Financial Literacy, Debt, and Credit
- AnnualCreditReport.com
This central site allows you to request a free credit report once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
- Credit.com
Credit expert Gerri Detweiler has collected a series of resources for individuals throughout the financial spectrum. Credit.com helps visitors manage credit cards, understand credit reports, maintain debt consolidation, and exercise savvy banking. Check your financial stability and read through the the blogs of Credit.com’s financial authors. You can also participate in discussion groups and find more information through the Learning Center. To read Gerri’s own blog on financial stability, visit http://www.gerridetweiler.blogspot.com/.
- Debt Assistance Guru
Tips and advice for getting out of debt no matter how serious your current problems.
- The Delaware Money School
The Delaware Money School, the signature program of the nonprofit Delaware Financial Literacy Institute, offers more than 500 free, no-hassle personal finance classes a year. Classes are held throughout Delaware, and there are online courses for people throughout the country. There are periodic workshops for shopaholics as well.
- InCharge Education Foundation
The InCharge Education Foundation provides award-winning products and materials, including a variety of innovative personal finance tools, from content-rich magazines and websites to print, CD, and web-based educational programs. All support the personal financial literacy needs of consumers worldwide. There are programs providing credit report education, and several financial education programs, including programs for K-12 children, 18-24 year olds, military families, new home buyers, the Hispanic population, and those going through bankruptcy.
- KBK Connections
Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, LMHC, CPCC is a national speaker, internationally published author and money coach. Her company, KBK Connections, Inc. is dedicated to empowering professional women to talk to their money and achieve financial stability. Her unique blend of financial and psychological expertise makes her a powerful money coach. She works with female entrepreneurs, executives and financial advisors providing coaching, training and consultation to increase their cents-ability.
- Money and Empowerment
Judith Gruber, LCSW, CCET, is a holistic psychotherapist, life and business coach, and certified core energetics therapist. She is founder and president of Money and Self-Empowerment, which is dedicated to helping people create abundance and prosperity in every area of their lives, to helping them understand and become accountable in their relationship with money; and to creating a plan for financial well-being.
- MoneyHarmony.com
Olivia Mellan is a Washington, DC-based speaker, author, and money coach. She gives teleclasses to therapists, financial planners, coaches, and the general public on money and relationships. She speaks all over the country on a variety of money-related topics. She coaches individuals and couples in person and on the phone in connection with her money conflict resolution work.
- MyMoney.gov
This governmental website is dedicated to teaching all Americans the basics about financial education. Whether your questions relate to budgeting and taxes, credit, financial planning, home ownership, kids, paying for education, retirement planning, or saving and investing, mymoney.gov has useful and detailed information.
- National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE)
The mission of NEFE is to help Americans acquire the knowledge and skill necessary to take control of their financial destiny. The Endowment sees itself as having “nothing to sell and a lot to tell”. NEFE provides informative and user-friendly articles, tools, and other resources. There’s a financial planning program offered to high schools that over five million high school students have been exposed to.
- SmartAboutMoney.org
A division of the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE). On this website, consumers can take a financial assessment and then, on the basis of their answers, be directed to appropriate resources. There’s also a life events and financial decisions section that helps consumers think about the financial issues that are relevant to a variety of life events and stages. In addition, you’ll find here the NEFE Financial Literacy Resource Centers, a collection of free materials contributed by many organizations and reviewed by NEFE to provide credible and unbiased information on topics such as insurance, college planning, and health and medical issues, among many others. Click here for Smart About Money.
- The Schulman Center for Compulsive Theft and Spending
Compulsive shoplifting and employee theft, though distinct from compulsive buying, are often related to it. Terry Shulman is a therapist, attorney, consultant, and certified professional coach, who specializes in both of these areas. He also offers counseling for compulsive shopping/spending.
