example, personal loans typically come into play when borrowers have run out of options and need cash quickly, such as for a medical emergency or taxes. Ask if you can negotiate a payment plan for those medical expenses or an unexpected tax bill.
Liz Davidson
Author of What Your Financial Advisor Isn’t Telling You
Founder and CEO, Financial Finesse

Which debt is better: a personal loan or a credit card?

Typically, a personal loan is a smarter choice because many of them have fixed interest rates. A majority of credit cards have variable rates, which could increase without warning over time. If you’re looking for consistency, a personal loan may be a wiser choice.
Adam C. Hagerman

This isn’t even a fair comparison. The personal loan wins hands down because the debt has almost no impact on your credit scores. And, with a personal loan you’ll have a much shorter payback period than with a credit card.
John Ulzheimer

Can I use a personal loan to pay off my credit card debt?

You’ll see your credit scores improve, considerably, when you pay off credit cards with a personal loan because you’re converting score-damaging revolving debt to score-benign installment debt.
John Ulzheimer

Most personal loans I see stem from credit card consolidation. If a personal loan can reduce your interest rate and help you secure a payment that can give you some breathing room in your budget, I’d say go for it. However, before you do, you need to address the reason you got into debt in the first place because I don’t want to see you continue to accumulate more. By paying off credit cards with the loan, you’re left with available credit. If you don’t address your spending issue, you’ll now have the personal loan, plus credit card debt. In that example, the loan only made matters worse.
Adam C. Hagerman

What if I have bad credit?

You want to start with the banks that offer the best rates. If you just assume that you’re going to get a bad rate, and only shop at high-risk lenders, I guarantee you’ll get one. Instead, start with the banks that have the best rates and call them up to see if they offer loans to individuals with your FICO score.
Adam C. Hagerman

Your options are more limited because you’re a higher risk borrower. You can certainly apply with the mainstream lenders, but even if you’re approved, your rates are going to be considerably higher.
John Ulzheimer

What might stop me from getting approved?

There are a number of factors that could prevent you from getting a personal loan. If you don’t pay your bills on time or have too much debt and haven’t paid it down, chances are good that a bank won’t be too interested in giving you money. If you don’t have a history of using credit, you may need to have someone cosign a loan with you to get established.
Adam C. Hagerman

How can I tell if a loan company is reputable?

Some loans are covered by consumer protection laws and some are not. Do your research before you sign. Sites such as Bankrate, CreditKarma, and Credit.com can help you gather basic information about what’s available. Check out the FDIC website for general information about banks. Most importantly, check out the lender in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Complaint Database and see if it is rated by the Better Business Bureau.
Liz Davidson

The Bottom Line

The best online personal loans have four key criteria — no fees, low APR, fixed interest, and reputability — and I found four lenders that hit all the marks: Avant, Citizens Bank, Discover, and LightStream. Your individual acceptance and interest rate may vary, but if you’re applying for personal loans, start here.

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Friends mourn, fondly remember Pike County businesswoman Philly Viscardo

Philly Viscardo, the face and spirit of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce, is being remembered for her smile and her ambition that helped the chamber broaden its presence during her three terms as president and grow to 275 members.Viscardo's sudden death on Wednesday evening at age 50 stunned the Pike County business community, the Milford community at large where she lived and the Dingmans Ferry United Methodist Church where she was an active member and usually had the lead role in [...]

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Planning Ahead for a Summer of Inexpensive Family Adventures

During this coming summer, Sarah and I are planning on having a handful of short “adventures” with our family. We are going on a summer vacation of sorts, but it’s a really laid back road trip and the rest of their summer break is a big open span of weeks, so to break that up a little, we’re spicing it up with some little “adventures.”

For many families, this idea works best if you plan these adventures around weekends. However, during the summer, our family’s schedule becomes incredibly flexible. Sarah usually has several weeks off during the summer and my own schedule as a writer can be pretty flexible, too, so we’ll probably do some of these “adventures” during the week.

