Course Description
1. Start Saving Now: How To Do It
Objectives
- Achieve financial independence that facilitates creative independence.
- Implement automated, consistent systems that offer long-term peace of mind.
- Utilize technology to free up time for creative achievement.
- Build up savings that facilitate short, intermediate, and long-term goals.
• Explain a financial inventory and list its two major components.
• Define assets and liabilities.
• Build and assess a simple 30-day budget for yourself.
• Define short, medium, and long-term financial goals and list what they could entail.
• Based on your budget, set short, medium, and long-term financial goals.
• Calculate how much your 3-month emergency reserve needs to be.
• Explain why everyone needs to save, and why it is important to pay yourself first.
• Examine the relationship between your budget and saving goals and calculate a saving goal for each month based on a percentage of your income.
• Define compound interest and explain its long-term impact.
• Explain the saving strategy of “bucketing” and list several possible buckets.
• Describe why multiple bank accounts could be helpful and what they might be used for.
• List several retirement plans and explain the difference between at least three IRAs.
• Define automation and why it is important for saving.
• Assess financial management tools available to you. Choose one and implement its use.
• Use the data to assess your monthly and yearly budgets and refine your saving strategy.
• Explain at least one saving strategy that exists for freelancers.
• Explain why it is important to pay down debt and save simultaneously.
• Differentiate between saving, investing, and speculation and the time horizons involved; explain why saving is important at all life stages.
2. Introduction To Investing
Objectives
- Prioritize investing for future goals now.
- Build upon your short-term saving strategies to think about a longer time horizon.
- Diversify where and how your money is working so that your business can weather setbacks.
- Craft an investment strategy, investigate apps to track your investments, and invest regularly.
- Achieve financial freedom now AND maintain it throughout your life.
• Explain what a financial inventory is and use provided worksheets to complete one.
• Understand the relationship between a saving strategy and an investment strategy.
• Explain why it’s important to start investing now, no matter what life stage you are in.
• List typical first investments.
• Explain the difference between traditional retirement plans and typical retirement plans for freelancers.
• List what percentage of income is recommended to put toward retirement and describe how a freelancer may tackle that kind of saving.
• Explain what a taxable brokerage account might look like, where you might go to get one, and the three main topics you want to consider before choosing an account.
• Explain a no-load mutual fund and who might offer one.
• Describe what an aggressive investment strategy might look like as compared to a more conservative one (thinking about stocks and bonds).
• Differentiate between investing and speculation.
• Define ESG.
• Differentiate between negative investment screening and proactive, affirmative investing. List examples of affirmative investing.
• Describe easy and automated ways to keep track of your investments.
• Set an annual schedule to complete a financial inventory. Assess and refine your investment strategy at each of these check-ins.
• Explain the relationship between the time horizon for your goals, risk, and investment strategy.
• Explain what a financial planner is, how they may work with you, and for how much.
• Relate your future goals to the topic of investing and articulate how your values may influence your investment strategy.