- TrueCredit.com
An online resource that helps protect you from unexpected changes to your credit report. For .95 a month, Truecredit.com will notify it’s members about critical changes to their credit report, giving individuals the ability to track changes in their credit scores and challenge changes that could cause their scores to drop. Truecredit.com provides suggestions for improving credit, as well as personalized explanations of credit scores.
- Women’s Institute for Financial Education
WIFE.org – Women’s Institute for Financial Education, is “the oldest non-profit organization dedicated to providing financial education to women in their quest for financial independence”.
Consumer Education, Media Literacy, and Voluntary Simplicity
- The Center for a New American Dream
Provides consumer-education materials, including the video, “More Fun, Less Stuff: The Challenges and Rewards of a New American Dream”. The Center works with individuals, institutions, communities, and businesses to protect the environment, enhance quality of life, counter the commercialization of American culture, and promote social justice. Click here to be directed to the site.
- The New Road Map Foundation
The New Road Map Foundation (NRM) is a non-profit educational and charitable foundation that aims to cultivate a cooperative human community by creating and distributing practical tools and innovative approaches to personal and cultural change. Since 1980, a big focus of the foundation has been on teaching the program in Your Money and Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.
- New Mexico Media Literacy Project
Founded in 1993, the New Mexico Literacy Project is an outreach project of Albuquerque Academy and is one of the most successful media literacy organizations in the United States. Centered on building healthy communities, the New Mexico Media Literacy Project supports critical thinking concerning today’s media culture. Their website offers educational media literacy presentations for youth and adults, a free newsletter, training opportunities, and media literacy curricula on CD and DVD.
- Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME)
Founded in 2002 in Albuquerque, N.M, the Action Coalition for Media Education is an emerging global coalition run by and for media educators. It is dedicated to teaching about media literacy, developing and distributing media education curricula and tools, advocating independent media production, and supporting local, state, national, and global media reform as well as media justice efforts. Using a wide variety of multimedia curricula and resources, ACME helps individuals and organizations gain the skills and knowledge to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce media in a wide variety of forms.
- Don’t Buy It: Get Media Smart
Don’t Buy It: Get Media Smart is a media literacy website for young people that encourages users to think critically about media and become smart consumers. Activities on the site are designed to provide users with some of the skills and knowledge needed to question, analyze, interpret, and evaluate media messages.
- The Simple Living Network
Since 1996, The Simple Living Network – www.simpleliving.net – has been providing resources, tools, examples, and contacts for conscious, simple, healthy, restorative living. This site offers a free online newsletter, discussion forums, in person and online study groups and simplicity circles, and a wide variety of CDs, DVDs, e-books, and brochures on topics related to voluntary simplicity.
- Postconsumers.com
Postconsumers.com is an educational company helping to move society beyond the addictive consumerism embedded in our culture. It especially utilizes humor to reach people (Get Satisfied Cartoon Gallery and Get Satisfied Game Show) and offers the Get Satisfied Interactive Handbook as a brief web course teaching “the satisfaction of enough.”
- The Simplicity Resource Guide
This site offers “a wide spectrum of resources related to voluntary simplicity, a way of life that addresses the widespread yearning in North America and other western countries for a slower pace of life with more time for joyful relationships, fulfilling work, and living one’s dreams”. Included are book reviews, articles and essays, and information about organizations and activities related to simplicity. Click here to be directed to the site.
- The Simplicity Forum
Founded in 2001 by the New Road Map Foundation in partnership with Seeds of Simplicity, the Simplicity Forum is a leadership alliance dedicated to honoring and achieving simple, just, and sustainable ways of life for all.
- Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
Reverend Billy (Bill Talen) and The Church of Stop Shopping are an advocacy group that believes consumerism is overwhelming our lives and warns of a coming shopocalypse. They perform throughout the country in a variety of venues to proffer their message that our neighborhoods are “disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores” and expose companies without “fair trade” policies.
These sites are links that have been reviewed by us and have valuable content. If you encounter a link that is broken or contains inappropriate content please contact us.