So, what do I mean by “adventures”? I simply mean spending a day or two away from the house doing something outdoors in a new location, preferably in a low cost way. For example, a camping trip in and of itself can be an adventure, but you can do far more than that with the idea.

Here are six ideas for inexpensive weekend adventures that Sarah and I have come up with for our family. Most of them are really inexpensive, costing only the gas to get there and maybe the cost of renting a spot to camp for a day or two. For us, camping is really inexpensive because we already have all of the gear from many years of camping. It’s all conveniently packed up so we can basically decide to go camping almost on the spur of the moment, even with kids.

If you have a family, consider taking on one of these adventures.

A Weekend of Geocaching

One weekend, we’re going to simply camp in an area of the state that we haven’t been to before and find lots of geocaches. The goal of the weekend is to find as many geocaches as we possibly can, but do it at a relaxed pace.

For those unaware, geocaching is an activity where you take a GPS device (or your smartphone) and download sets of coordinates from sites like geocaching.com. Those coordinates essentially function like the “X” on an old fashioned treasure map – and it’s up to you to go find the treasure with the aid of your GPS device. Usually, the treasure is very minor – usually just a log book to sign along with perhaps a trinket or two (with a “leave something if you take something” rule) – but the fun is in finding the treasure and keeping a log of all of the geocaches you’ve found.

I’ve been scoping out a weekend camping trip at Lake MacBride here in Iowa. This would enable us to find the dozen or so geocaches around Lake MacBride, the half dozen or so geocaches along the Iowa River nearby, and the dozen or so additional geocaches in City Park and Hickory Hill Park just a couple of miles south. There are a lot of other geocaches within the city of Coralville as well, so I envisioned getting to the camp site in the afternoon, finding the nearby caches that afternoon, camping that evening, then getting a bunch of caches the following day in the parks and in the city of Coralville, then camping again that night and heading home the next morning.

If this sounds like fun, check out geocaching.com and check out some state parks you’ve never been to that aren’t too far from where you live. Do any of them have a bevy of geocaches within the park or within a few miles of the park? If so, you probably have a great destination for your geocaching adventure.

A Day at an Arts Festival

Many major cities have an arts festival that’s usually free to the public. An arts festival can be a great way to expose everyone in the family to a wide variety of arts and experiences, all in one place.

For us, that means the Des Moines Arts Festival. It’s close enough that we can make a day trip (or two) out of it, which means we can take our time at the festival on Friday and come back on Saturday if we so choose. The only cost for us is the cost of parking (which is free provided you don’t mind being a little bit far away) and anything that you buy on site (we’re likely to bring our own food for every meal save one, where we’ll all try something new from the interesting food vendors on site).

A Weekend of Trails

This is a similar activity to our geocaching one and can even overlap with geocaching if you wish, but for us, the focus on these weekends is on trails with interesting landscapes and wildlife to appreciate.

We simply spend a weekend camping in or near a state park with a wide variety of trails available, which we find by looking at the state park service website and checking out what’s available at each state park. I have a list of about twenty state parks in Iowa with a wide variety of interesting trails and we’re slowly going through that list via weekend adventures.

We make these trips fun by taking tons and tons of pictures along the way and using them for collages and photo albums and other things. We’re also learning about identifying trees and birds when we go on these walks.

This really isn’t about high-intensity mountain climbing or anything like that. With a five year old in tow, we are pretty restricted to simpler trails and we don’t go through them at a breakneck pace. We go along slowly, stopping to look at anything that’s interesting, having lots of conversations, and just enjoying a day outdoors.

A Day at a Museum

Many, many museums around the country offer special discounted or even free days where people can go to the museum and view the wonderful exhibits. If you can keep tabs on the free or discounted days that are offered by local museums, you have a ready-made adventure for yourself and your family.

