If you’re new to financial planning and you want to learn how to manage your finances on your own without hiring a professional, there are a few places you can find the information you need. And, it’s free. Fortunately, there are a number of free online courses that can help you learn what you need to know. Here are some of the best ones I’ve found.
This is one of the best resources for money advice, tips, and learning. It includes 29 lessons with everything from setting goals to managing debt to home ownership and insurance, all the way through to retirement planning. Pick and choose just the topics you need or the things you’re most interested in learning now. It even includes glossaries of terms you need to know and quizzes to help make sure you’ve learned what you need. And best of all, it makes learning easy.
Money Management International
Money Management’s online Financial Education site offers a variety of tips for long-term planning and short-term needs. If you want to know how to save money on holiday shopping or how you can earn more money, they’ve got you covered. Need information on bankruptcy, credit reports, and understanding your credit reports? That’s there too. Need help with a home loan or debt management? It’s all there. Even tips on teaching your kids about financial matters.
University of California-Irvine’s Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning
This online course offers lessons on creating your financial goals, doing the math to figure out what you need, creating a financial plan, and getting started with your plan. Once you have a plan together, it will help you figure out things like insurance, long-term care, social security, and medical care. Like the other courses, you can start anywhere you’d like and skip the courses you don’t think you need or aren’t ready for yet. Even though this is a college-level course, it was designed to help regular consumers at all levels of their financial education make better informed decisions about their money.
Purdue University’s Planning for a Secure Retirement
This 10-module course will help you plan your retirement to make sure you have all the money you need to get through. It includes several helpful tools to help you plan including personality profiles and risk tolerance calculators. This course is at-your-own-pace and it’s easy to understand no matter your financial education level.
The American Financial Services Association Education Foundation’s MoneySKILL
This course is designed for those who are new to financial planning to help you gain a basic understanding of money management. It covers topics like income, expenses, savings, investing, building credit, and obtaining insurance. It’s a high school and college level course to teach teens and adults alike the basics of money management and planning.
Learning what you need to know about financial planning can seem overwhelming and confusing, but with free courses like these that teach you everything you need to know in an easy to understand manner, there’s nothing to stop you from becoming financially independent.
Emilie is a prolific blogger, and influencer inspiring millennial women to live financially, physically, and professionally fit lives. She writes about overcoming debt, while balancing trying to eat healthy, stay fit, and have a little fun along the way. She is a politics major turned data engineer who graduated from Princeton University in 2015. She currently lives in North Carolina with her college sweetheart Casey who is currently stationed at Fort Bragg. She enjoys eating food, cuddling with her dog, and binge watching HGTV.
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