Online course

Finance Fundamentals: Financial Planning and Budgeting

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

Finance Fundamentals: Financial Planning and Budgeting

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Overview
Topics
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Requirements
Educators
Overview
Topics
Start dates
Requirements
Educators
  • Duration 4 weeks
  • Weekly study 3 hours
  • Learn Free
  • Upgrade $69 What's this?
This course is part of the Business and Finance Fundamentals and Finance Fundamentals programs, which will enable you to master this subject in depth.

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?

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.

Who will you learn with?

Martin Upton

Martin Upton

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.

Stephen Wheat

Stephen Wheat

Teach business modules for the OU and moderator for certain online Business courses.
Degree in Economics and interested how we manage our resources

simon jackson

simon jackson

I am an Associate Lecturer for the Open University and an educational writer

Who developed the course?

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.

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