Psychologists have long realized that people tend to organize themselves through the process of goal-setting, and those who do it well tend to exhibit higher psychological well-being.  This happens because the pursuit of personal goals help provide meaning and structure to one’s activities and identity. Michelangelo, the famous painter, once said, “the great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”  This danger is especially true when it comes to financial goal setting. Our financial lives are complicated, and we need to make financial decisions every day of our lives. Having a personal financial plan helps provide meaning and structure to our every financial decision, which enables us to have a deeper enjoyment of God’s resources.

But, how do we go about creating an effective financial plan? In this course we will explore the typical types of financial goals and how to prioritize them through identifying your core values. We will learn how to calculate the amount of monthly savings required to meet your goals given that, over time, interest is earned from investments and purchasing power is lost from inflation. We will look at how to manage certain destructive personality money scripts that get in the way of financial plans. We will also explore whether saving regularly means you have to be less generous, and how generosity integrates with financial planning. By the end of the course you will have a comprehensive financial plan for your life that will help provide meaning and structure to your daily financial decisions.

This course features video lectures from Professor Shane Enete, CFA, from Biola University's Crowell School of Business. Professor Enete is the director of the Personal Financial Planning Program at Biola University through the Crowell School of Business. He also founded the Biola University Inspire Research Institute for Biblical Responsible Investing during 2017. He worked as an investment research professional for over 10 years for large institutional asset managers. His duties included valuing public stock securities, modeling asset allocations for billion dollar pension plans and serving as a forensic accountant for a trillion dollar bond manager. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designations. He earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California, a M.S. in Mathematical Finance from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and he is a PhD candidate for Personal Financial Planning at Kansas State University. He is married to his lovely wife, Tammy, and has two kids, Sage and Silas.

In this course, you will receive:

• Video lectures by Professor Enete to walk you through different financial decisions
• Reflection questions to help you process what you learned in the videos
• A downloadable coursepack with lecture notes and assignments to help you apply your learnings to your own financial situation

This course is the second course in the Financial Literacy Series of courses available on Biola LEARN. The full list of courses in this series, present in their recommended order of completion, is:

1. The Bible and Personal Finance
2. Personal Financial Planning
3. Basic Money Management (Basic Money Management for Church Leaders also available)