School teaches us a lot and expands our knowledge, but it skips one of life’s basic skills: personal financial planning. In turn, many adults struggle to save money and spend more than necessary. These money-saving blogs and podcasts are a crash course in the basics of financial planning, teaching you how to budget, save money, and invest it wisely.
There is a growing demand online for learning how to manage wealth. If you find it embarrassing to admit that you don’t know how to manage your finances, it can be comforting to turn to online experts who teach without judgment. Remember not to take their word for it as gospel since your financial situation might be unique. As a precautionary measure, it is best to use these tips to develop your financial knowledge and apply them to your financial matters.
1. Modern frugality (web): learn how to limit your expenses and save money
Author Jen Smith and her husband paid off $78,000 in debt over two years. She turned everything she learned along the way into her Modern Frugality blog and wrote three books (the basics of which you can also check out on the blog).
Modern Frugality’s approach is to first control your spending and plan your finances accordingly. The Touchstone is The No-Spend Challenge, one of Smith’s best-selling books, which you can do in a week or a month. It’s explained in detail on the blog, and you’ll find other blog posts on recommended resources, short stories, free activities, and more. Once you complete the challenge, you can move on to the two main types of blog posts depending on your financial goals: saving money or paying off debt.
Along with fellow frugality advocate Jill Sirianni, Smith is also a co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast, which is one of the top-ranked podcasts for saving money and getting out of debt. In weekly episodes, they cover common financial topics such as budgeting, paying off debt, and most importantly, how to save money or be thrifty with a partner or family. They both draw on their personal experiences and often invite expert guests for sound advice.
2. Clever Girl Finance (Web): Free Online Courses to Learn the Basics of Personal Finance
While Clever Girl Finance primarily targets personal finance education for women in the United States, their advice is generally universal enough for anyone to learn the basics of money management. The most impressive arrow in their versatile quiver is the collection of over 30 free personal finance online courses with no strings attached.
Basic finance courses start with the basics of money management, such as saving challenges, creating a budget that works, improving your financial mindset, building a good credit, destroying debt and setting financial goals. These are all self-paced courses that run entirely in your browser, with step-by-step lessons, video tutorials, worksheets, and a community to discuss your progress or have any doubts. Once you’ve gotten through the fundamentals, there are other investment and wellness courses.
Besides classes, Clever Girl Finance offers many other ways to boost your financial mindset. The blog is regularly updated with articles on managing finances, while the weekly podcast is a great resource for timely advice.
In a unique move, Clever Girl Finance also offers a free video call with a mentor. This is limited to women in the United States and Canada, and each member receives only one call. These are essentially support and encouragement sessions, not financial planning consultations.
The best advice comes from experts on a subject. But often the advice you can most relate to comes from a non-expert who has lived through the situations you are going through. Andy Hill is not a qualified financial expert, but his stories and suggestions have resonated with thousands of people who connect with his business, Marriage Kids and Money.
As the name suggests, Hill’s focuses on managing finances as a married couple with children (or an only child). You’ll find practical advice on topics such as paying off a mortgage in the shortest and healthiest time possible, living on one income as a family, building a family budget, retirement and saving for independence. financial, etc. interviews with young millionaires, financially independent couples and debt-free parents to learn their money management tips.
Often joined by his wife, Hill shares this advice in three different ways: a blog for those who prefer to read, a podcast for those who prefer to listen, and a YouTube channel for those who prefer to watch. The advice is consistent; it’s pretty much your favorite medium.
4. One Minute Economics (Web): Learn the Basics of Personal Finance in Short Videos
Many people find it difficult to implement the advice of personal finance experts due to a shaky understanding of the principles of how the economy works. One Minute Economics seeks to provide simple explanations of economics in one-minute videos and has created a special YouTube playlist of personal finance topics you need to understand.
Creator Andrei Polgar took the model from famous YouTube channels like Minute Physics and adapted it to discuss economics. Each video is around a minute long, with a series of animations to illustrate the subject matter, while Polgar explains it through a voice-over.
In the Personal Finance in One Minute reading list, Polgar does not give practical advice that you can implement. Instead, it teaches the basics of economics you need to know to manage your money and know how to grow it. Topics range from simple to complex, such as calculating net worth, understanding insurance, rent vs. mortgage, cryptocurrency investments, assets and liabilities, and more. That’s a total of 120 videos, but keep in mind that they’re pretty short.
If you want more practical advice for your own finances rather than understanding the wider economy and its impact on you, One Minute Economics has you covered there too. Try the Adulting Explained in One Minute playlist for just 33 of 120 videos in a series that explain simple steps you can take to manage your money.
Financial planning and management app SoFi has partnered with Coursera to release a series of free online courses aimed at improving financial literacy. Anyone with a Coursera account can take all five courses at their own pace or take the global specialization recommended by SoFis experts.
The courses, in order, teach the basics of personal finance, saving for the future, debt management and repayment, investment fundamentals, and risk management to protect your finances from the unforeseen events. unforeseen. Each course is taught by a certified expert in the field.
All courses are aimed at beginners and include a mix of readings, videos and activities. SoFi suggests working at a rate of two hours per week, which would take five months to complete the specialization course.
If you want more courses or courses from top universities, check out some of our favorite sites to learn the basics of personal finance and managing your money.
How to Teach Kids Money Management Skills
While it’s good to learn the basics of personal finance as an adult, wouldn’t you like to be taught these basics at an early age? Don’t let the next generation go through what you went through.
It’s never too early to start teaching kids money management skills, whether through online tools and games or your own ways of explaining it. Just like many other life skills that aren’t taught in academia, it’s up to you to pass this knowledge on to young minds.
