Learn key finance principles, including modeling, forecasting, and analysis, to make informed business and investment decisions.
Master Excel, review corporate finance, and build a valuation model on a public company. Gain basic and intermediate Excel skills and learn how to read financial statements, build valuations, and predict market trends.
Join our financial modeling class to learn essential finance and accounting concepts, build a discounted cash flow (DCF) model in Excel, acquire advanced Excel skills, explore corporate finance and valuation, and create a financial model on a real company. This hands-on course will teach you practical financial skills.
Gain a comprehensive understanding of stock investing, valuation, and stock movements in this course. Learn about essential valuation techniques, financial statements, and the fundamentals of stock investing, as well as the factors that influence stock prices and how to analyze them.
Get the skills you need for a career in finance technology with the FinTech Bootcamp. Learn Python programming, data science, financial analysis, data visualization, and machine learning to become a Financial Analyst, Data Scientist, or Data Analyst.
Learn key skills and concepts for financial accounting in this beginner-friendly course, from the basics of accounting statements to complex topics like investments and securities.
Learn how to analyze financial statements and reports, including income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, and understand essential financial accounting principles and metrics. This course offers hands-on exercises using real-life examples from well-known companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Apple to demonstrate practical application.
Finance is a broad category of fields that covers the management, investment, and movement of personal and professional assets, usually money, as well as stocks and bonds. Since finance is such a broad field of knowledge, many training programs that teach finance break it down into more specialized courses. Students may learn financial planning and management skills, financial modeling, financial technology, or investment and asset management. These are all subtly different skills, and while they are used in conjunction with one another, students will want to be aware of the major differences when they consider learning finance.
If you want to learn how to maximize your budget, make good investments, and understand how public finance impacts you and your family, studying finance makes a lot of sense. Finance impacts every aspect of your economic life and is at the heart of fiscal decision-making. Whether you are looking to start your own business, find work as a Financial Analyst, or just make prudent investment decisions for your future, taking a Finance course is a great life decision.
No matter the industry you work in, finance plays an important role. For this reason, studying finance will give you an edge over your competition. Employers value staff who understand effective business decision-making and know how to carefully monitor trends and market behaviors.
Studying finance also improves problem-solving skills. You’ll learn about important financial concepts such as time, price, and value, preparing you to make better financial decisions for yourself. Interested in buying stocks or ETFs? Learning about finance will give you the knowledge and confidence to make smart investments.
Among the most important financial skills students may be interested in learning is the financial management training necessary to keep their financial situation in order. Whether this is balancing a personal budget or keeping your business's books in order, learning the basics of financial management is a vital personal and career skill. In classes focusing on these skills, students will learn how to document and manage financial information, set budgets, allocate funds for significant expenses, and track their financial obligations. Courses that teach business-related financial management may also cover the basics of keeping books accurate for easier tax preparation and payroll management.
Students enrolled in a financial management program will likely learn basic accounting terms and concepts such as balancing books, recording budgets, and maintaining long-term financial records. They are also likely to learn how to use Microsoft Excel to build complex spreadsheets that allow them to easily and effectively manage their financial data. Microsoft Excel is one of the most commonly used applications globally and is integral to virtually every aspect of the financial industry, so learning how to use it, even for something as simple as building your own monthly budget, is likely to be a tremendous benefit for your long-term financial career.
One of the key components of a successful career in finance is understanding how to model and visualize the movements of money and capital. In a financial modeling course, students will learn the complex aspects of financial accounting and corporate finances to keep up-to-date, accurate records of complex financial systems and build models that predict future movement within those systems. Using tools like Microsoft Excel, students will learn how to create and utilize financial modeling systems to better understand cash flow, leveraged buyout modeling, corporate valuation, and dozens of other complex financial factors that businesses and organizations need to account for.
Students in financial modeling courses will likely learn advanced functionalities of Microsoft Excel and other data organization tools. Features such as Data Validation, CHOOSE, Data Tables, and Goal Seek are not commonly used by most users but are essential in financial modeling. This is more advanced training, and many programs will require students to be familiar with basic financial terms and the use of Microsoft Excel.
A newly emerging aspect of the financial industry is FinTech, referring to technological innovations that make investing and money management easier than ever before. Given how much of the economy runs through the financial sector, it’s no surprise that firms and companies have started developing new technologies to streamline and optimize financial systems. FinTech covers everything from Python databases used to record and organize fast-moving trading information to computer programs that forecast asset valuations over long periods and machine learning programs that interpret financial data to make predictions independently.
FinTech is a rapidly developing field, and new technologies with the potential to revolutionize how we invest are potentially in development. Students learning FinTech will divide their attention between learning how to use these new technologies such as financial analysis applications to visualize market data and make informed investment decisions based on this data, and learning how these programs work, largely by learning skills with Python and SQL. The individual skills taught will vary, but this is the path for students who want to blend an interest in technology with a desire to work in the financial industry. Whether you are building machine learning programs to gauge the state of the market or simply using automated trading applications to streamline your assets, FinTech training enables that.
