Don’t worry, I’m not selling anything. I’m not hyping a seminar either.

This personal & family financial planning course is one of the free courses you can take in Coursera.

I first learned about it when Rox mentioned it in her blog. So being the quick-acting guy that I am, I promptly installed it on my phone two years later – and then waited a few months before searching for a course.

Despite myself, I eventually did enroll in this course. It’s not the Fundamentals of Financial Planning that Rox enrolled in, but it’s actually pretty good too.

The biggest downside is that it’s very U.S. centric. And there’s a whole week about taxes, so obviously that’s all out the window as none of it is applicable to the Philippines.

Another downside is that the U.S. investing environment is apparently very different as well. Over there they recommend mutual funds because those are low cost. Their hedge-funds are more expensive, while their Unit Investment Trusts require large capitals for you to participate.

Here in the Philippines, the cost of mutual funds and UITFs are roughly the same. But UITFs (at least those that I know of) tend to have slightly lower initial investment and fees.

It’s easy to understand and if you’re familiar with some financial
products here in the Philippines, it’s easy to spot the differences
(i.e. what you do and don’t need to pay attention to).

Overall, it’s a pretty informative course. You get to learn about the different financial stages, time value of money, budgeting and insurance. And at the end you get to make your own financial plan.

And best of all it’s very flexible. As long as you’ve got an internet connection, you can use either your pc or smartphone. Courses are a little time-bound – you can’t skip ahead too far and if you fall back too much you won’t get credit for your work. But otherwise, you’re free to take one 20-minute lesson a day and still won’t fall behind.

This course just ended though. But it usually repeats, at least from what I saw before. So it might be open again in a few months.

For myself, I’d probably take another course. Maybe something slightly more advanced if the workload isn’t too much.

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