Online class via Skype on budgeting coming in October - ish. Make that December because ... you know, hurricanes and stuff.

Ever since I started this website, I had 2 goals in mind. I wanted to share the information with people that I find about finance and the world of money - for no other reason than the fact that I find it both fascinating and at the same time incredibly destructive what the banking system does to the economy in the name of profit. I have been yapping about finance to anyone who was willing to listen to me for years, about how money is created out of thin air, how banks profit off of money that doesn't exist, how the government issues bonds, etc... finally my wife said, either do something productive with all this stuff or I don't want to hear another word about it! So, either find an outlet for your ranting and ravings or shut the hell up! Hence the website.

Secondly, I have been trying to find a way to share my budget worksheet with people, and for the past 15 or so years I have done so, with several dozen people, who needed help budgeting. As far as I know, most of them still use the worksheets I have shared with them. But it just seemed so inefficient to do it one at a time, so since I was working on this website anyway, I thought, I would incorporate it into my "rantings and ravings about banks" - so here we are.

In light of the feedback I received, I thought it would be great if there was some way I could do a class or something on the budget, because it would be so much easier to do that than try to sell the budget and then do a skype lesson for a few weeks... just didn't work well. So. I wrote a curriculum around budgeting. And I am using my budget worksheet to teach it.

It is a 6-week course, meeting weekly for 1 hour a week. The cost - yes there is a cost - is $25 for the course which includes the lesson plans and the budget form for 1 year. A 52-week budgeting guide. The first course will start the last week of October and will run to the first week of December. The second course will start in January and run to the end of February. It will be all online - so no need to drive anywhere. It will require regular access to Skype, where I will be doing the class and some form of a computer to be able to follow the lessons and to fill out the budget on. It will be a hands-on course with actual participation heavily required from the participants - not necessarily speaking if they don't want to, but in order to gain an essential understand of the budgeting process, they will need to be present, be willing to pay attention and be willing to do the work. After all, this is for the benefit of the participants. No tests, no grades, no final exams. Only knowledge and experience gained to write a budget, maintain a budget, follow a budget and edit a budget. A little financial history, monetary functionality and a brief overview of how loans work as well as credit cards. I spent several years forking for banking institutions and several of those years were spent on working with credit card systems from the merchant perspective - so the course will have a brief tutorial about how credit cards work, what they do and how they do it. For some people it will be an eye-opening experience, others may already be aware of the information.

But in order to gain the knowledge, you have to sign up. You have to show up. You have to participate - at least for yourself - and you have to be willing to learn a little about budgeting.

Contrary to what people think, budgeting success does NOT mean financial independence. Being a good budgeter does not mean you will be free of financial burdens. Being good at budgeting does not equal being financially stable. THAT can only happen over time, with discipline and with a working budget that is actively managed.

Being a good budgeter is having the ability to look at your budget, compare it to the bank where your money is kept and seeing a 1 - 1 number system. If you have XYZ in the bank, you should have XYZ on your budget. If you have paid all your bills, and you see them being deducted from your bank account, you should see a corresponding budget line item for each of those bills. In other words, being on track with your money is what good budgeting means.

Then you turn good budgeting into good habits like saving money and investing. But that comes later. First, you need to have a solid budget, and you need to follow it. This is what I will be focusing on during the 6-week course. In October there will be a live Facebook seminar to give an overview of the course and how to sign up for people interested in taking it. There will be a maximum of 25 spaces in the first course, some of them is already promised to people here in the Tampa area. So realistically there will be 15 spaces available unless someone cancels for the first class - but the second one is wide open for those who don't get into the first one. So, no worries.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for Facebook live events, which should start in December and will be talking about the general financial markets. Anyone is welcome to log in and follow along and/or offer a viewpoint or ask questions. My intention is for us to learn from one another about the world of finance.