Welcome To the Brand New Simple. Thrifty. Living.

When starting the redesign of the site, we knew we wanted to change how the site functions for our readers. This idea informed a lot of the decisions we made about the new design. Here are some of the design features you can look forward to in the new design:

• Easy scanning: Articles that are organized to give you information quickly, for our readers who are in a hurry and don’t have time to read everything.
• Cut to the chase: Just looking for one thing? Check out the “In This Article” feature at the top of each article to jump to sections of the article that interest you most.
• Readability: Larger type and a cleaner typeface make for easy reading whether you are on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone.
• Eye-catching importance: Icons and graphic elements help draw your eye to the most important parts of the site.

The old Simple. Thrifty. Living. focused on the most recent articles first, leaving older, important articles hidden. The new site offers better organization so that you not only get the most recent tips and tricks for saving money, but also have access to our most popular and important articles when you need them.

• Stream-lined menu: Our new menu not only shows you what topics we cover, but gives you a list of our most popular and informative content, to help you find the information you need more easily.
• Articles by category: The homepage now houses a section that breaks down the most recent articles by category. So if you are only looking for information on credit, you don’t have to sift through all the other insurance/investing/personal finance articles to get to the articles and tools you need.
• Reviews at your fingertips: We’ve broken out our product reviews and Best of lists from the other articles to give you access to our independent testing results faster and easier. Product reviews break down individual products, while the Best of lists give you our top recommendations on everything from credit repair to online tax services.
• Category pages: Just looking for articles and tools about credit cards? Now everything credit card related is in one place. We have created category pages that house every article, review and tool about whatever category you are interested in, from mortgages to online deals to career advice.
• Search: We’ve organized our search results page to make things easier, too. Instead of a long list of content that includes everything related to your search terms, we’ve separated results into articles, reviews, etc. to make finding what you are looking for easier.

One of the best new features we’ve introduced is tools to help you save money and find products that can help you with your finances, with more tools arriving in the months to come.

• Credit Card Finder: Our new credit card finder allows you to select the kind of credit card you are looking for, and then takes you to our partner page that can help you narrow down the best credit cards to fit your needs.
• Insurance Finder: Whether it’s home, health, car or life insurance, our insurance finder will find the best insurance companies in your area. Just enter your zip code and a list of the top providers will pop up for you to choose from.
• Coming soon: In the coming months, we will add mortgage tools to help you find the right mortgage for you, as well as savings account tools to make sure you are making the most of your saving investments. We also will be adding some fun tools, such as a spending/saving advice tool based on your zodiac sign.

Our product reviews have always been one of the most popular features of our site, so we wanted to make sure those reviews were as clear and easy to understand as possible. We’ve made some changes that we think will make these reviews even more popular.

• 5-second review: Each review and Best of list will include a mini-review box that gives the readers a brief rundown of the product. It includes specs on everything from cost to customer service ratings, including our overall Simple. Thrifty. Living. star rating.
• In-depth review: Immediately following each 5-second review is a more in-depth review of each product. These include common questions about each product and what other people are saying about it.
• Best of: Our best of lists take those individual reviews and combine them into a ranked list, from best to worst, to give you a chance to compare all the services in a category side by side. Our Best of lists include everything from investment sites to home warranty services to online loans.

We want to connect with our readers and make sure that the information we are providing is useful and helpful to our readers, so we love getting feedback. Here are some new ways that you can let us know how we are doing:

• Feedback buttons: We added a few buttons at the top of each article that will help let us know which articles you really enjoy. There is a Share button, which allows you to share the article on social media; a Comment button, which lets you share your thoughts with us in the comments section; and a Love button, which you can click you really like the article and want to let us know. These buttons not only let us know how we’re doing, but let other readers know which articles other readers liked the best.
• Comments: We’ve streamlined our comments section to make it easier for readers to let us know what they are thinking about our articles, reviews, etc.
• Reach out to us: We’ve also streamlined our Contact Us page, so that every message sent through the site reaches all of our editors, so we can respond to you as quickly as possible.
• Social Media: You can also access our social media pages from multiple places on the site. At the bottom of every page, and on the Contact Us page, is a set of social media icons that will take you to each of our social media pages.

We hope you enjoy our redesign as much as we enjoyed making it for you. If you have any feedback or questions about the site, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on our Contact Us page here.