Personal Financial Management Program

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Learn to set and evaluate your financial goals and objectives. Learn an easy method to track income, expenses, savings, and credit, and how to set and meet priorities for spending in the future. The class includes related facets of personal financial management: identifying needs vs. wants, fixed and variable expenses, discretionary expenses, emergency funds, revolving savings funds, and appropriate savings accounts. The course provides basic, easy-to-use formats for managing daily expenses. The formats are designed to be used manually (paper and pencil) or using an already formatted Excel workbook. The class also reviews a popular free, secure on-line application designed to help individuals manage their income and expenses entirely on-line. Please register with the Personal Financial Management Program Office: 703-614-6950

Learn about the credit system, credit reports, credit scores, debt management, and consumer rights. Learn how to improve your credit score. Learn how to dig out of a deep debt situation. Learn to use an easy FICO Score Estimator.” Active duty personnel can follow up the class by getting a free FICO score based on either their TransUnion or Equifax credit report (sorry, not Experian at this time). Please register with the Personal Financial Management Program Office: 703-614-6950

Buying a car is a major financial transaction and is filled with pot holes for the persons who have not done their homework before stepping into a dealer’s showroom. This class covers the five planning steps recommended by experienced car buyers, including the process of determining how much a person can afford in total transportation costs, and arranging for advantageous financing before arriving at the dealership. Understanding the sales process from the dealer’s viewpoint helps the prospective buyer prepare for the first encounter at the dealership. The class includes negotiations with the sales force, the purchase decision, and cost-related contents of the purchase contract. Class also includes the relative advantages and disadvantages of buying new, used, or leasing.

Learn the home buying process:  deciding to buy or rent, deciding what you can afford, working with an agent, qualifying and applying for a mortgage, types of mortgages (Conventional, FHA, VA; Fixed & Adjustable Rate Mortgages), negotiating a price, closing the purchase. 

Please register with the Personal Financial Management Program Office: 703-614-6950.

This class is intended for persons who know they need to invest money in the “stock market,” are uncertain how they can find relatively safe, prudent investments, but do want to have to become highly knowledgeable to begin investing in a prudent manner.  The class starts with a brief review of Time Value of Money and several calculation that suggest the amount of monthly investment needed to achieve large account balances over time.  The class links the concepts of business cycles and stock market cycles to the historical annualized rates of return for the S&P 500 Index [past performance is no guarantee of future performance].  The class compares and discusses the behavior (rate of return) of stock mutual funds, bond mutual funds, and balanced (stocks & bonds) mutual funds through two recent business cycles.  The class then addresses the reality of “investor risk tolerance”  The last building block in to the “safe, prudent” approach to investing in mutual funds is to understand “investor time horizons” and the type of investment that is prudent for both the investor’s time horizon and the investor’s risk tolerance.  With these building blocks in place, the class then reviews two basic, prudent strategies for investing over long periods with the goal of being financially independent by the time the investor reaches full retirement.  Please register with the Personal Financial Management Program Office: 703-614-6950

Unlike the “Begin Confident Investing in Index Mutual Funds” class which examines business cycles, stock market cycles, and index mutual funds, this class is intended to provide more detail on stocks, bonds, and mutual funds (index, actively managed and a slightly different investment, the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).  The stock portion provides an overview of the “stock valuation” process; the bond portion describes why bonds that are actively traded (that is, are not held to maturity) go up in price when interest rates fall, and down in price when interest rates rise.  The class highlights the difference between index mutual funds and actively managed funds and includes the use of free database tools to find high performing actively managed funds.

The objective of this four part class is to help a beginning investor acquire a basic understanding of the investments, their returns, and their risk, such that the person will be more confident, and more likely to take the first steps to becoming a successful, life-long investor.

Part 1

Starts with the basic questions of the difference between saving and investing, compound interest & rates of return, and the characteristics of stocks, bonds and mutual funds that makes them suitable as investments.

Part 2

Links the hoped for rise in prices of stocks and mutual funds to the realities of the business and stock market cycles. An understanding of the relationship is key to managing short and long term risk in investments, and to achieving a high rate of turn, with acceptable risk, over the long term. Part 2 also describes how stocks are listed indexes, by sectors of the market, as “growth” or “value” stocks, and as aggressive and conservative investments.

Part 3

Focuses on the nature of risk in investments, and specifically, risk in mutual funds. Part 3 includes a discussion of the role of the mutual fund manager, and information easily available on the Internet that helps investors determine which managers consistently achieve a high return with acceptable risk and acceptable expenses.

Part 4

Distinguishes between (1) historical investments which result in capital gains (or losses) and capital gains taxes and (2) tax-advantaged investments such as the TSP, IRAs, and 401(k)’s that are the foundation of retirement plans. Part 4 includes a discussion of load funds and no-load funds, purchasing and selling a mutual fund, strategies for investing for the long-haul, and most importantly, determining an investor’s tolerance for risk.

The class provides an overview of five elements of military retirement planning: (1) understanding “High-3” & “CBS/REDUX,” (2) introduction to the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP), (3) retirement needs analysis (the estimated monthly income needed to support a desired standard of living during full retirement AND the amount necessary to invest monthly in order to build an investment account to sustain the monthly income), (4) an outline of company retirement plans a Marine is likely to find in his or her post-active duty employment, and (5) “legacy planning,” an overview of the purpose, scope, and limitations of the basic estate planning documents: wills, durable powers of attorney, advanced medical directives, and trusts.