Live Debt Free

Pay off debt. Save. Give. Live your mission.

Top Ten Online Classes for Financial Literacy

by //

Personal finance is something most people learn by trial and error. But, if you would rather skip the school of hard knocks, there are plenty of online classes. Financial literacy is all about smart money management and making it work for you.

Whether you need to learn the basics, delve deeper into investing strategies, or learn how to buy a house, there is an online course for you. Here are ten of the best.

1. edX’s Finances for Everyone

edX’s Finances for Everyone is rated as the best overall online personal finance class by Investopedia. It is a free course made for nearly everyone ready to learn how to manage their finances better.

However, you will want to be familiar with basic accounting terms and high-school-level algebra. edX’s course is structured like a typical online undergrad college course, but it is self-paced. In addition, the curriculum provides a solid overview of personal finance topics.

You will start by learning about how the time value of money works and how to use its principles to make financial decisions. Then, you can think of compound interest and the ways it can apply to investing and saving, in addition to borrowing. The course also includes discussion groups and videos. In case you need help making up your mind, here is what people are saying.

2. Udemy’s Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know

This is another free online financial literacy course that starts with the basics. But, you do not need to know accounting terms or understand high-school algebra. Udemy is also rated as one of the top free online learning platforms.

In Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know, you will have access to quizzes and three hours of video content. In addition, you will go through 53 different topics and lectures at your own pace.

This course is specifically aimed at people who are just starting to build their financial chops. So, you will be learning about everything from filing income taxes to choosing the best credit cards. The only thing you need to do is create a Udemy account to get started.

3. Ramsey Solutions’ Ramsey+

Although this online course isn’t free, it is designed by one of the world’s top financial experts, Dave Ramsey. Ramsey is known for his best-selling personal finance books and radio talk shows. The Ramsey+ course will cost you $129 a year, but there’s a 14-day free trial.

You will gain access to Ramsey’s Financial Peace University’s videos and tutorials with the course. You’ll also get the chance to participate in a large online community of others who are currently taking the journey to improved financial literacy.

Follow the link to learn more: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210726005106/en/Test-Scores-Prove-Financial-Literacy-Effectiveness-of-Ramsey-Solutions%E2%80%99-High-School-Curriculum

Besides the online community, Ramsey+ assigns you a personal mentor. This person is with you every step of the way to provide advice, help you overcome learning curves, and use personal finance tools to your advantage.

4. Udemy’s The Complete Personal Finance Course

This is not one of Udemy’s free courses, but it is considered a lower-priced online course that teaches financial literacy. The curriculum is led by an award-winning business teacher and best-selling writer, Chris Haroun.

One hundred ten thousand people have already taken the Complete Personal Finance Course, and 6,200 of them gave it an average rating of 4.6 on a scale of 1 to 5. But, unlike Udemy’s free personal finance course, you will have lifetime access.

Plus, you will go through 122 topics and lectures with over 16 hours of video content. For example, you will learn to save money for retirement goals and emergencies. There is even a lecture on how to budget for your pets.

On top of all these resources, you will get spreadsheets that help you walk through real-life exercises. So, you will not be just listening to someone talk the walk. Instead, you will be trying it out, increasing your absorption of the material.       

5. Coursera’s Financial Planning for Young Adults

Who has graduated from high school or college without an accurate idea of budgeting and managing debt? This is a free course created by the University of Illinois and the CFP Board with young adults in mind.

Some of the topics and lectures include managing financial risk, investing and saving, and budgeting. Responsible borrowing and credit use is another crucial topic. The course lasts four weeks, with each subject including quizzes, real-world case studies and exercises, and videos.

If you are interested in a potential career as a Certified Financial Planner, the last module covers preparation for a finance career. In addition, you will get to see interviews and insights from professionals already working in the industry and as Certified Financial Planners.  

6. Khan Academy’s Saving and Budgeting

This great complementary course zeroes in to create a workable budget and save for the future. There are practical exercises, videos with lectures, and real-world case studies within the course.

Participants in the course will learn a brief introduction to personal money management. Then, you will define what your financial objectives are. Want to save a down payment for a house? Include it! Or, maybe you want to learn how to start your retirement planning before it is too late.

Either way, you will incorporate your personal goals into a budget designed just for your circumstances. You will also learn basic budgeting strategies, such as ideal percentages for various categories.

