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Managing my money
Managing my money

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Week 1: Financial planning and the life course

Introduction

Before you start, The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to further improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven't done so already, please fill in this optional survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

Martin Upton is your educator and guide through the course. He is Director of the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance, based at The Open University Business School. He’ll meet you at the start of each week of the course to tip you off about highlights and challenges, to remind you of what you’ve learned and to help you make the most of Managing my money. Note that each of the eight weeks of the course is designed to be studied over a period of three hours, ideally with one week being studied per week.

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As the course progresses you’ll also meet personal finance expert Jonquil Lowe from The Open University.

Your financial profile

Some of the coolest features are the financial challenges, planners and calculators you get to explore throughout the course. See how you score in the financial bad habits test, build up your personal budget and household balance sheet, and develop your own ‘fact find’ to take away at the end of the course. Your fact find is available to use throughout the course as a record of your goals and financial circumstances. You can download your fact find now so that you’re ready to use it later this week. Record your own details and, if you wish, those of your partner.

This fact find is different to the documents you complete when acquiring financial products like investments and mortgages. The fact find for Managing my money is intended to provide a full summary our personal financial circumstances. When acquiring specific financial products your financial adviser or financial product provider (e.g. your bank) will only require details about your financial circumstances that are relevant to the financial product you are intending to acquire.

You can also access a handy short glossary to the course.

A note about financial advice

This course provides the information, frameworks and financial planning guidance needed to manage your finances and to assist in making financial decisions.

However, course contents do not constitute ‘advice’ with regard to which specific financial products you should use or which financial services providers you should do business with. Consequently the course educators and facilitators cannot answer questions about matters relating to such financial advice.

If you need specific individual financial advice you should contact an authorised financial firm or financial adviser.

This course is presented with the kind support of True Potential LLP.

The True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (True Potential PUFin) is a pioneering Centre of Excellence for research in the development of personal financial capabilities. The establishment and activities of True Potential PUFin have been made possible thanks to the generous support of True Potential LLP, which has committed to a five-year programme of financial support for the Centre totalling £1.4 million