2. Consider Your Family Plan (and Save) for Retirement

Morningstar Investing Classroom offers a place for beginning and experienced investors alike to learn about stocks, funds, bonds, and portfolios. Some of the courses you’ll find include “Stocks Versus Other Investments,” “Methods for Investing in Mutual Funds,” “Determining Your Asset Mix,” and “Introduction to Government Bonds.” Each course takes about 10 minutes and is followed by a quiz to help you make sure that you understood the lesson.¹⁹

EdX is an online learning platform created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.²⁰ It offers at least three courses that cover personal finance: “How to Save Money: Making Smart Financial Decisions” from the University of California at Berkeley, “Personal Finance” from Purdue University, and “Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making” from the University of Michigan. These courses will teach you things such as how credit works, which types of insurance you might want to carry, how to maximize your retirement savings, how to read your credit report, and what the time value of money is.²¹²²²³

“Planning for a Secure Retirement” is an online course from Purdue University. It’s broken up into 10 main modules, and each has four to six sub-modules on topics such as Social Security, 401(k) and 403(b) plans, and IRAs. You’ll learn about your risk tolerance, think about what kind of retirement lifestyle you want, and estimate your retirement expenses.²⁴

“Personal Finance” is a free online video course from Missouri State University through iTunes. This basic course is good for beginners who want to learn about personal financial statements and budgets, how to use consumer credit wisely, and how to make decisions about cars and housing.²⁵

Podcasts

Personal finance podcasts are a great way to learn how to manage your money if you’re short on free time. While you’re getting ready in the morning, exercising, driving to work, running errands, or preparing for bed, you can listen to expert advice on becoming more financially secure. In addition to “The Investopedia Express with Caleb Silver,” you may find these valuable:

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  “The Dave Ramsey Show” is a call-in program that you can listen to anytime through your favorite podcast app. You’ll learn about the financial problems that real people are facing and how a multimillionaire who was once broke himself recommends solving them.²⁶
  
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  “Freakonomics Radio” and NPR’s “Planet Money” both make economics interesting by using it to explain real-world phenomena such as “how we got from mealy, nasty apples to apples that actually taste delicious,” the Wells Fargo fake-accounts scandal, and whether we should still be using cash.²⁷²⁸
  
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