With household budgets feeling the pinch this course shows how to bring order to your finances and make good financial decisions.

- Duration4 weeks
- Weekly study3 hours
Finance Fundamentals: Financial Planning and Budgeting
Find out how to manage your income and expenditure more effectively
This online courses explore how current economic conditions impact household finances, before showing you how to manage yours more effectively.
You will find out whether you have bad financial habits and how to address them; discover a simple four-stage model for making sound financial decisions; examine the two components of household budgeting – income and expenditure – and how to manage them; and look at a key area of household spending – insurance.
The Open University’s Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance created this course, with the generous support of True Potential LLP.
What topics will you cover?
- Financial planning over the life course
- Prioritising plans
- Human behaviour and financial decisions
- Applying a financial decision-making model
- Income and inflation
- Income and taxation
- Government benefits
- Factors influencing household expenditure
- Creating and managing a household budget
- Understanding when to buy insurance products
- The range of insurance products
When would you like to start?
Date to be announced
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Identify and understand how financial needs change over the life course
- Identify, understand and apply a model for financial decision-making
- Identify and appreciate how human behaviour affects financial decisions
- Identify and understand the impact of inflation and tax on incomes
- Apply and appreciate the social and economic factors that influence spending
- Design and manage a household budget
- Identify and understand insurance products and when to buy them
Who is the course for?
For further information about registration, the final assessment course, your eligibility and the BA in Business Management, visit the Open University website.
IMPORTANT! If you are aiming to use your study of courses in the Business and Finance Fundamentals program to obtain academic credit, please be aware that the final planned presentation of the Open University Assessment Course BXM191 Business and Finance Fundamentals in Practice starts October 2020. Please ensure that you allow yourself enough time to obtain all eight Certificates of Achievement from courses in the program before registering for the Assessment Course. Details of runs of the relevant FutureLearn courses in 2019 and 2020 are available here.
Who will you learn with?
I am Director of the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (PUFin) at the OU Business School. Previously I was Treasurer of Nationwide Building Society.
Moderator for certain online Business courses.
I am an Associate Lecturer for the Open University and an educational writer
Who developed the course?
The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning, with a mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas.
- Established1969
- LocationMilton Keynes, UK
- World rankingTop 510Source: Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020
Learner reviews
Get a taste of this course
Find out what this course is like by previewing some of the course steps before you join:
Do you know someone who’d love this course? Tell them about it...
You can use the hashtag #FLBFbudgeting to talk about this course on social media.