Check out this nifty “step-by-step guide to gaining control of your financial life” by CNNMoney. It’s an all-in-one package sort of deal with 23 lessons covering topics like investing basics, kids and money, retirement, car buying …and many more…almost everything you would want to know towards better personal finance management. The lessons start from basic know-how and proceed towards advanced concepts. For example, shown alongside is a snapshot of the lesson on retirement (lesson #13).
Some of the lessons include handy tools (or calculators) that you can use to crunch up some numbers as you read. A multiple-choice type test accompanies each lesson. Use the tests to check how much you have learned (or how much you need to learn). For example, here is a test question from the lesson on investment:
I stumbled on an interesting tool right in the beginning of the guide (in lesson #1); it’s called the “Prioritizer“. It’s pretty handy if you have trouble assigning an order of importance to your goals. The tool basically asks you to list all your goals, prompts you to compare them one-on-one (in a round robin style), and then churns out some sort of a ranked list. I tried it with the following (hypothetical) goals in a random order:
After comparing them with one another, the Prioritizer ranked them as follows (100 = highest priority):
By the way, the Prioritizer is not money-specific…you could use it to rank any random list of things like movies, restaurants, girlfriends (?), etc. Give it a try.
It may take you 23 days (or more) to go through all the lessons..it doesn’t matter. What matters is you go through all the stuff. If you think you already know too much about personal finance, read it nevertheless; repetition has never killed anyone…well…except some Kiyosaki followers I think.
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the prioritizor is a fun tool. I just ranked home improvement projects.
Haha, I don’t think $200K would even get your feet off the ground. Up that by 100fold and the Russian government might start returning your phone calls.
F2O: Yup…the Prioritizer it’s quite versatile.
Dimes: I am thinking of Virgin Galactic over the Russians.
Read this and you will know what I am talking about:
http://www.thetaoofmakingmoney.com/2007/02/25/262.html
Yeah, these lessons are awesome! I spent a lot of time with them before discovering the intriguing world of PF blogging. They seem to constantly update these too - for instance I dont remember the prioritizer from before - so that’s another plus!
I like the prioritizer. I may use it with my wife to figure out some things, although I’m a bit concerned about what may happen.
I’m sorry, but I think a house and retirement should come before your child’s (assuming college)education, or at the very least, your retirement should come before your child’s education, unless you can guarantee your child will support you in your old age and take care of your medical expenses. There are no guarantees.
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