Managing your personal finances and understanding the concepts is critical if you want to maintain your financial well-being, so holes in your knowledge can come with serious consequences. Luckily, there are plenty of free online courses that can help you improve your financial literacy. Here are seven free online courses that everyone should consider taking.
1. Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know – Udemy
If you want to get a grip on the basics, this course is ideal. It covers basic concepts in key areas like debt management, credit building, planning for retirement, understanding credit cards, and more. The class even teaches participants how to file tax returns.
This online course has three hours of video and 52 downloadable resources. When you sign up, you get lifetime access to the materials. Plus, it is mobile-friendly, so you can even squeeze in a lesson while on the go.
You can find it here.
2. Personal & Family Financial Planning – Coursera
A University of Florida creation, this online course is approximately 13 hours long, covering critical topics about financial planning. Everything from budgeting to taxes is reviewed in the class, and you have access to videos, reading materials, and even quizzes to help make sure you absorb the information.
The class is highly accessible, and the information is easy for beginners to digest. If you want to build a strong financial literacy foundation, this option is worth checking out.
You can find the course on Coursera’s website here.
3. Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making – edX
A course from the University of Michigan, this class focuses on how to make sound financial decisions during your daily life. The class takes about six weeks to complete (five to six hours each week) and only requires an understanding of basic math and high school-level algebra.
Some of the information focuses on key life decisions, like whether you should rent or buy a home, how to evaluate buying a car and dealing with student loans. It also dives into other more advanced areas, like investing in stocks and bonds and resource allocation, ensuring you can make wise decisions over the long-term.
The course is available here.
4. Financial Literacy – ALISON
This six- to 10-hour course concentrates on the basics of personal finance. From budgeting and saving to debt management and retirement planning, this class aims to improve your overall financial literacy to ensure you can manage your today and plan for tomorrow.
The class also covers a few additional topics, like insurance options, wages, and taxes. Each main point is its own module, making the content highly digestible and each learning session short enough to fit into nearly any schedule.
ALISON’s personal finance course listings are here.
5. Personal Finance – iTunes
For those who want to be able to learn while on the go, this course from Missouri State University features seven sections, each one covering a primary topic.
Unlike some other options, goal setting is the first subject in this course. This allows you to determine where you would like to be in the future and use that information to shape your choices along the way. However, it also delves into critical areas like budgeting, credit, and investing, ensuring you get a well-rounded understanding.
The class doesn’t make any assumptions about a person’s knowledge level, making it ideal for genuine beginners. However, those with a basic understanding of personal finance can also benefit, and you can always choose to focus just on the lessons that cover your knowledge gaps.
The Missouri State University page is here. You can find the iTunes link here, but you’ll have to have iTunes on your device.
6. Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts – ALISON
If your primary financial literacy goal is to learn more about debt management and elimination, this course is for you. It takes approximately one hour and helps you learn how to prioritize payoffs and take control of any debts that are causing you stress.
The goal of the class is to help you plot a path for becoming debt-free. It presents multiple methods for reaching that objective, allowing you to determine which option is right for you while still guiding you to a better financial future.
Here is the direct link to this course. It got about 1 module which takes about 3 hours to work through.
7. Investment Vehicles, Insurance, and Retirement – Khan Academy
Another more focused course, this class focuses on investing, insurance, and retirement. It discusses how mutual funds work, who the various forms of IRAs differ from each other, 401(k)s, hedge funds, life insurance, and more.
While the information is valuable for anyone, the course doesn’t aim at true personal finance beginners. Instead, it is best for those who have basics like budgeting and debt management down and want to secure their financial future through smart planning and choices.
You can find the direct link here.
Ultimately, all of the free online financial literacy courses above are worth checking out. Since they won’t cost you a dime, there is no risk in signing up and seeing if what they have to offer can help you get your financial life on track.
8. Bonus Idea – Read Blogs
Another great way to get financially literate is to read personal finance blogs. They’re usually excellent sources of practical advice on how to build wealth or better manage your finances. A good place to start would be a decent directory of blogs like personalfinanceblogs.com.
Do you know of other free online courses on financial literacy that are worth exploring? Have you tried any of the courses listed above? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.
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