Managing Money - MBA insights for Undergraduates

List of Modules

  1. What's in your budget
  2. To credit or to debit that's the question
  3. To build your credit - boost your credit score
  4. What is the deal with loans
  5. Saving and investments basics
  6. A simulating guide to the stock market
  7. So do I have to start paying taxes now
  8. I too young to mess with insurance
  9. So you want to be an entrepreneur
  10. What the best MBAs know

Course Instructor: Peter Navarro, PhD

Peter Navarro received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1986 and has been a business professor at the University of California-Irvine since 1988. His best-selling volumes include the ground-breaking management strategy books The Well-Timed Strategy and Always A Winner, the stock market investing classic If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks, and his provocative series on China, including The Coming China Wars and Death By China.

Peter Navarro has also co-authored with former White House economic advisor Glen Hubbard Seeds of Destruction: Why the Path to Economic Ruin Runs Through Washington, and How to Reclaim American Prosperity. In this powerful, timely, and nonpartisan book about the global macroeconomic environment, Hubbard and Navarro take on the most important problem of our age -- a decade-long pattern in which the American economy has grown below its full potential, giving rise to fears about the nation's future prosperity.

Over the past two decades, Professor Navarro has been a keynote speaker on management, finance, global politics and the economy at hundreds of events. His speaking style is unique; it involves a very active engagement of the audience using a state of the art audience response system.

Professor Navarro is also a frequent media commentator. His articles have appeared in publications such as Business Week, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal; and he is frequently seen on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, and the major network news shows.

Professor Navarro's latest project is the documentary film Death By China, which is based on the book of the same name. Visit www.peternavarro.com and www.deathbychina.com for more information.

Course Peer Teaching Assistant: Alex LeBon

Alex LeBon currently studies physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. His interest in economics stems from the unique connections between seemingly unrelated forces in the market and how they can interact to create the effects we see every day.

Course Introduction Video

Course Overview

About the Course

This course will introduce college students in a practical way to the world of personal finance as well as time and career management. It will provide students with a useful set of tools from economics and finance that will allow them to move forward into the world upon graduation with a solid foundation in managing their money, time, and career. In a course of this nature, it is unavoidable that some of the content relates solely to the United States. Personal finance touches on topics that are governed by the nation's tax code, financial regulations, consumer protections, and so forth. However, students outside of the United States will still benefit from many of the principles, explanations, and exercises offered by the course.


Course Format

The course consists of ten modules divided into multiple video lessons. This allows students to view the modules in roughly five-minute increments so the material is easily digestible. Each module concludes with a multiple choice quiz. At the end of the course, students take a final exam.


Course Grading

The course is divided into ten modules. Each module has a Quiz worth 6% of the overall grade. There is a comprehensive Final Exam at the end of the course worth 40% of the overall grade.


Recommended Background

This class is designed primarily for college students. However, it is also applicable for advanced high school students, and young men and women in their 20's. Many of the topics in the course are taught from a United States perspective, but are also applicable to learners from other areas of the world, albeit with slightly different financial system details. There are no course prerequisites and no previous business experience is necessary.


Suggested Readings

The following books by the course instructor are not required in any way for the course. However, students who are curious about some of the underlying economics of this course may find these two books useful:


1.Always a Winner: Finding Your Competitive Advantage in an Up and Down Economy. Peter Navarro

2.When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready?Peter Navarro

Students who enjoy this course who wish to improve their economic literacy are likewise referred to two of Professor Navarro’s economic principles courses also on Coursera. These include:


  1. The Power of Microeconomics


  2. The Power of Macroeconomics