Increase your Financial Knowledge with Free Online Classes

The topic of finance can be daunting for many people, but in our information age we have more opportunities than ever to tap into free financial knowledge online.  Whether you are looking to simply make smarter financial decisions, save more, eliminate debt, or sharpen your money management skills then you are in luck.  In this post, I’ll be laying out six personal finance courses that are currently offered for FREE online.  It’s important to remember that these courses should be seen as educational in nature and not personal financial advice for your situation.  In other words, you might not follow everything to a “T” but perhaps some concepts can be applied within the context of your personal situation.

Course 1: Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making
You’ll find this on Edx.org, an online course provider created by Harvard and MIT and featuring courses from universities. The Finance for Everyone course was developed by the University of Michigan, and it covers finance fundamentals and strategies for making good financial decisions. It’s a self-paced course that lasts six weeks, with enough coursework that Edx.org suggests you could spend five to six hours going through the material.

Course 2: Purdue University’s Planning for a Secure Retirement
This online course, located on Purdue University’s website, has 10 modules, all with lessons designed to teach you how to have a successful retirement. The course is self-guided, and you can learn about topics such as understanding your risk tolerance when saving for retirement and navigating simplified employee pensions. While the course offers a wealth of information, it’s best suited for those interested in learning how to achieve a financially secure retirement.

Course 3: Duke University’s Behavioral Finance Course
Coursera.org, a platform offering classes taught by university professors throughout the world, offers courses in which students can interact with professors, receive graded assignments and earn certifications for a fee. But you can also find free classes on the website, including a three-week behavioral finance class from Duke University. In the class, you’ll learn how biases impact how much you spend on food, how to tip and how much to allocate for insurance, along with tips for saving for retirement in a course taught by a university professor.

Course 4: The University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign’s Financial Planning for Young Adults
This is another course you can find on Coursera.org, and it’s offered by the University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign. If you’re looking for a class designed for beginners, this introductory personal finance online class might fit the bill. Subjects covered include financial goal-setting, saving and investing, budgeting, financial risk, borrowing and credit. There is a lot here; it’s estimated it’ll take you 19 hours to complete all the coursework.

Course 5:  Alison.com’s Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts
Alison.com offers free online finance courses. The Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts financial literacy course covers everything you’d want to know about managing or eliminating debt, offering tips on how to prioritize debts as well as strategies for bringing down a credit card balance. It’ll even help you devise a debt elimination plan. All in about 90 minutes to three hours, Alison estimates, depending how fast you go through it.

Course 6: Planning for Risk, Retirement and Investment
Planning for Risk, Retirement and Investment, another offering on Edx.org, is a four-week course from Indiana University that includes four to six hours of instruction a week. It’s self-paced, so you can go through the course at your own speed and, like all of the courses on this list, it’s free. You’ll tackle everything from life insurance to deciding how much money you need to have to retire. As the course states, “Students in this course will gain both conceptual and practical knowledge of the inevitable and universal decisions around managing risk, planning for retirement, and starting a program of investment.”

While this is certainly not an exhaustive list of free online courses available to you, I hope it highlights the point that learning a new skill or topic is always at our fingertips.  So, during this holiday season, rather than scrolling one more time through social media perhaps you can improve your financial acumen and look to complete one of these free online courses.