Keystone Financial Academy Personal Finance MasterClass

A comprehensive online course on credit, savings, budgeting, and debt.

This informative class will cover all the important topics related to personal finance, with the goal of making you well-versed in every aspect of managing your money!

PART 1 is all about Mastering Your Credit. We'll start with important credit-related terms and types of credit, and then get into the details of what your credit score is all about, with a special focus on how you can achieve (and maintain) a high credit score. Both the FICO and VantageScore models will be covered, and what goes into them discussed. We'll then move on to managing credit, and conclude with how to fix your credit score, if it needs repair.

PART 2 is all about Establishing Your Savings. We'll start with why and how much you should be saving, and then talk in detail about the various financial tools to help you with this, such as bank and credit union savings accounts, Money Market Accounts (MMAs), and Certificates of Deposit (CDs).

PART 3 is all about Budgeting & Spending. We'll start by going over all the typical living expenses, and discuss in detail how to cut costs with all of them. We’ll then get into budgeting, and how to put together a workable budget, and introduce the 50/30/20 Rule as well as Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB). Finally, we'll go over some of the software options that can help you with budgeting and spending.

PART 4 is all about Managing Your Debt. We'll start by discussing the different categories and types of debt, and then discuss ways you can avoid getting into debt in the first place. We’ll then talk about a number of effective debt payback strategies such as Debt Stacking, Debt Snowball, Balance Transfers, and Consolidation Loans.