For example, near us we have the Des Moines Art Center which has free admission all the time (!), Living History Farms which has (very) occasional free admissions, Blank Park Zoo which has occasional free admissions, Science Center of Iowa which has occasional free admissions, and the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden which also has occasional free admissions, among many others.

All you have to do is search for museums, zoos, and/or gardens in your area via Google and see what you can find. Visit their websites and figure out if and when they offer discounted or even free admission and plan a day trip for those days.

A Day at a Community Festival

In many parts of the United States, communities will hold annual community festivals during the summer. As with the art festivals mentioned above, these are usually free. They usually are tied deeply to the ethnic and cultural history of the town. Near us, many towns celebrate a Scandinavian or Dutch heritage with such festivals as Pella’s Tulip Time festival which celebrates the town’s rich Dutch heritage or Decorah’s Nordic Fest, which is deeply in tune with the town’s Nordic roots.

We usually try to take in a community festival or two during the summer, ideally one that can be done via a day trip from our home if we wake up early, which gives us a two or three hour radius of options. We find these festivals by searching Google for “best Iowa community festivals” and looking at the results.

Such community festivals are virtually always free, though there may be side attractions that have a small cost. They usually feature interesting foods related to the ethnic heritage of the area, so when we go to these festivals, we’ll usually eat one meal on site and bring the other meals with us in a cooler, bringing the cost down to just the fuel for the trip.

A Day Building Something

This is more of a “stay-cation” idea, but it’s something that can easily consume an entire day.

If you look in our garage right now, what you’d find is a bunch of large cardboard boxes folded up in a giant pile that screams “TAKE ME TO RECYCLING!! PLEASE!!” There’s also a box with a bunch of jars of tempera paint in them.

I’m holding onto these for a nice summer day, when I’ll take all of those boxes and paints outside into the yard and my children are going to build a giant cardboard castle. It’s entirely up to them to design it – all I’m there for is guidance and suggestions and some engineering help.

When the structure is built, then they can design it and paint it however they’d like with the paints, then they can leave it up as a temporary playhouse for a day or two until the weather decides to no longer cooperate with them.

What does it cost us? Nothing except for the cost of the paint. All I’m doing is saving boxes that would otherwise go to recycling.

Final Thoughts

The adventures I’ve described above aren’t expensive ones. They aren’t really difficult ones, either, especially if you put in a little bit of advance work to plan things out.

The real advantage, however, is to have some of these ideas floating around before the summer even begins, with a few time-specific events (such as particular festivals or free days at museums) penciled in so that you know when the time is right to take advantage of them.

You can make an amazing, memorable summer for your family for very little money. It just takes a little bit of forethought – and now’s the time to put in some of that thought.

Good luck!

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit

Is your content a mess? It might be high quality (it might not be), but that doesn’t mean that it’s organized. It also doesn’t mean that you’re producing all of the right kind of content that your readers want to see. Most online businesses that use content marketing have weaknesses in their content. Either the content isn’t performing as well as it could be, or they’re missing content on certain topics and keywords altogether. And this includes good businesses too, so don’t feel bad if you don’t think your content marketing is quite as good as it could be. Instead, recognize that this is an opportunity to further improve your content marketing processes. So, how do you find these weaknesses? As you may have guessed, you find them with a content audit. A content audit helps you assess your current content as well as shape your future content strategy. In this post, I’m going to show you a 5-step content audit that you can follow (although there are many other effective content audit processes). 

Step 1: Generate a list of all your content

The first thing you need to do is take stock of what you have. You’ll want to compile a list of URLs and put them in a spreadsheet. If you have a small site, you can do this manually, but otherwise I suggest you use software like Screaming Frog to generate a list. The free version will crawl up to 500 links on a site, so as long as your site is small, you’ll be fine. Otherwise, you’ll want the premium version, which is worth the investment for any serious marketer. Enter a starting URL in the text bar at the top of the tool, and press Start: You can’t configure the options in the free mode, but the defaults should be fine. When it’s done, set the filter to HTML, and export the results. From this list, you’ll want to keep all the URLs with a status code of “200.” If you find that you’re missing a lot of URLs, which is possible if your internal linking isn’t great, you can use another option like a sitemap generator. If you use the tool I just linked to, enter your starting URL again, and the tool will crawl up to 500 pages: You can then copy the results and paste them into a spreadsheet. You might have to clean them up a little, but it will work.

