If you haven’t caught on by now, I love being productive, I hate wasting time or money, and I hate when things are needlessly complex.

Here are a few KILLER tools I’m using to simplify my life.

youcanbook.me:  I HATE scheduling Skype appointment. It normally takes 10 text messages over the span of 3 days to nail down a time. When working with so many international time zone it is never easy to find a time and day to meet.

Not any more.

Youcanbook.me will sync to your google calendar or iCloud etc. All you have to do in put in the hours you are free and busy (by maintaining your personal calendar)–send your person a link to see your available hours, and with one click they can book you. You receive a notification with the time that you are scheduled to meet (according to your time zone).

No longer will you have to have needless emails and texts trying to figure out the perfect time. Life just got a little easier. 🙂

IQBOXY: Keeping track of receipts is a PAIN. Nothing worse than having a shoe box of receipts that you have to sort through every tax season. I have searched high and low for the BEST FREE receipt tracker and after testing out over 6 different apps IQBOXY won.

IQBOXY integrates across platforms, exports into nearly any finance program you use, and auto-reads your receipts for you saving you time on data entry.

GET IT!

Charles Schwab: If you are a world traveler then you know the PAIN of international ATM and transaction rate fees. I have good news for you. Schwab has ZERO ATM fees, ZERO foreign transaction rate fees, ZERO minimum balances, and ZERO fees. It is truly free checking.

Through our old bank, we would spend well over a thousand dollars a year in fees from $5 ATMs fee to 3% Exchange Rate Transaction fee. We now spend ZERO.

Taking the TEN minutes to set up an account could save you thousand EACH year. 

Capital One 360: Let’s face it. Saving money can be hard. It takes time and energy to transfer money every day, two weeks, or month from checking into your savings. The worse part about it is that savings only happen when we are motivated or if we are lucky to remember.

Capital One 360 solves this problem.

With Capital One 360 you can set up as many savings accounts that you want–all for free. You are also able to set up automatic transfers from your checking to Capital One 360–schedule them daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly–you name it. You can even set start dates and end dates.

Now you can EASILY set aside self-employment tax, tithe, money for Christmas savings, or money every week to save for large yearly bills.  Oh, and it is all free.

ANKI:  Anki is a spaced repetition app that is GREAT for learning a second language or memorizing anything. I use it daily. You can build your own decks or thousands of pre-made decks, and millions of pre-cards.

The app is free for PC and Android phones, but 24 dollars for iPhone (it is $24 well spent). I have spent COUNTLESS days (actually the app keep tracks of all the metric for you) on this app. My wife and I would have never learned Arabic without it!

Sleep Cycle: Hate waking up groggy? This app actually tracks your REM cycles so waking you up while you are in a light sleep–giving you a fresh start to each day.

I have been using Sleep Cycle for two years now. Before I started using sleep cycle I would often wake up late, groggy, and in a fog. After starting to using sleep I would wake up on time, early, and alert! I was able to visually see how good of night sleep on got and how many hours I was actually sleeping for. Being aware of my sleep patterns allowed me to make changes and improve my sleep, my attentiveness, and my life.

PIA VPN: If you are concerned about your internet security and are searching for a VPN then Private Internet Access might be the one for you. For only $3.33 a month you can have 5 devices connected through the VPN at any given time. Their customer service is timely and RELENTLESSLY helpful! I couldn’t be happier.

Neomailbox.com: I talk to many people who are looking for a secure email address in a world of hackers, identity thief etc. There are some emails you want to make sure are safe from prying eyes.

When searching the vast world of secure emails neomailbox.com was the winner for me. For $50 a year I receive a safe email address, hosted in Switzerland, and multiple email aliases. I also rest assured that my information isn’t going to be sold (like Gmail, yahoo, MSN, etc does).

The one negative thing I must say, the user interface is not the best. But–I don’t use it to feel warm and fuzzy. I use to know I’m communicating safely.