Five Free Courses For Managing Your Finances
The miracle of the human mind isn’t its ability to change. It’s the mind’s ability to decide to change. And it doesn’t have to be a costly decision. The internet provides us with so many resources that, these days, the only real investments required for learning new skills or tasks are time and effort.
Time and effort appear to be in abundance, what with all of the YouTube tutorials teaching everything from kissing techniques to “how to be emo.” But when it comes to financial management, it can take near-bankruptcy for some people to admit that they haven’t been diligent enough in managing their financial assets. But, as the old saying goes- the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. The second is taking a free online course.
If you’re one of the many people who would like to improve your financial management skills, both professional and personal, I’ve compiled a short list of free, online resources to help you do just that.
Course #1: Money 101 from CNN Money
CNN Money provides us with a great starting point. This “course” provides 22 lessons covering everything from saving for college and buying a car to investing in mutual funds and planning employees’ benefits. The lessons are casual articles, with great tips, helpful suggestions, and advice worth heeding.
Course #2: Fundamentals of Personal Financing from the University of California Irvine
OpenCourseWare has done an amazing job with this course. The site runs smoothly, the information is presented cohesively, and the content is thorough. The topic here is personal financing, but within that framework, the course covers everything from organizing and assessing your immediate financial situation (creating a cash-flow statement and doing taxes) to planning for your great escape (funding your retirement) and eventual demise (estate planning). If personal finances are an area where you’re looking for improvement, I highly recommend checking out this resource.
Course #3: Financial Management from MIT
Take a trip through time, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology circa 2003. MIT offers all the essentials for you to relive this Graduate class on Financial Management.
From the course description: “Financial Management studies corporate finance and capital markets, emphasizing the financial aspects of managerial decisions. It touches on all areas of finance, including the valuation of real and financial assets, risk management and financial derivatives, the trade-off between risk and expected return, and corporate financing and dividend policy. The course draws heavily on empirical research to help guide managerial decisions.”
You can download the lecture notes, take the exams, even do the homework assignments. Unfortunately, they don’t provide you with the answers. If you’re like me, though, it won’t matter. There’s no way you’ll get these questions right.
That’s because, while you can essentially take an entire MIT graduate course without the ivy-league tuition, it’s an MIT graduate course. So most of it looks like this:
If you’re up to the challenge, more power to you. Moving right along… Continue Reading
Delicious Resources for Entrepreneurs
Think of That Advisory
If you’ve never heard of Delicious, it’s a social-bookmarking site. Social bookmarks are the same as bookmarks in your web browser, except they’re not just for you. They’re social, so you share them.
So I’m sharing mine. Throughout my last year’s worth of research for the Why Didn’t I Think of That? Blog, I’ve utilized Delicious (along with Twitter, Facebook and others, of course) to document or mention interesting things I find scattered about the web. I now have almost a hundred Delicious bookmarks.
Delicious lists the stories and articles in chronological order, but you can also sort them by Tags. Some of my most popular tags are to the right. “Advice,” for instance, is a great place to go if you’re feeling unsure, or need a bit of inspiration for the day and have exhausted the Why Didn’t I… Inspiration Hall of Fame.
One of my favorite functions of the site is the Browse Bar. This will let you navigate the bookmarks by looking at the actual sites, one at a time, in true StumbleUpon fashion.
Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
Chelsea Smith is a Portland based writer, musician, and entrepreneur.
I’m happy to announce the Why Didn’t I Think of That Blog‘s first Guest Post.
Are entrepreneurs born or made?
Living amidst so many millions of people pursuing ‘the American Dream’, the question is a burning one for many. While the definition of the American Dream inevitably varies, being a self-made business owner always seems to top the list. Despite the market share of large corporations, small businesses remain the backbone of the American economy; a tradition that dates back to the country’s founding. But researchers are looking for other explanations for the success of small business owners. Believe it or not, a preliminary study in 2009 determined that genetics indicate entrepreneurs are 40% born and 60% made.
The study results are compelling, but it remains speculative to conclude that being a successful entrepeneur is anything but cultural circumstances, ambition and good timing. Continue Reading
Home Depot
On Tuesday, I posted the first piece in my new series on Business Axioms where I spoke with Why Didn’t I Think of That? co-host Bob Smith on what it means to “Rethink Your Industry.”
And today, I’m bringing you a brand new 90-second WDITOT feature that tackles how two men did just that in the home-improvement world. Here’s the world premiere of Why Didn’t I Think of That‘s newest story, Home Depot:
Personally, I love stories like this, taking a giant household-name and learning its origins story. I covered Home Depot’s origins here on the Think of That blog about a year ago, where I was able to go a bit more in-depth on the subject, like why Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were fired from Handy Dan, and why, exactly, they had their children walking around the parking lot of the Home Depot on its first day in business, handing out dollar bills to anyone who was willing to check out this new “discount” store.
No one’s paying you to shop at Home Depot today. And why should they? With $71 billion in annual sales, I think it’s safe to call this one a true success story. Thanks for listening, and thanks for reading. Come back tomorrow as we examine not only the entrepreneurial spirit, but an entrepreneur’s genetics.
Never Get A Real Job
Scott Gerber is a serial-entrepreneur and author with a lot to say. Still in his twenties, Gerber owns several businesses, is an entrepreneurship columnist for Entrepreneur, Inc., and the Wall Street Journal, and has just released his first book, Never Get a Real Job.
He graduated from college and immediately launched his first business, a new-media and technology company. It failed. He wound up moving back in with his parents, plotting his next move. His mother had an idea: Get a real job. But Gerber had other plans. He took the last $700 in his bank account and started a new company. Whereas his first endeavor didn’t have a clear market in mind, his new effort was built for a niche market, had low overhead, and was managed much more frugally. It was called Sizzle It, and it put together “sizzle reels,” or promotional clips, for various companies and products. Sizzle It is still in business and now services clients like Procter and Gamble, OBI, and the Gap.
Scott Gerber is not a millionaire, and his book, Never Get a Real Job is not a how-to for getting rich quick. He wrote it for his fellow Gen-Y’ers, for many of whom the idea of a real job–think an office, boss, and cubicle–has little to no appeal. At the essence of Gerber’s message is this: Don’t waste your life handing out resumes, trying to get a job you most likely don’t want, and don’t waste your time trying to come up with the next million-dollar idea that will erase all your financial woes overnight. Get practical, and get busy.
Here at Why Didn’t I Think of That? we profile a lot of companies that seem to be the antithesis of Gerber’s advice: unique or quirky business ideas, many of which turned out to be “million-dollar ideas.” But the two philosophies are not at odds. Going into any endeavor with a “get-rich-or-bust” mentality simply isn’t good business. Your idea very well might exceed your wildest expectations, but it doesn’t have to. All it has to do is keep you employed, keep you interested, and keep making a profit.
“The lesson,” wrote Hanna Seligson in a New York Times piece on Mr. Gerber that ran last month, “may be that entrepreneurship can be a viable career path, not a renegade choice — especially since the promise of ‘Go to college, get good grades and then get a job,’ isn’t working the way it once did. The new reality has forced a whole generation to redefine what a stable job is.” Continue Reading