Step 2: Retrieve metrics, and categorize content

Now that you have a good idea about what you have, it’s time to figure out how it’s performing. Just because you have an article about “SEO for cats,” which is a topic you wanted to cover, doesn’t mean that the article is getting traffic or doing anything with the traffic it gets. Content that is underperforming is going to be the first main weakness that we’ll identify. Below is a list of metrics that you might want to collect. Add a column to your spreadsheet for each one. Feel free to add any others that you care about:

• Title of content - You can pull this right from Screaming Frog.
• Length of title - You can also get this from Screaming Frog. Use it as a quick check for excessively long titles. Remember, it should be under 55-60 characters to show up fully in Google. This can affect your click-through rate (CTR).

• Category – Write down the topic of each page.
• Ranking for main keyword (if available) - If there’s a keyword you’re targeting, record your ranking for it as of now.
• Search volume for main keyword - A metric that will help you prioritize your SEO effort in the future. Get it from Google AdWords or any keyword research tool.

• Average organic search traffic per month – Get this from Google Analytics. Go to “Behavior,” and pick the page. Then add a secondary dimension of “source,” and look for the traffic data beside Google.
• Average overall traffic per month — Again, get it from Google Analytics. Record the total traffic number by going to “Behavior,” and pick a page. Look at a time period of at least 3 months when possible, and calculate an average.
• Meta description – Your meta description can also greatly affect your CTR. If your traffic seems unreasonably low for the typical monthly search volume, you can optimize your meta description to attract more clicks. You can also pull this from Screaming Frog.
• Bounce rate of organic search traffic – Again, go to “Behavior,” pick a page, and add a secondary dimension of source. Look at the bounce rate metric beside the Google row.
• Average time on page of organic search traffic – Use the same report as above, but get the average time on page.
• Number of backlinks – Backlinks are a critical part of ranking well. Use a link database tool such as Majestic or Ahrefs to get the number of backlinks to each page (can be done in bulk).

• number of linking root domains – You should be able to get this when getting the number of backlinks. It tells you whether backlink numbers are inflated (i.e., 10,000 backlinks from one domain).
• URL rank - Different tools have different metrics (e.g., MozRank for OSE, URL rating for Ahrefs) to judge the overall quality of links. Get one to get a rough idea of your page’s authority.

• Total social shares - you could also break this down by network. You can get this information using a tool like Sharetally.

If you plan on doing multiple content audits or you’re working on a very big site, doing all this manually would be crazy. Some of it is easy to do all at once, like collecting numbers from Screaming Frog. But all the other actions can also be done in bulk (and automated) with a little technical know-how. Hire a programmer to build you a simple tool that pulls all this data from different APIs, and it will save you hours of work.

Step 3: Create an in-depth reader/customer profile

We’ll take a step away from your actual content for this part and instead focus on your target audience. This step consists of two parts. Part #1 – Identify your reader: It’s a basic rule for any marketing – create things that your target audience is interested in. It applies to social media marketing, content marketing, SEO…and so on. But in order to do that, you first need to determine who your reader is. Refer to this section of one of my ultimate guides if you need help doing this. Part #2 – Determine what they’re interested in: Now, you can start to learn and understand what they’re interested in. You figure that out by researching demographics (age, gender, etc.) and psychographics (what they believe in). Here’s a good introductory guide that will walk you through the most important demographics and psychographics. Once you’ve done that, you should have a fleshed out reader avatar. Part #3 – Use those interests to identify topics and keywords: Once you have a pretty good understanding of your target audience (be as specific as possible with everything), it’s time to translate that to content. A good place to start is to use basic keyword research tools. After that, use these advanced keyword research methods to find even more keywords and topic ideas. You should record all of these keyword and topic ideas in another spreadsheet, complete with any search volume data they have. Note that you are not limited to just these topics for content. From your knowledge of the reader, you might be able to know that they’d be interested in something that can’t be searched for. You can still add these topics to the list; you’ll just have to get traffic for them from sources other than search engines.