For example, no more than 30% to 40% of your take-home pay should go to housing. However, this may not be practical for those with lower incomes or individuals who live in more expensive housing markets. Still, you will learn to work around those obstacles and live in your means. If you need more convincing, read more about Khan Academy here.

7. Duke University’s Behavioral Finance Course

Even though this course is designed by a university, it is free to the public. The course teaches how your perceptions and attitudes about money impact your financial decisions. This includes everything from spending and borrowing to whether you save discretionary income.

You will learn how to identify what perceptions and internal biases might be leading to poor decision-making. Then, you will master ways to change those perceptions and make personal finance decisions that help you increase your quality of life.

For instance, a belief that money can only be earned through hard labor might prevent you from earning it through investments. Likewise, seeing your parents stick to conservative investments might have ingrained the idea in your head that high-earning investments are too risky.

Although the behavioral finance course is free, you can earn certification by paying a small fee.

8. National Endowment for Financial Education’s Smart About Money Course

The National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) wants to empower the public regarding personal finance. It’s the main reason why the non-profit organization offers its Smart About Money course for free.

A great thing about this course is that you will get access to various tools and instructional materials. There are calculators to work with, worksheets, quizzes, articles, and individual modules.

The articles aren’t just about learning how to budget better or use credit wisely. You can also find information about careers in finance and budgeting for specific life events, such as going back to school or buying a home.  

9. Alison’s Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts

This is a free and short course, lasting only an hour. But if you want to learn how to handle your debt, Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts will be up your alley. Even if you do not have a lot of debt, the course can teach you to manage it well.

For instance, you will learn how to track your debt on a spreadsheet and how to pay them off using different methods. You will also learn how to work with creditors and prioritize payoff schedules.

Say you have a $100,000 mortgage balance at 2.5% interest and a credit card with a $10,000 balance at 15% interest. In most cases, you would want to prioritize putting more money toward the credit card and pay it off sooner than your mortgage. The course teaches you strategies like these and becoming as debt-free as possible.

10. Khan Academy’s Housing Course

Khan Academy’s Housing course is not just about buying real estate. It is for anyone who needs to rent or purchase a place to live. So unless you have inherited your dwelling space or live rent-free, this course applies to anyone.

The course contains 19 different lectures, covering the differences between a mortgage and rent payment. For instance, you can deduct a portion of your mortgage payment and initial expenses.     

Image Credit: Steve Stark

Why Minimalism Is the Ultimate Hack to Save Time and Money

by //

Minimalism

In a world where having the newest and nicest of everything to post on your Instagram feed seems to reign supreme, it is hard to imagine how to become a minimalist. It sounds nice on paper, but how do you DO it? 

Does a minimalist lifestyle save you time and money? The answer is yes. But many who have successfully adopted minimalism would say that doing it right is not easy. 

You may think of minimalism as cleaning out a couple of drawers and donating clothes. Or trying a zero spend month to save money and buy with more intention. But those things scratch the surface of minimalism and how it can save you time, money, and so much more. 

  • If you have ever been curious about minimalism but are unsure that you could do it, this is for you!
  • We are going to talk about all the ways that minimalism saves you precious time and money and show you how doable it is in your life. 

Less spending

This might seem overly simple, but it is such a profound part of adopting a minimalist approach to your life that it deserves to be mentioned. If you cut down on the number of things you are buying, you will spend less money. It is simple math. 

Many people begin a minimalist approach because they need to save money. Maybe you have noticed that your credit card bills are stacking up. Or perhaps the pile of clothes with the tags still on them is getting too big, and you have got more toys than your children could ever play with. 

It is easy to go down a slippery slope of spending because the world pretty much tells you that you need everything or else you are not keeping up.

There are ads everywhere— your TV and your social media feeds. You are constantly being sold to, both indirectly and directly, almost every minute of every day. It takes a lot of self-control to sift through the noise around you and decide what you need.

When you commit to becoming a minimalist, you shift your priorities around spending money entirely. I am sure you will find that you have a lot more money in your bank account at the end of each month, and you will begin to wonder where that money was genuinely going before.

Invest in quality pieces

When you focus on spending less money, the overall focus of what you are spending your money on will shift. It’s a common misconception with minimalism that you simply decrease the number of things you have, but minimalism often looks like buying more when you first get started. 

Minimalists still spend; they spend smart. As a part of this lifestyle shift, you will find yourself more driven to high-quality pieces that will last. Although these items may cost you more to start with, you will not have to repurchase a new version of the same thing every year – see more below from Making of a Millionaire. 

https://themakingofamillionaire.com/importance-of-time-in-minimalism-a14d0b8ecb34

This concept is especially common with clothing. A great example of this is something you may have heard of in recent years called a capsule wardrobe. 

