The Broke Girl’s Tech Stack
That Actually Works
Free and almost-free tools that do 80% of what the expensive ones do — curated for women who are smart about where they spend.
There’s a premium version of every tool you use. Productivity, design, writing, finance, communication — every category has a $15–$30/month option that markets itself as the thing you need to operate at a higher level. Some of them are worth it. Most of them aren’t, if you know what the free alternatives actually do.
This is the stack for women who are smart about where they spend — meaning they pay for the things that genuinely earn it and use free alternatives everywhere else. I’ve audited my own subscriptions doing this exercise and canceled three things I forgot I was even paying for.
Go to your bank app right now and search “subscription” or filter for recurring charges. Write down everything you’re paying for monthly. Most people find at least one thing they forgot about. That’s the list we’re working from.
The Stack — Category by Category
Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus — pick one based on which free tier you actually keep opening. Both are $20/month. Both replace multiple other subscriptions. The single highest-leverage software purchase available right now for anyone who creates, writes, researches, or runs anything.
Try both free tiers for two weeks each. Pay for the one that fits how your brain works. Don’t pay for both unless you’re using both heavily every day.
Try Claude free →Real-time web search with cited sources. Better than Google for research questions, comparison shopping, or understanding a topic quickly. The free tier is genuinely excellent — this is the most underrated free tool on this list. Use it every time you’d otherwise spend 20 minutes Googling something.
Try Perplexity →Paste your writing in, get instant feedback on readability and clarity. Highlights overly complex sentences, passive voice, and adverbs in real time. No account needed, runs in the browser. Useful for anyone writing content, emails, or anything that needs to communicate clearly and not sound like a press release.
Try Hemingway →Worth it if you make visual content regularly. The free version is good. The Pro version earns its keep for three specific things: background remover, brand kit (saves your fonts and colors permanently), and the expanded template library. If you’re not making visuals at least weekly, the free tier is enough.
Try Canva Pro →Free browser-based Photoshop alternative. Genuinely capable — opens PSD files, handles layers, supports most editing tasks. If you occasionally need to do something Canva can’t handle, Photopea does it for free without a subscription or download. Stop paying for Adobe Creative Cloud for casual use.
Try Photopea →Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides — free, excellent, integrates with everything. If you’re paying for Microsoft 365 for personal use, this is worth reconsidering. The Google suite handles everything most people need. The main reason to keep paying for Microsoft is if you specifically need Excel’s advanced features or Word’s formatting for professional documents.
The free tier is a fully functional productivity system. Unlimited pages, basic databases, enough to run a small business’s entire project management. Don’t pay for Notion until you’ve genuinely hit the free tier limits — most people never do. Use it for content calendars, goal tracking, note-taking, and link organization.
Try Notion →Eliminates the back-and-forth of scheduling. The free tier allows one event type and handles the main use case completely. If you’re scheduling calls, client meetings, or anything that currently involves three emails to agree on a time — set this up today. Five minutes to configure, saves time every week after.
The one budgeting tool that actually changes behavior rather than just tracking what you already did. YNAB’s methodology — give every dollar a job before you spend it — is meaningfully different from every other budgeting app. It has a free trial and is worth testing seriously. Not “free” but included here because it’s the one finance tool that typically pays for itself within the first month for people who use it consistently.
Get the YNAB book on Amazon → Affiliate link · We earn a small commissionFree credit monitoring, credit score tracking, and personalized recommendations. Not perfect, but free and genuinely useful for keeping tabs on where your credit stands without paying for a monitoring service. Check it monthly alongside your debt payoff tracking.
You need a password manager. You don’t need to pay for one. Bitwarden is fully featured, open source, and free — it does everything 1Password and LastPass do at a fraction of the cost (zero). If you’re currently paying for a password manager, cancel it and switch to Bitwarden this week. If you don’t have one yet, start here.
Get Bitwarden →Before you pay for more cloud storage, do this: spend 20 minutes deleting old email attachments and duplicate photos. Most people reclaim gigabytes this way and push their storage upgrade date back by a year. Google gives you 15GB across Gmail, Drive, and Photos — use it intentionally before paying for more.
The Framework for Every Subscription Decision
- Do I have a specific, recurring task this tool solves — not a vague “it might be useful”?
- Does the free tier already solve it? Have I actually tried the free tier?
- What is the per-hour value of the time it saves me each week?
- What would I cut to afford it — and is that trade worth it?
Most tools fail at question one or two. The ones that pass all four are usually worth it. The ones that don’t are costing you quietly every month.
What to Cut Right Now
Multiple streaming services. The average person subscribes to four. Use JustWatch (free) to find which service has the show you want, subscribe for one month, watch it, cancel. Stop paying for ambient availability.
Any AI writing tool that isn’t ChatGPT or Claude. Jasper, Copy.ai, Writesonic — these are now wrappers charging a premium for access to the same underlying models you can get directly for less.
Adobe Creative Cloud for personal use. Unless you use Photoshop professionally, Canva Pro + Photopea covers everything you actually need.
Any paid password manager. Bitwarden does the same thing for free.
The chapter on automating your finances is the most practical guide to setting up your money to run on autopilot without constant willpower. Sethi’s framework — spend extravagantly on what you love, cut ruthlessly on what you don’t — is essentially the philosophy behind this entire article applied to your full financial life.
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