Step 4: Conduct “gap” analysis

Now we have two spreadsheets:

• One with all your current content (and metrics)
• One with all the content (or content ideas) your target reader is interested in

It’s time to look at them together. Area #1 – See which content you’re missing altogether: This has to be done manually and will take quite a bit of time. Start by pairing up those keyword and content ideas to the content you already have. Essentially, you’re copying the entire row from the first sheet that we made and pasting it right beside the keyword it matches. Here’s a small snapshot of what it might look like: What you’ll find at the end of it, in almost all cases, is that for some of the content/keyword ideas, you don’t have any matching content. That’s a clear problem: you have a gap. Obviously, you’ll need to fill these gaps, but we’ll get to that later. Area #2 – See which content is not performing: I mentioned this briefly before. If your current content isn’t generating any traffic, it’s about as useful as if it was missing altogether. That’s not good enough. The challenge here is to identify this underperforming content. Unfortunately, there’s no specific formula I can give you here. It comes down to what you consider good. For some sites, getting 200 visitors a month to a piece of content is horrible, while for others, that’s great. On top of the absolute amount of traffic your content gets, you want to consider two other main factors:

• Its search rankings
• Its potential search traffic

If a page is ranking in positions #4-10, it’s not getting much traffic. However, with some extra work, you could easily get it to rank in the top 3 and get more traffic. But you also have to consider if it’s worth the effort. If the keyword gets a few thousand searches a month, it probably is. If it gets 20? Probably not. At this point, you just want to highlight which content isn’t getting much traffic. Next, we’re going to bring it all together.

Step 5: Create your new content strategy

The final step is to create a content strategy that will address all the weaknesses that have been identified up until this point. And it requires a lot of manual work and careful consideration. Step #1 – Create a column for action: It’s time to add another column to your spreadsheet. I suggest adding it to the very beginning. In this column, you’ll add a final label reflecting the corresponding action you want to take on it. Again, choose any labels you want, but you could use these ones if you’d like:

• “Leave” – The post is performing well, no changes are needed.
• “Create” – A default label for any content idea that needs to be filled.
• “Merge” – Sometimes, you might have more than one piece of content for one topic (it happens if your content is not well organized). It’s usually best to merge these together into one best version.
• “Improve” – If your content is underperforming, you’ll want to improve it.

You’ll need to go through each idea, one by one, to do this. Step #2 – Create a column for priority: There’s one final column you need to make. Put it right next to the action column. Some gaps are bigger than others. It makes sense to fill those big gaps first and get to the smallest ones only when you have time. Here, you’re going to assign each action (other than “leave”) a priority from 1-10 (10 being the highest). You need to factor in those things we looked at like potential for SEO traffic. If a piece of content has the potential to generate a ton of new traffic, it gets a high priority and should be edited or created as soon as possible. Finally, create an action list: Now that your sheet is filled out, sort all the actions based on their priorities. Then, plan your content marketing goals, tasks, and resources so that you can start filling in these gaps one by one, in order of priority.

Conclusion

No collection of content is ever “complete”—there will always be some gaps. Conduct a content audit on a regular basis, and identify your biggest weaknesses. It’s a ton of work and leads to even more work (taking action on your results), but it is an extremely effective way to consistently improve the results from your content marketing. This can get a little overwhelming if you haven’t done a content audit before, so if you’re confused about any of this, leave me a question below.

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