Creating a capsule wardrobe means investing in a few high-quality, mix-and-match pieces of clothing that you can wear in many ways. The goal is to find clothes that fit your body and style without being overly trendy so that you can wear them year after year. 

This capsule wardrobe mentality can be applied to much of your life outside of clothing. 

The same rules apply to children’s toys, kitchen appliances and dishes, decorations in your home, and more. Buy one or a few lovely pieces and use them forever rather than replacing them constantly. 

Save on housing and storage costs

If you decide to take the minimalist lifestyle to heart and end up clearing out a lot of space in your home, you could even look to downsize your home. Doing so will save your rent or mortgage expenses quite a bit, as well as utilities and other bills. 

Although it goes against much of what mainstream society will lead you to believe, there is a ton of freedom in downsizing your home. You will likely have not only a lower mortgage or rent payment, but also your taxes, utilities, and overall home expenses will go down. 

Of course, downsizing is not going to work for everyone. If you are a growing family or your current living space is as small as you could comfortably maintain, this may not be an option. 

12 Reasons Why You’ll Be Happier in a Smaller Home

If this is the case, I’m sure you can still find ways to save in this category. For example, you may live in a small home or don’t have a basement or attic, so you have a storage unit for the overflow. 

By decluttering and living more minimally, you may no longer need the storage unit, which would be money in your pocket every month!

Make money by cleaning out

One of the most rewarding parts of adopting a more minimalist approach to your life is the decluttering process. Going through your home and getting rid of all the things you do not need can feel so freeing. 

Depending on what you must get rid of, you have the choice to donate, throw away or even sell your unwanted items to make some extra money. You may do a little bit of all three to get rid of everything you have. 

https://www.thespruce.com/decluttering-your-entire-home-2648002

If you have high-end items, sought after, or generally still in good condition, you can probably sell them for a profit. Doing so might take a little bit of patience and organization, but you can easily make some extra cash and help your items find a new home.

There are a few different ways to sell your stuff, including consignment shops, yard sales, online platforms like Poshmark or Mercari. Each of these methods works better for different items, so do your research.

Look at what you have after you have decluttered and chosen a platform or method that works best for the type of things you are looking to get rid of. You would be surprised at how much money you can make just by clearing out your closet.

Get (or stay) out of debt

Most adults in the US have debt. Whether it’s student loans, a car payment, credit cards, mortgage payments, or some combination of all of these, you probably have some debt. If you do not, that is AMAZING, but that is hard to find these days! 

One huge benefit of living a minimalist lifestyle and spending overall less money on things is that you will be able to use the money you spent on stupid stuff to pay off debt. This is not a very glamorous fact, but it will help you so much in the long run. 

By living minimally, you can take the money that would have fed your Amazon shopping addiction and instead make extra payments on outstanding debt. This will help you pay it off faster and get you to financial freedom even quicker. 

If, for some reason, you have lived frugally or already paid off any debt you have, switching to living minimally will still help you too! Staying out of debt is just as admirable as getting out of it. If you buy less stuff, the extra money you have lying around can be saved. 

Whether you were spending an extra $25 or $500 on junk every month, you will free yourself up to put that money to work for you in a savings, investment, or retirement account of your choice. This is yet another way minimalism helps you set yourself up for the future. 

More time for what matters

One of the biggest benefits of adopting a minimalist lifestyle is the perspective shift. When you are stuck on the hamster wheel of purchasing the next trendy bag or the cute shoes everyone is wearing, you spend a lot of time and energy on keeping up.

Minimalism will help you learn that keeping up is not as important as you may have thought. When you are in an endless cycle of buying things to keep up or impress people, it often leaves you feeling empty rather than fulfilled. 

When you change your perspective and focus on living minimally to pursue your happiness, you have all that time back that you spent trying to impress other people. 

The time you previously spent shopping online at night or walking the mall looking for a cute outfit is replaced with intentional time to do things that truly serve you. You can spend more time with your family, take a class on something that interests you, try out new hobbies, etc. 

Having more time for what matters and using it to make memories, improve yourself, and take care of yourself is time that you can genuinely never get back. 

