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Last week I shared Investing for Your Future, a fantastic 11-week home-study course for beginning investors with small dollar amounts to invest. This week I found a similar resource from UC Irvine, which offers a free online class in the fundamentals of personal financial planning. According to the course introduction:
This course is not intended to replace the professional financial planner, but to help to make the general public better consumers of financial planning advice. The course was created to help those who cannot afford extensive planning assistance better understand how to define and reach their financial goals. It provides basic understanding so informed decisions can be made. The course can also be seen as a reference for individual topics that are part of personal financial planning.
The course is divided into eight discrete modules, each of which contains a number of specific topics. (And each topic is divided into multiple pages.) This approach makes it easy to sit down and read through the information in chunks, whenever you have the spare time. The course modules cover topics like:
- Setting financial goals
- Figuring out where you are
- Taxation
- Preventing bad things from interrupting your goals
- Investment basics
- Funding retirement
- Funding education
- Estate planning
I haven’t read the entire course, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of good information here. If you took the time to work through Investing for Your Future and Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning, I believe you’d have an excellent grounding in the basics of saving and investing.
This article is about Basics, Tools Thursday, 23rd April 2009 (by J.D. Roth)
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
J.D. You post a lot of good links, but there have been a little too many lately. I am not able to catch with all of them.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
A friend approached me about this Money Merge Account System. Have you heard about it and what is your view of it? Is it a scam or does it work?
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
@Tami (#2)
You can read more about money merge accounts here: Is a money-merge account a good way to pay off your mortgage? They’re not necessarily a scam, but they’re not a magic bullet, either.
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
J.D. looks like a great course and the price is right. Thanks for sharing!
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I cannot believe folks have to be “taught” how to save. And they pay money to boot, to learn how. Now, that’s idiocy.
Bozo
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
@Bozo,
Saving is not a natural, instinctive behavior for most people (because it really involves consciously delaying gratification) and, therefore, must be “taught.”
If there is value in paying to learn how, which there can be, that’s not idiocy; it’s smart.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Dylan, saving is a natural, instinctive, nature for squirrels. They save their acorns for the winter (trust me, they bury them all over my garden).
Are squirrels smarter than humans?
If you’re dumber than a squirrel, then I suppose you should pay to take a “how to save” course.
Bozo
PS: Once the squirrel saves, it’s a different issue as to how the acorn is planted. If planted on the “back forty” where it is unlikely to be harvested, it might grow into a mighty oak, yielding many acorns. If planted in my flower pot, I will no doubt dig it out come Springtime.
April 24th, 2009 at 5:40 am
JD just some quick advise regarding your links. You also post links in your articles that take readers away from your site. You should direct them to open in a new tab or window. You never want to direct a reader away from your site. Most attention spans will not stay focused enough to return to you.
Great site.
April 24th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Seamus, it’s “advice” not “advise”. It’s a noun. Not a verb. In any event, the attention span of most blog readers is a nano-second, so it really doesn’t matter. I suspect fewer than one in one million got my squirrel metaphor. Assuming (big assumption) even a million bothered to read the post.
Bozo
April 24th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Bozo, a little too much free time maybe? It’s great that you’re perfect but maybe some of the rest of us could use the opportunity to learn something. Sheesh.
Some humans have the natural instinct of squirrels. They “squirrel away” everything from cash to comic books to 20-yr-old newspapers, “just in case”. Some are the opposite and can’t make a paycheck last the week. Blogs like JD’s and classes like the ones he posts are incredibly helpful for those of us seeking some balance.
Keep it up, JD! Thank You!
April 24th, 2009 at 10:18 am
@”E”
Think of life as a teeter-totter. If you put too much weight on this end, you tend to tip over the other.
Folks seeking some “balance” might learn from teeter-totters. Those who are “teeter-totter”-challenged might learn about “levers” from the French:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever
The last I checked, squirrels didn’t speak French.
Nor did they ride teeter-totters, but they did “squirrel away” their acorns.
You can pay me for this wisdom.
Or not.
Bozo
April 24th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Another option if you don’t mind spending a little money is to buy a used personal financial planning textbook on amazon.
I found the one used by a local university in it’s CFP curriculum. Covered all the topics in enough detail to be usuable.
By the time I was done with it, I had a budget, balance sheet, and an income & expense sheet. I was also tracking my solvency, liquidity, and debt ratios as well as my savings rate. Beyond that I learned about the rest of the basics, insurance, taxes etc.
One of the best $50 investments I have ever made.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
@ bozo This is supposed to be a place for people to intelligently discuss personal finance. If you have nothing positive to add to the discussion please save your troll-ness for less positive sites.
@J.D. Thank you for the wonderful links. Keep up the good work.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi JD,
I’ve been reading for a long time, and I figured the best way to reach you would be through here rather than an email…plus this question is relevant to this post.
I am just beginning learning the fundamentals now because I am about to graduate from grad school. So I have a question because this is a basic budget question that I can’t seem to figure out.
My take-home income will be between 5000-5500 a month, and I was wondering if $1900/mo for an apartment is too high? It’s about 38%, but the thing is I won’t have a car (so no insurance or expenses on that) because I’ll be within walking distance of work and all shopping/groceries, and my company covers all medical insurance 100% (including copays and prescriptions). So I won’t have any automotive or insurance expenses, and also, utilities are included in that rent amount, so I won’t have to worry about a huge heating bill in January.
Does that still seem too high? I guess I just really really like this place and even then my budget still includes me saving 50% of my income (10% to savings/debts and 40% to contributions) so I think I’ve still got my priorities straight?
BTW I have no credit card debt, my credit card score is 780, and I have about $31k in 5-6% interest federal student loans.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
“even then my budget still includes me saving 50% of my income (10% to savings/debts and 40% to contributions)”
Adam, you’ve got a lot going to Eve, here. 40% is a mighty big apple.
Just my passing thought.
Bozo
PS: Garden of Eden metaphor, for those slow on the up-take.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Bozo needs a hobby.
April 25th, 2009 at 3:59 am
Whatever it takes a course or the self discipline– you have to start somewhere . . .
April 25th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
@Eve
Haha I got your reference, but what’s wrong with saving a ton?
April 26th, 2009 at 8:31 am
J.D., perhaps you’ve shared it with GRS readers already, but http://www.finance.cch.com/ appears to likely be quite useful. From the Home Page:
This web site is dedicated to you and your financial future. It’s free, there’s nothing to buy, and it’s brought to you by a team of finance and business professionals with decades of experience. Over a thousand pages of essential information and tools to help you manage your personal finances through planning, investing and asset protection strategies.