Blessed by the Potato

I have re-created the Money 201 session from our Toronto Public Library talk in February, and put it up on YouTube for your enjoyment and/or education and/or ridicule:

Now, here’s my crazy idea: wouldn’t it be great if there was a full online course along these lines? A full course would be about 12-24 hours of material, and would be designed to have some coherency and flow. So would you be interested in something like that? Doing something like that would take hundreds of hours of time to plan, draft, record, and upload: would you be willing to pay for it (either to pay for an online course with group hangout sessions/webinars, or to sponsor a video series through something like KickStarter)? If it was say $200 for an online course?

As cool as it sounds, it’s not like an online course is the only way to learn this stuff: there are plenty of books and blog posts, there are even some videos out there on individual components of personal finance/investing/planning if you look hard enough. But other than the odd book it’s very haphazard. If you’re coming in with no background, a blog is a terrible thing to encounter as the information is scattered all over chronologically, and often blog posts are focused on debating little technical issues which are not so helpful for a first-timer looking to learn.

There are in-person courses around: Ellen Roseman and Gail Bebee both offer courses on investing, with the added bonus of the reputational backing of the continuing education arms of UofT and Ryerson (at $245 for ~12 hours of class time). Plus there are plenty of free Toronto Public Library talks on the matter. Of course, you have to live in (or haul your butt to) Toronto for those classes, and I don’t think the rest of the country is as well supplied, so an internet option may be needed. So comment, email, or Tweet if you want to see something like this (especially if you would want to support it and make it happen).

Update: I am working on a course along these lines. I’ve streamlined the draft syllabus from what I linked to above, and am looking into using Thinkific to deliver the course. However, it’s a lot of work to get it right so expect many months yet (I don’t want to put a date to that after already blowing through one planned launch date).

I’ve started to give the idea some thought, and even thought about who I might pull in for guest lectures (some of whom are game if I can raise some money), but this is something that will only come together if there’s a real demand in the community for it — and the demand might be for someone other than me to do it. And just because I was crazy enough to think it was feasible doesn’t mean I’m the one who has to do it: if you think Ellen or someone else should make an online course then mention that in the comments too, and I’ll give them a poke.

“Have I told you about my latest crazy idea?”
“You have lots of crazy ideas, it’s hard to tell which one is the latest.”

Note: the self-publishing series will return at the end of the week.