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The Basics

Effective Strategies for Personal Money Management

Overview
Stress, anxiety, and anger are common experiences in many families' financial affairs. To turn these feelings into satisfaction, competence and security, families need information on how day-to-day spending impacts their long-term financial well-being.

Effective Strategies for Personal Money Management delivers that message and teaches sound planning and management skills with practical suggestions to improve spending habits.

Spending Tomorrow's Money Today

Overview
Unfamiliar terms, unexpected charges and easy access make credit use, for some consumers, confusing and expensive.

Spending Tomorrow's Money Today explores the advantages and disadvantages of using credit, the warning signs of credit crisis, and the contents of credit reports. Although use of credit is widespread, many people are uninformed about what factors to consider before making beneficial and appropriate choices.

This module provides the financial educator with a resource for presenting reliable, generic information that will help consumers approach credit use decisions armed with facts and an understanding of how to use credit to their best advantage.

Protecting Financial Security

Overview
Consumers face a variety of risks that may threaten their financial security. Many consumers spend their 'insurance dollars' to cover relatively small, out-of-pocket costs while ignoring the infrequent, but financially devastating potential losses due to liability risks. Many families and individuals make choices about how to handle risk without considering the potential impact on their current assets and long-term financial security.

Protecting Financial Security is designed as a foundation program that could precede discussions about managing specific risk issues, such as premature death of the breadwinner or loss of property. This program encourages participants to examine their risks and employ a variety of alternatives in their risk management plans. Financial educators will find in this module a resource for presenting reliable, generic information that will help consumers make knowledgeable choices today for a sound financial future.

Long Term Planning

Planning for Retirement

Overview
As lifespan increases, planning for adequate financial resources during retirement is critical to financial security. Employers are increasingly reluctant to provide retired employees with guaranteed pension benefits that may last decades. The defined benefit guaranteed pension of the post-World War II era has all but disappeared. In its place are defined contribution plans, such as 401(k), 403(b), ESOPs, and profit sharing. Today, employees have the responsibility to decide how to invest their retirement funds. While defined contribution plans have many benefits, such as faster vesting, greater portability, and increased investment choices, such plans greatly increase the need for employees to learn about and take control of their own retirement planning.

Financial Matters for Later Life

Overview
As families look ahead to the changes that aging will bring, there is a need to communicate values, expectations, goals and desires to those who will help on the journey. Finances, housing, healthcare, and long term care present complex later life issues.

Financial Matters for Later Life offers an introduction to some of these issues in order to raise awareness and stimulate family communication. The module is designed especially for those people who are helping their parents, grandparents, and older relatives develop strategies to deal with changing healthcare and housing needs. It may also be useful for those who are planning for their own later life finances.

Investing Basics

Overview
Financial security, for most people, is achieved through consistent, long-term efforts to defer current spending so that future priorities can be met. To be successful, savers and investors need information on how to 'find' money to fund long-term priorities, the types of savings and investment options available, and the kinds of risks associated with various savings and investment alternatives.

Investing Basics offers the beginning investor basic information, such as the value of saving small sums everyday, five types of savings and investment risks, and the differences between stocks and bonds. With this foundation, consumers can begin to develop long-term investment plans to reach their financial goals.

Major Purchases

Should I Buy or Lease my Next Car?

Overview
This module explores the issues surrounding the basic decisions about personal transportation. While leasing a car is becoming increasingly popular, many people are confused about what factors to consider in order to make an informed and satisfying choice. Unfamiliar terms, unexpected charges, and enticing deals make vehicle leasing an expenditure that, for some consumers, has been fraught with misunderstanding and fraud.

Should I buy or Lease my Next Car? provides the financial educator with a resource for presenting reliable, generic information that will help consumers approach this decision armed with facts to compare buying and leasing.

Buying Your First Home

Overview
Buying a house is a complex, expensive, and emotional experience. And for the first-time buyer the legal jargon, mortgage options, and government regulations can be overwhelming. A home is the largest single expenditure most families will make and the need for accurate, practical information is critical. Financial educators will find in this module a resource for presenting reliable, generic information that will help consumers make knowledgeable choices.

Saving for College

Overview
For many families, a college education is one of the largest expenses they will ever confront. Costs have risen consistently over the last forty years and the trend is expected to continue.

Saving for College presents six alternative methods to save for college. Determining which alternatives are best suited to a family's needs must be considered in the context of a family's lifetime financial goals and resources, the cost of the type of college their child will attend, and the number of years until the child goes to college.

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