A 2019 survey found that 58 percent of adults in America don’t have a budget or keep close track of their spending. And 71 percent deal with some type of financial worry, whether that be not having enough in savings and retirement or the financial ramifications of losing a job.
If you’re looking for help with your finances, you could hire a personal money coach. Or, you could look for an online personal finance course that fits your needs.
Thankfully, the internet offers a host of personal finance courses that were developed with the goal of helping people manage, save, and invest their money better. We’re going to share some of our favorite personal finance courses that can help you do just that.
Table of Contents
- Best Personal Finance Courses that are Free
- 1. Udemy’s Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know
- 2. Inspired Budget’s Free Budgeting Basics
- 3. edX’s Finances for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision Making
- 4. Clever Girl Finance Free Personal Finance Courses
- 5. Alison’s Financial Literacy Course
- Bonus: Ramit Sethi’s The Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance
- Best Personal Finance Courses that are Paid
- 6. Grant Sabatier’s Financial Freedom in Uncertain Times
- 7. Well Kept Wallet’s Debt Free in 18 Months Course
- 8. Udemy’s Personal Finance: Financial Security Thinking & Principles
- 9. Money Peach’s Awesome Money Course
- 10. Ramsey Solutions Ramsey Plus
- Conclusion
Best Personal Finance Courses that are Free
There are both free and paid personal finance courses available online. One might argue that free personal finance courses aren’t the best personal finance courses. After all, you get what you pay for, right? Yes and no.
There is a long list of personal finance gurus offering their expertise for free in the name of helping people become more financially stable. Sometimes people really do give nice things away for free. In that vein, here are some free personal finance courses you might want to check out.
1. Udemy’s Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know
- Price: Free
- Topics covered: Budgeting, retirement, saving, homeownership, and more
- Class time: 3 hours worth of video
Udemy’s roughly three-hour Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need To Know course will cover most everything you need to know about personal finance. Along with the topics mentioned above, this course will share information about a broad range of personal finance subjects.
You’ll learn the basics of estate planning, investing rules, and how to protect yourself from identity theft. You’ll also learn how to navigate your money through life events such as dating, marriage, raising kids, and divorce.
2. Inspired Budget’s Free Budgeting Basics
- Price: Free
- Topics covered: Budgeting, how to pay debt off fast, how to organize your financial records
- Class time: 6 days of email instruction
The Inspired Budget blog was started by a mom-to-be who needed to get out of a lot of debt fast in preparation for the birth of her first child. 4.5 years later, Alison and her husband had wiped out $111,000 in debt.
Now she’s sharing her money management tips with others via her Free Budgeting Basics course. When you sign up for the course, you’ll also sign up to be on the email list for the blog, which means you’ll get access to a wealth of other financial tips.
Bonus: The course includes 14 pages of money management printables. You’ll get printable cash envelopes, a debt-free thermometer, and more.
3. edX’s Finances for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision Making
- Price: Free
- Topics covered: Time value of money, how to make money decisions in any situation, money management basics
- Class time: 6 weeks, 5-6 hours per week
The Finances For Everyone: Smart Tools For Decision Making course is probably the most comprehensive course on our “free” list. It starts out by explaining how the time value of money (TVM) affects our life both long and short-term.
The course goes on to give students an in-depth understanding of how money affects the world. From there, it will teach you how to use that new understanding as you manage your money going forward.
The course will even show you different frameworks for decision making as you work to manage your money.
4. Clever Girl Finance Free Personal Finance Courses
- Price: Free
- Topics covered: Financial goals, savings, debt payoff
- Class Time: Go at your own pace
Clever Girl Finance has several personal finance courses on the blog site – and every single one is free. Choose to take one or more courses such as Build A Solid Foundation, Create The Right Financial Goals, Destroy Your Debt, and more.
Other courses include the Savings Challenge Bundle and Build Good Credit. The site also features free financial worksheets and a free financial roadmap.
