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Welcome to Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Personal Finance Course! Thank you so much for participating! This is a multi-media web-based program to provide the basic but critical knowledge to manage your personal finances. Upon completing this program, you will be able to write proper financial goals, create working spending plans, and apply strategies to reduce the cost of credit and debt. This will be done through eleven separate modules, broken into four clusters, with each module containing an audio-video lesson (with text for those who cannot or choose not to watch the video), example problem, and an assignment. Each lesson will start with a quick overview of the lesson’s objective and how that lesson relates to previous lessons.

Before we get started, let's discuss how you got to this site.

If you are being asked to complete this course from another organization - please complete the lessons in order (unless otherwise noted). You will need to receive positive feedback for all eleven assignments in order to complete the course. All assignments will be emailed to your course facilitator. To figure out who your course facilitator is, please refer to the list of facilitators in the text below. In order to move through this course, you must be comfortable with using Microsoft Word, have a working email address, and understand how to attach documents/files to emails. If you are unable to do any of these, please contact your course facilitator before beginning the course.

If you are taking the course voluntarily - feel free to move through the course however you like! If you could email your course facilitator and give them a heads up, that would be greatly appreciated!

Course Facilitators:

**If you do not see your locality on this list, Glenn Sturm (top of list) will be your course facilitator

Why is this information important? We’ll start with a story of a former unnamed client. This individual had a number of spending leaks, including consistently buying non-necessities at dollar stores, and going out to eat and grab drinks on paydays before figuring out where that money might really need to go. They would also regularly carry a high balance on their credit card from month to month, only paying the minimum, and use payday loans and car title loans to address emergencies. Years ago they had a goal to purchases a new family vehicle; however, in that time they had amassed thousands in credit card interest, had poor credit, and when they came to us they still didn’t have that new car. And it’s not just this person; according to the Federal Reserve, the average credit card debt for a household with at least one credit card is over $16,000! In addition, while the typical financial recommendation is to have enough in emergency savings to cover three to six months of expenses, according to a bankrate.com survey, 50% of those surveyed had less than a three-month cushion in savings, and 27% had no savings at all! However, it’s not all bad news; we’ve had our success stories with past learners as well. One in particular who made a genuine effort to identify and reduce spending leaks, avoided carrying a balance on their credit card, and developed a structured savings goal that included a specific savings amount each month. After a couple years, they had significantly improved their credit score, reduced the cost of interest, and saved enough money to make a down payment on a used car! If you follow the instructions and tips from this multi-media program, you will have the tools needed to properly manage your finances too!