Image credit: [Harsgcharg]

Better Side Hustle: Uber or Lyft?

by //

Deciding which rideshare companies will be a better side hustle for you will depend on several factors. These will include your location, how often you drive, what time of day you drive, and your personal preference on what the brand stands for.

While Uber pays more per distance driven, nationwide Lyft pays more to its drivers on average. In addition, Uber is considered more professional, while Lyft is a more casual company.

What is required to get started?

Both Uber and Lyft require you to be of legal driving age for your state and city. You’re also required to have a legal driver’s license and insurance to drive for either company.

Your car must not be older than 15 years from the current year, be a four-door with no body damage. Both will run a driving and background check before allowing you to drive. This is where they begin to differ.

Uber

You need at least one year of driving experience. If you are younger than 23, you must have three years of driving experience.

Lyft

The vehicle must have five seatbelts, no more than eight seatbelts, and less than 350,000 miles on the odometer. Lyft also requires drivers to complete a community safety program before allowing them to drive on the platform.

Which company is easier to start driving for?

Both ensure the safety of riders using the platform. Lyft has more requirements for the drivers’ vehicle and requires an extra education program before starting.

Based on the extra things required by Lyft, it will take longer to get started on the platform than its competitor.

https://therideshareguy.com/side-hustle/

Do I get a sign-on bonus?

Neither Uber nor Lyft currently offers a sign-on bonus. However, both offer a series of bonuses that encourage you to drive during busy times, increasing your overall paycheck.

Lyft currently offers more incentives, but Uber’s can come in useful as well. Below are the different bonuses and promotions the two platforms provide.

Lyft

Lyft offers personal power zones to encourage more drivers during busy times. In addition, Lyft offers ride streaks for consecutive rides. Lyft also provides an earning guarantee and ride challenges to prompt enough drivers to satisfy its riders.

Uber

One of the bonuses for Uber drivers is the extra money for consecutive trips made. In addition, Uber also has a promotion called Quests. This consists of a bonus for making a set number of trips of a specified number of days.

Which one trains drivers more?

Both platforms give training to their drivers on how to use the app. However, Lyft tends to have more comprehensive training.

Both platforms have developed a functional app for drivers to use. For example, Lyft has a function to contact riders if they have trouble finding the pickup location.

Which one earns more?

Depending on what area you live in and how many users are regulars on each app, this can vary.

Both platforms are good if you’re looking for money right now. Lyft may be a good option for some, while Uber benefits are better for others.

Both side hustles can be lucrative. On average across the nation, Uber drivers tend to make a little more per hour. Therefore, it would help to weigh the benefits when calculating the earning potential for either of the two rideshare companies.

Which one is better to drive for overall?

While Lyft offers its highest-rated drivers some nice perks, Uber isn’t without its benefits. So, it just depends on what you’re looking for when considering this side hustle.

Lyft’s highest-rated drivers get things such as 24/7 roadside assistance and free taxes. If you use either incentive, the saving will put money back in your pocket. On the other hand, Uber offers discounts on gas while using the Uber debit card and discounts on maintenance and bodywork.

Uber offers by far the most beneficial bonus to its highest-rated drivers, with the driver or their family receiving free online tuition at Arizona state university. This online school is a great option that makes many pick Uber over its competitor.

Does either offer a car to use?

Lyft has begun offering a new rental car program. While it is not free, it does allow you to drive a car other than your own. Not to be the odd man out, Uber will enable you to rent through one of its partners.

If using one of Uber’s partners, the vehicle will be fully insured and registered. You will have to pay a rental fee, so this is good for people who have a car in the shop getting repairs or want to try before they dive into this choice of side hustle. Not everyone is eligible, so check before you make this your deciding factor.

Which side hustle is better for you?

If you’re an international driver, Uber is going to be your top choice. This is because Lyft currently only operates in North America.

You would need to weigh the different options for all North American drivers to see which will benefit you the most. Each platform is a good side hustle if you don’t mind driving and having random people in your car. On the other hand, if you are an active driver, accept a good majority of rides, and receive good ratings, you can make decent money driving for either platform.

Does it Pay to Drive Uber as a Side Hustle?

What about my insurance?

Drivers should let their insurance company know if they are driving for either platform. Your insurance rate will go up as a driver on a ridesharing platform. 

Even with the added expense in mind, you should still inform your auto insurance company because you may find yourself out of pocket if involved in an accident. In addition, drivers who don’t have the right insurance can receive coverage if involved in an accident while driving on either platform.

Image credit: Peter Berglund