Personal Finance Foundations

By connecting the perspectives of social scientists, financial planners, and individual consumers, this Building Connections General Education course covers money management best practices from a personal point of view. Students can expect to gain objective financial knowledge as well as insight into the contextual factors that shape individual approaches to financial decision-making. Overall, the aim of this course is to provide guidance, tools, and information for making sound financial judgments so that students can set goals and achieve long term financial well-being. Students will end the semester with a personal financial plan. 

Your completed project will include three sections, plus an executive summary, with each section focusing on taking a different perspective from the course. The final plan will be in the style of a professional financial plan that a financial planner would give to a client. 

Here are the overall requirements for the project: 

• The plan should be presented in a clear, organized and engaging manner, however, the specific format you select is up to you. 
• Organizational structure should include an executive summary that highlights key points from the plan (see below) 
• Sections must be organized with headers and subheaders to clearly delineate sections of the plan. 
• Plan must include at least one graphical display of numerical information. 
• Outside sources, if used, must be cited using an established academic formatting standard (i.e. APA, MLA, Chicago)

Financial Plan Outline

Section 1: Perspective = The Individual Consumer (in this case, yourself)

Looking back at learning you’ve done over the course of the term, analyze your own financial tendencies, personal circumstances, and future plans. In this section, you must include:

• An assessment of your own financial tendencies: Think about what you’ve learned about your propensity to spend vs save? Take vs avoid risks? Address vs avoid money challenges? Embrace vs reject materialistic values?
• A description of your career and income plans (to the best of your ability), family structure (or intended future family structure) and ideal location (i.e. where you hope to live). For some of you, these are not yet known, but brainstorm about what you think might appeal to you, or how you think your life might unfold. 

Pick a time frame in the future (you can determine how many years in the future you want to project) and describe your “ideal” life. What values do you hope will underpin your lifestyle? What do you hope you’ve accomplished? What will be most important to you in your life? How do you hope to spend your time?

Past assignments to draw on for this section of your project can include (but are not limited to): The Self-Reflection Essay, The Tracking Pennies Project, The Retirement Planning Project, and online questionnaires completed as part of the lecture videos from Topic 1.1 on Financial Well-Being, Topic 1.2 on Materialism and Topic 4.1 on Risk Tolerance.

Section 2: Perspective = The Financial Planner

In section 2, you’ll take on the perspective of a financial planner and assume that you are your own client. You’ll complete a thorough quantitative evaluation of where you stand in key financial areas, as well as where you’d like to be in the future. Then, using what you’ve learned about financial best practices, you’ll write two SMART goals to move from where you are now to where you want to be in the future.

For this part of your plan, choose 3 of the following 6 areas to focus on:

• Budget and cashflow analysis 
• Emergency preparedness 
• Asset acquisition (vehicles, houses or other large purchases) 
• Credit/debt management 
• Asset/Identity protection 
• Retirement Planning

For EACH of the 3 chosen areas, you must present: 

1. An evaluation of where you stand right now¹
2. A description of where you’d like to be in the future (you must define your time horizon how far in the future you are projecting?) 
3. A set of at least 2 actionable SMART² goals that will help you more forward in this area. Ideally, your SMART goals should focus on actions you can take within 5 years, even if the goal might not come to fruition for many decades. (Note that you must present 2 SMART goals for EACH of your 3 chosen areas, which means you will share 6 SMART goals in total)

At least 1 of the 3 topical areas must include a graphical display of numerical information (i.e. a chart, bar graph, table or other visual representation of numerical data or information). You must create your graphical display using your own data. You cannot copy a generic graph from the internet.

The following optional resources may be helpful as you create your own graphical display of data: 

How to Choose the Right Data Visualization 

How to Choose the Right Graph (5 minute YouTube Video) 

How to Insert Charts on Google Slides (2.5 minute YouTube Video)

Past assignments to draw on for this section of your project can include (but are not limited to): The Self-Reflection Essay, The Tracking Pennies Project, The Credit Management Project, The Vehicle Purchase Project, The Retirement Planning Project, and the textbook and lecture videos sharing best practices in related content areas. You CAN use SMART Goals you've already written as part of earlier course projects.