On a practical level, students interested in learning finance are likely to want to learn how to invest their money for long-term returns. Investing is the practice of buying an asset (usually a stock, but sometimes a bond, mutual fund, real estate, or even a valuable object) and holding onto that asset to sell it later once it has appreciated in value. This can be a complicated and risky process that has the potential to provide investors with financial stability and long-term peace of mind. Learning how to invest your money can be the difference between having a comfortable retirement and needing significant contingency plans.
Importantly, investing classes don’t provide financial advice (i.e., you won’t be taught what to invest in; be wary of any class that claims to do so). Instead, they teach students how to invest in ways that account for the risks and volatility of financial markets.
Students will also learn about the strengths and limitations of investing in various assets, as stocks, real estate, gold, and bonds appreciate differently and suit different investing styles.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over the next ten years, approximately 715,000 new business and finance jobs will be added to the economy, representing a seven percent overall increase, slightly above the national average. These are important, high-paying jobs where students will work in a competitive and thriving sector of the economy. Regardless of whether you aspire to start your own business or find work on Wall Street, learning finance skills will help you find long-term, high-paying employment.
Students with significant financial modeling training may find work as Financial Accountants or Certified Public Accountants. These finance professionals are responsible for ensuring that a company’s financial records are well-kept and accurate, which is essential to running a business. Without professional accountants, even the mundane aspects of running a business, like payroll and taxes, would be impossible. These are vital administrative roles that keep a company afloat.
Those interested in the investment aspect of finance may want to consider finding work as Investment Analysts or Financial Analysts. These professionals assist individuals and businesses in finding ideal, safe investment strategies that can provide them with long-term stability and success. Investment Analysts utilize data analytics and modeling skills to make informed decisions about the state of the market and predict future trends using available data. This is an ideal career path for students interested in blending financial knowledge with predictive data analytics skills.
Students looking to learn finance skills have a diverse array of options before them, particularly if they are interested in pairing their finance training with complementary skills like data science. Some classes aim to prepare students for careers in specific financial industry fields, while others aim to provide students with more generalist training. Since finance is a varied field, it is worth considering all of the options available before committing to a course.
Students interested in a comprehensive financial training program may consider Noble Desktop’s ||CPN509||. In this class, students will learn how to utilize and refine the financial instruments that support financial analysts in collecting and interpreting data. Students enrolled in this course will learn how to program applications using Python and how to build the databases that make this work possible. Students will also learn how to use programs like Tableau to transform this data into rhetorically persuasive data visualizations, allowing them to communicate their findings to their clients. This is a career-focused training program, so the aim is for graduates to be ready to enter the job market as Financial Analysts the moment they complete the program. To facilitate this, Noble provides students with career development assistance, including one-on-one career mentoring sessions.
Students who aren’t interested in learning to code may want to consider enrolling in the ||CPN506||. This accelerated training program will introduce students to the world of financial modeling and prepare them for more advanced financial training or certification programs. Students will learn to use advanced Microsoft Excel functions, including data tables, goal seek, and CHOOSE. In addition, they will learn important financial terminology and ideas that will help them work in more complex financial institutions like banks and corporations. This course does expect students to have a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel before enrolling.
Students interested in learning more about specific elements of finance and investing should consider exploring some distance learning options offered by the UCLA Extension. These classes include subjects like Business Valuation and Real Estate Finance, making them ideal for students who want to narrow their training to specific, practical skills they hope to employ in the immediate future. They also offer a robust Finance Certificate program.
Students looking to learn finance may be intimidated by some of the course content, especially those classes with prerequisites. Students may want to ease into their training, and one great way to do that is to learn a basic component skill like Microsoft Excel. NYIM Training, Training Connection, NYC Career Centers, Certstaffix Training, Ledet Training, and dozens of other national service providers offer beginner-friendly and comprehensive Excel training programs.
Students interested in exploring further options for in-person and live online finance classes should take advantage of Noble’s Classes Near Me tool. This focused search tool will help students find and compare courses to help them locate the exact one that fits their needs.
Students who enroll in a professional finance training program will also need to decide whether or not they are planning to learn in-person at a dedicated training facility or in a digital classroom. Both options provide students with professional-quality instruction from experts in their field teaching in real-time. However, there are meaningful differences between these two delivery methods, so students should consider which option is best for them.
Many students report that they find the benefits of in-person instruction very helpful in facilitating their learning success. The dedicated classroom space serves to minimize outside distractions, and many students find it reassuring to be able to interact with their instructor face-to-face. Plus, the collaborative nature of the space lets students build valuable networking opportunities with their classmates. The drawback to these classes is that students can only attend the courses that are located nearby, which can greatly restrict a student’s options, particularly if they don’t live near a major city.
Live online training is an excellent alternative for students looking to learn from any service provider without having to leave their homes. These classes still provide expert instruction in real time, and students can receive personalized feedback and assistance on their work. They also let students learn on their own devices in their home offices, which can be productive for students looking to handle their own finances or run their own businesses. The drawback to these classes is that they require students to set up and maintain their own technology, and some students find that they are more easily distracted when working in a digital classroom.