Best Personal Finance Courses in 2024 (2024)

• Our Top Picks
• edX's Finances for Everyone
• Ramsey Solutions' Ramsey+
• Khan Academy
• Duke University
• See More (1)

• Final Verdict

• Compare Providers

• Alternatives to Personal Finance Courses

• FAQ

• Methodology

It's comprehensive, stacked with learning tools and resources, self-paced, university-developed and taught, and it's free. That's why we chose edX's Finances for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision Making as the best overall personal finance course.

For a free option, edX's Finances for Everyone is as comprehensive a course as there is. But what makes it stand out is its college course structure, which keeps students moving forward with quality instruction and resources while providing them with a unique learning experience.

edX's course is the creation of the University of Michigan and is taught by Gautam Kaul, professor of finance at the university's Ross School of Business. It's a six-week course (five to six hours per week) consisting of weekly learning sequences comprised of short videos embedded with interactive learning exercises, allowing students to practice what they learn.

The course also includes tutorial videos similar to on-campus discussion groups. There's an online discussion forum for students to post and review questions and share comments with teaching assistants and other students.

Generally, the course is designed for beginners, emphasizing improving financial literacy. It starts with an in-depth study of the time value of money as the foundation for understanding and appreciating the many applications of finance to analyze the personal decisions we make. The course provides a framework to help guide decisions in all aspects of money management.

The course is free unless you want to earn a certificate of completion, which costs $49.

Mastering your personal finances is about changing your behavior, which can be difficult for some people. Ramsey+ is more than just a top-notch course; it's also a massive community of like-minded people willing to support each other, making it our choice for the best personal finance course for a support system.

In addition to offering top-tier educational courses and resources, Ramsey+ is home to a massive community of Dave Ramsey's students who are there to learn and lend their support to other students.

For those who like to learn from legitimate gurus, there's no one more renowned than Ramsey. He has authored several best-selling books on personal finance and is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, reaching millions of listeners. With financial counselors throughout the country, his Financial Peace University has tutored thousands of people who want to control their finances.

Ramsey+ is an expanded version of Financial Peace University that adds extensive resources in addition to online courses. A membership with Ramsey+ costs $129 a year and includes several useful, mobile-optimized apps.

First is an app that carries all the Financial Peace University courses with on-demand videos. EveryDollar is a highly touted budgeting app (also sold separately for $99), and Baby Steps is based on Dave's well-traveled steps to getting out of debt quickly. While the courses are world-class, the apps are well worth the $129 per year price of admission.

However, the real value of Ramsey+ is the extra motivation you get from community support to stick to your plan. When you join Ramsey+, you join an interactive online community of thousands of people who have completed or are taking the courses and make themselves available to support each other. In addition, you also have access to a money mentor. That's the real value of the cost of membership.

There are many free personal finance courses available, but the Khan Academy has a sterling reputation for delivering quality online education services, which is why we chose it as the best free personal finance course.

When it comes to any educational course, free is not really free if you're committing your valuable time. With Khan Academy's 15 years of experience developing high-quality courses, you can be sure it will be worth your time.

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization founded in 2008 by Sal Khan, who has built it into a global leader in free online education. The personal finance course was developed and taught largely by Khan, who has a finance background.

The course is built around video lectures, short readings, interactive quizzes, and comment threads. There are nine courses covering the essentials. A typical course is broken down into units containing all the lessons, materialsm and resources you'll need.

Khan's courses are unique in that Sal Khan uses a virtual blackboard upon which he writes out his notes while he talks and thoroughly explains the concepts, just like in a real classroom. The learning site tracks your progress as you work your way through the course, capturing time spent watching videos and reading texts as well as your quiz scores.

As an additional resource, Khan has partnered with Visa to produce a 20-part YouTube series on personal finance.

To master your personal finances, you need to understand how your behavior influences financial decisions. Duke University has put its academic heft behind the development of its Behavioral Finance Course, making it our pick as the best personal finance course for learning behavioral finance.

Your behavior, including your biases and attitude about money, influences your financial decisions, which can have lifelong consequences. Duke University offers a Behavioral Finance course that focuses squarely on how to control your biases to make better decisions.

Duke is a world-class university with a top finance department. Its Behavioral Finance Course is very popular among its students, but it is also offered for free as an online course through Coursera.org, a learning platform that curates courses taught by university professors worldwide. While the course is free, you can pay a fee for course certification.

The five-hour course examines typical mistakes people make in their financial decisions and how to avoid them. It helps you discover your own biases, leading to poor decision-making. The course is taught by Emma Rasiel, a professor and associate chair of the economics department, who provides detailed instruction through a series of online videos. The course includes supplementary readings and quizzes at the end of each segment.