financewebdirectory.com

“360 Degrees of Financial literacy is a national volunteer effort of the nation’s Certified Public Accountants to help Americans understand their personal finances and develop money management skills. It focuses on financial education as a lifelong endeavor—from children learning about the value of money to adults reaching a secure retirement.” - 360financialliteracy.org

The 360financialliteracy.org website covers various topics on Personal Finance. The site is divided into the following main categories with each category sub-divided into relevant topics.
Life Stages: Tutorials are presented classified by life stages such as “Home Ownership”, “Retirement”, “Childhood”, etc., Each section has relevant articles, tools and FAQ’s.
Financial Topics: Tutorial are further sub-divided into relevant groups. I guess, these are categories that did not fit under Life Stages. Nevertheless, useful ones such as “Estate Planning”, “Investment Planning”, “Government Benefits”, etc.,
Women: This section deals with topics such as “Building your career”, “Planning for your future” , “Growing your household”, etc.,
Ask the Money Doctor:This is a section where you can get any questions you have related to basic financial planning issues answered by volunteering CPA’s or CPA Personal Financial Specialists. There is no archives of past questions, which I thought would have been useful. But they do publish a question of the month if you want to keep track. It is still good to have a place to go where you can get some questions answered for free

The ICI website is sponsored by the Investment Company Institute and functions as an educational website. It has articles that cover the basics and various aspects of Mutual funds and 529 plans.
The articles are well laid out and easy to understand. In fact on most articles we sampled, you are half way through it before you know it. Some articles contain useful checklists and FAQ’s. There are also several links to other related investment websites that may be of interest to the readers.

Investorguide.com has tutorials that cover the basics of Stocks, Retirement, Investing, Portfolio Management, Taxes, Estate Planning, etc., The topics range from basics such as “Index Funds and ETF’s” to “Sector ETF Rotation Strategies”.
What was really interesting about how the website is designed is that there is a “Similar Articles” section at the bottom that recommends similar tutorials on the site - for people who might get easily bored reading sequential chapters this might work out very well.

This is a site maintained by Dr. Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance and David Margolis Teaching Fellow at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He is also the author of several books and articles on Valuation, Corporate Finance and Portfolio Management.

Here he shares several articles, data, spreadsheets and podcasts related to Corporate Finance, Valuation and Portfolio Management. Another excellent source but I should warn you that it could be overwhelming if you are impatient. Take you time and absorb it in bits and your knowledge in these areas will increase greatly.

Click here to visit the site.

“The Options Industry Council (OIC) was created to educate investors and their financial advisers about the benefits and risks of exchange-traded equity options. ” -OIC.
If you want to learn about Options and need a site to teach you about options this is a good site to visit. OIC offers articles starting with “What is an Option?” and covering several topics such as Benefits and Risks, Options Pricing and Volatility among others. The topics are classified into Basics, Advanced and Strategies.

They even have a direct line and email in case you are confused or if you have further questions. Really? Yep, they do. Visit their site by clicking here.

Moneychimp is a good place to go if you are looking for some basics on investment and valuations. Although I did not find anything that indicated that they start with the basics such as, “what is stocks?” - like some sites do, they do provide clear and helpful articles that teach you about several investment topics.
Moneychimp is also a good place to go if you are looking for financial calculators or if you need some tutorials on how various investment calculations such as Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) is done. They have several articles on Stock Valuation and information on the different methods used to value a stock.
Visit their site by clicking here.

AXA Advisors is a broker-dealer and investment advisor for AXA Financials Inc. In their website you can find articles that cover investment basics related to common topics such as stock investment basics, as well as rare topics such as reducing risk and international investing. Click here to visit their website.

Bankrate has several articles that which try to explain the types of options available to someone who might want to start saving. These are presented in chapters format with a quiz at the end of each chapter. These guides contain overviews from basic savings accounts to corporate bonds. Check out their site here.

Investopedia has dictionary, articles, tutorials etc., related to investment. Their tutorials is divided into sub-categories such as Beginners, Experienced, Active Trader and Retirement. In each section they go into details such as about stocks and bonds for beginners and about Technical Analysis for Experienced Investors and so on. They also have Q&A sections in these categories.

Click here to visit the website .

Fool.com is actually more like a finance portal. They have extensive articles, information and tools related to investing. They also have a section dedicated to investment basics. It starts with basics like why invest?, how money compounds over time and goes on to cover topics about stocks, mutual funds and bonds. It even has some sections on Stock Analysis with introduction to Fundamental Analysis, Quantitative Analysis and Technical Analysis. Is this something you are looking for? Click here to visit the website .

We are always looking for good finance and investment websites. Is there a website on finance or investment that you’ve found useful?