Khan Academy, a leader in online learning, has great resources for personal finance. Bookmark and visit khanacademy.org often to learn more about personal finance. There are many topics for anyone to learn about personal finance. Here a few topics that you can learn today:
- Retirement Accounts: IRAs and 401ks
- Introduction to Stocks
- Life Insurance
- Home Buying Process
- Renting vs. Buying a Home
- Introduction: Paying for College
- Personal Taxes
- Personal Bankruptcy
Khan Academy 20-Part Youtube Series
Also, if you want a good challenge then try to watch one of 20-part Youtube Series on Personal Finance per day with the longest is around 18 minutes. In three weeks your personal finance knowledge would improve tremendously. The series consists of:
- Part 1: Institutional Roles in Issuing and Processing Credit Cards
- Part 2: Roth IRAs
- Part 3: 401ks
- Part 4: Basics of the U.S. Income Tax Rate
- Part 5: Inflation Overview
- Part 6: Mortgage Interest Rates
- Part 7: Time Value of Money
- Part 8: Term and Whole Life Insurance
- Part 9: Open-Ended Mutual Funds
- Part 10: Estate Tax
- Part 11: Unemployment Rate Primer
- Part 12: Traditional IRAs
- Part 13: What It Means to Buy a Company’s Stock
- Part 14: Relationship Between Bond Prices and Interest Rates
- Part 15: Introduction to Bonds
- Part 16: Introduction to Compound Interest
- Part 17: The Rule of 72 for Compound Interest
- Part 18: Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and Effective APR
- Part 19: What is Bankruptcy?
- Part 20: Introduction to Mortgage Loans
Khan Academy Tutorials on Certain Personal Finance Topics
Here are some in-depth lectures your can learn about personal finance in an easy-to-understand format. These tutorials are around 5 to 15 minutes in length with in-depth lectures by instructors.
1. Debt
- Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and Effective APR: How to calculate the effective APR from a stated APR, and the difference between the two.
- Renting vs. Buying a Home: How to make an apples-to-apples comparison of the costs of renting a home versus buying a home.
- Mortgage Interest Rates: Different types of mortgages explained (such as fixed and adjustable rate), along with the relationship of principal and interest in a standard mortgage payment.
- Home Equity Loans: How to use equity in a home to create cash via a home equity loan
- The Discount Rate: The basics of the Fed funds rate and the discount rate from the Federal Reserve Bank.
- Personal Bankruptcy: Chapters 7 and 13: How personal bankruptcy works, and the differences between Chapter 7 (straight bankruptcy) and Chapter 13 (reorganization) and their consequences.
- Payday Loans: How payday loans work and the very high price borrowers pay who use these loans.
2. Income and Estate Tax
- Basics of US Income Tax Rate Schedule: An explanation of how income is taxed at various income tax rates, and how a marginal tax rate affects a taxpayer.
- Tax Deductions Introduction: What a tax deduction is, common misperceptions, and the difference between a deduction and a tax credit.
- Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT): How the Alternative Minimum Tax works in general, and why it is in the tax code at all.
- Estate Tax Introduction: What an estate tax is and how it is calculated.
- Tax Brackets and Progressive Taxation: How tax brackets work for higher levels of income, on an incremental basis.
- Calculating Federal Taxes and Take-Home Pay: How the standard deduction and personal exemptions impact a person’s federal taxable income.
- Calculating State Taxes and Take-Home Pay: How to calculate take-home pay after deducting state income tax
3. Insurance
- Term and Whole Life Insurance Policies: Term life and whole life insurance defined, and the difference between the two types of insurance.
4. Investing
- What It Means to Buy a Company’s Stock: Stock ownership defined and how the price of a company’s stock is determined.
- Introduction to Bonds: What a bond is and why an investor might want to buy one.
- Treasury Bond Prices and Yields: How bond price changes interact with interest rate changes, or why interest rates go down when bond prices go up.
- Relationship Between Bond Prices and Interest Rates: Why bond prices and interest rates move in opposite directions.
- Bonds Versus Stocks: The difference between a stock (ownership of a company) and a bond (lending to a company) with an emphasis on what a bond is and how it works.
- Open-End Mutual Fund (Part 1): What a mutual fund is and how it is created.
- Open-End Mutual Fund Redemptions: How mutual fund shares are purchased and how they are redeemed, and the impact on the mutual fund’s price (net asset value).
- Exchange Traded Funds: What an exchange traded fund is, and how it is both different and similar to a mutual fund.
- What Is Inflation: Inflation defined and how it is calculated
- CPI Index: What the consumer price index is and how it is determined.
- Moderate Inflation in a Good Economy: Why good economies tend to generate a reasonable amount of inflation.
- Ponzi Schemes: What a Ponzi scheme is and how it works, with an example from Bernie Madoff
5. Net Worth
- Introduction to Balance Sheets: The definition of assets, liabilities and net worth (equity) on a personal balance sheet.
6. Retirement
- Traditional IRAs: What a traditional IRA is, how it works, and its features and benefits
- Roth IRAs: What a Roth IRA is, how it works, its features and benefits, and how its different from a traditional IRA.
- 401(k)s: What a 401(k) is, how it compares to a traditional IRA, and how a 401(k) works.
7. The Time Value of Money
- Time Value of Money: The value of money received at different points in time, given a certain interest rate; present value versus future value.
- Introduction to Interest: The difference between simple interest and compound interest; why compound interest grows so quickly compared to simple interest.
- Interest Part 2: How to develop the formulas behind simple and compound interest, and an example of the striking difference between the two.
- Introduction to Present Value: How to decide whether it is better to have a sum of money today or in the future.
- Present Value 2: How to calculate the present value of different amounts of money received at different points in time.
- Present Value 3: What happens to the present value of money when you change the discount rate (or interest rate)?
- Introduction to Compound Interest: What compound interest is, how it works, and the math behind it.
- The Rule of 72 for Compound Interest: How and why the Rule of 72 is an easy way to estimate the impact of compound interest.
- Introduction to Continuous Compound Interest: How and why interest compounds (grows) over various time periods with a more detailed examination of the math behind the process.
Khan Academy Playlist
Lastly, if you have a lot of free time and want to be productive, try learning personal finance directly from the playlist from Khan Academy. These videos discuss personal finances and financial planning:
Watch them all for free. You’ll almost certainly learn something to enrich your life about personal finance.