¹For this part of your project, the more specific you can be, the more helpful this document will be for your future. Any information you share is protected by FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) because it is a part of your student educational record. That being said, feel free to make adjustments to what you share so that you feel comfortable. The point of this project is for you to create a meaningful financial plan and you can choose how you disclose your personal information. 

²Here are two sources to help you understand how to write an effective SMART goal. Khan Academy video; University of California How-to-Guide

Section 3: Perspective = The Social Scientist

In this section, you’ll engage in a critical analysis of the financial plan you’ve mapped out in Sections 1 & 2. Looking at your personal tendencies (section 1) and your evaluation of where you stand now as well as where you’re hoping to be in the future (section 2): 

• What psychological and sociological barriers might you face that might make realizing aspects of your plan challenging? 
• What psychological and structural strengths, opportunities and privileges may help you to achieve the goals you outlined in section 2? 

This final section of the plan will help uncover advantages and challenges that you might experience and will tie your plan to your understanding of the broader financial system, as well as the cultural, social, political and economic structures that influence the contexts in which you act and make decisions. On a practical level, this section will help you to identify those aspects of your financial circumstances that you may have some control over, as well as those that you don’t.

Past assignments to draw on for this section of your project can include (but are not limited to): The Self-Reflection Essay, The Tracking Pennies Project, Credit Management Project, Vehicle Purchase Project, and Retirement Planning Project.

Executive Summary: 

Once you have completed all three sections of your project, go back and write an “Executive Summary.” This is 1-2 paragraphs that will be inserted at the beginning of your project to highlight some of the key points that you will cover within each section of the plan. You can think of this summary as a brief overview of your financial standing and the direction you are hoping to head in during your life. Be sure to include at least a brief mention of some of the advantages and challenges that you foresee for yourself.

Signature Financial Plan Template

For their final project in PFFP150B2, students create a personally relevant plan to improve their financial well-being. This signature assignment evaluates all seven course objectives as it allows students to recall content, reflect upon their experiences (both in and outside of the class), quantitatively analyze data, engage in genre-specific writing, practice perspective taking, and integrate and synthesize learning that has happened throughout the term.  

Using a modified professional financial plan format, students examine their financial and life aspirations, develop actionable goals, and critically examine potential challenges and opportunities that they might encounter. Built around teaching best practices including scaffolded learning, personal meaning-making, choice, and peer workshops, this assignment integrates previous coursework through an applied, project-based approach. 

This project also highlights the value that each of the three Building Connections course perspectives bring to holistically understanding financial well-being.  

• Section 1 focuses on the consumer perspective, where students apply their learning about consumer behavior, decision-making, and materialism to outline their future aspirations regarding career, family, lifestyle, and personal values. 
• Section 2 adopts a financial planner's perspective, requiring students to select three of the six covered financial topics and analyze their current position against best practices. Students set future benchmarks and develop SMART goals to bridge the gap between their present and desired financial circumstances. This section includes data analysis and visualization components, allowing students to quantitatively represent some aspect of their financial journey. 
• Section 3 moves beyond traditional financial planning by incorporating academic analysis. Students utilize the perspective of a social scientist to examine their financial circumstances through psychological and sociological frameworks covered in class. This approach helps them to understand how psychological processes and societal structures might impact their ability to achieve their financial goals and showcases the relevance of these social science disciplines for understanding human behavior. 

From the very first day of the semester, this assignment is introduced as a promise for what students will gain from being in this class; by the end of the term, they are told that they will be capable of creating a detailed, actionable, personal, and professional financial plan. For many students, this is a motivating outcome. Throughout the term, module projects, in-class activities, and peer workshop time introduce students to the analytical mindset, content expertise, online resources, and problem-solving skills that they will draw on when they complete their final project.  

Project Components and Timeline 

1) Workshop 1 – Students identify the financial topics they will focus on in Section 2 and learn about data visualization (1 month before due date) 

2) Planning Your Financial Plan document submitted on D2L – Students complete this planning document to brainstorming ideas for inclusion in their final project. Graded for completion. (Two weeks before due date) 

3) Workshop 2 – Students attend an optional workshop on the last day of class to ask question, work with TAs, and get support with data visualization. (Last class of the semester) 

4) Signature Financial Plan Submitted on D2L