5. Alison’s Financial Literacy Course
- Price: Free
- Topics covered: Debt management, insurance, and budgeting
- Class time: 6 to 10 hours
Alison’s free Financial Literacy course is aimed at teaching you how to manage your money well. You’ll learn about budgeting, insurance, debt management, retirement planning, and more.
And you’ll learn how to create and manage a personalized budget. A comprehensive module on wages and taxes is included.
Bonus: Ramit Sethi’s The Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance
Ramit Sethi’s guide on personal finance doesn’t rise to the level of a “course” in terms of its comprehensiveness, the other ones on this list are significantly larger in terms of both size and scope, but you will not find a guide that gets you from zero to 80% knowledge in as short a time period. It’s all contained in a single well-organized page with comprehensive graphics and navigation to keep you on track.
It’s not a “course,” so we can’t put a time frame on it, but it’s hugely beneficial to review because it will give you a strong framework of understanding your relationship with money without getting bogged down in the details.
Take a look at Ramit’s Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.
Best Personal Finance Courses that are Paid
Yes, these courses cost money, but you just might find the price you pay well worth it. They provide valuable, lifelong financial management information.
6. Grant Sabatier’s Financial Freedom in Uncertain Times
- Price: $397.00
- Topics covered: entrepreneurship, saving and investing, wealth building
- Class Time: Go at your own pace
Grant Sabatier is a fellow personal finance blogger and author who has achieved financial freedom through side hustling and entrepreneurship. His course goes through how you can do the same, done expertly and professionally, so you can also achieve financial independence.
There are 8-modules, professionally recorded video, and a whole slew of tools to help you along the way. You can preview the modules to see what are included, including short video snippets.
7. Well Kept Wallet’s Debt Free in 18 Months Course
- Price: $67.00
- Topics covered: Fast track to debt payoff, budgeting, maximizing income, and more
- Class time: Go at your own pace
Deacon Hayes and his wife, Kim, started out married life with $52,000 in consumer debt. They paid it all off in just 18 months by using Deacon’s customized debt paydown strategy.
The Debt Free In 18 Months course will show you how to manage your money in a way that promotes fast debt payoff and increased savings.
This course comes with free access to Well Kept Wallet’s Debt Snowball Calculator. The Debt Snowball Calculator will give you the tools you need to devise a plan to pay off your debt as fast as you want to.
8. Udemy’s Personal Finance: Financial Security Thinking & Principles
- Price: $94.99
- Topics covered: Principles of financial security, money perspectives, finding additional revenue streams
- Class time: 3+ hours
Personal Finance: Financial Security Thinking & Principles goes beyond covering financial success tactics and gets to the heart of money problems with a discussion on money perspectives.
This course will help you learn how the way you think affects your money situation. Then it will help you create a personalized action plan.
9. Money Peach’s Awesome Money Course
- Price: $147.00
- Topics covered: supercharged debt payoff, wealth building, cash flow, and insurance
- Class time: Go at your own pace
Money Peach’s Chris Peach designed his Awesome Money Course after he and his wife Andrea went completely broke three years into their marriage. Today they’re debt-free, cash-rich, and living life on their terms because of what he teaches in this course.
Peach says his course works for all levels of income, including the self-employed.
10. Ramsey Solutions Ramsey Plus
- Price: $129.99 after a 14-day free trial
- Topics covered: Debt management, savings, retirement, and more
- Class Time: unlimited
Dave Ramsey is likely the most well-known name in personal finance today. Ramsey has taken his highly successful Financial Peace University and added a host of extra benefits to it with the creation of Ramsey Plus.
Your $129.99 membership to Ramsey Plus includes free access to his Financial Peace University teachings, Ramsey’s Every Dollar app, a Baby Steps Tracker, and access to newly listed courses.
Conclusion
Most everyone needs a little help with money management now and then. If you’re looking for some tips on how to pay off debt, save and invest, or create a budget there are plenty of online learning resources you can turn to.
Choose from this list of the best personal finance courses to help you make the most of the money you earn.
