What will I actually learn in this finance course?

You'll learn how finance professionals think about value, investment choices, and risk, without needing a finance background first. The course begins with time value of money and valuation, then moves into capital budgeting, cash flow, and the risk-return tradeoff. You'll apply those ideas in quizzes and a capstone case where you evaluate a business investment decision.

Do I need any finance background before starting?

No, you don't need prior finance knowledge. The course starts with basics like interest rates, compounding, and discounting before moving into valuation and capital budgeting. Some comfort with simple calculations will help, because you'll work through numeric examples, quizzes, and a final case.

Is this course beginner-friendly if I'm new to finance?

Yes, it's beginner-friendly if you're looking for an accessible introduction rather than a specialist course. James Weston teaches at a high conceptual level and walks through the tools step by step, while still showing how the numbers work. It may feel less beginner-friendly if you want a purely non-quantitative overview, since you'll still do calculations.

How long does it take to complete?

Plan on about 14 hours in total. At roughly 10 hours a week, that's about 1 to 2 weeks of work, though the course itself is organized in a four-week sequence. The time is spread across lessons, readings, quizzes, and a capstone case.

Are there hands-on exercises or projects in this course?

Yes, but the practice is mostly guided rather than open-ended. You'll solve finance problems in quizzes and homework, build a simple spreadsheet model for NPV and IRR, and work through a capstone case about a bakery's equipment investment. That way, you apply each idea to a real decision instead of only hearing the explanation.

What finance topics and methods are covered?

You'll cover valuation, capital budgeting, cash flow analysis, and the link between risk and return. The course uses tools like discounted cash flow and NPV to show how firms value projects, read financial statements for free cash flow, and estimate cost of capital. Overall, it gives you a connected view of how financial decisions are made inside a business and from a market perspective.

What can I actually do after finishing?

After finishing, you should be able to follow and evaluate common finance reasoning in business decisions. You can compare investment choices using NPV, estimate free cash flow, and see how the discount rate affects a recommendation. For example, you should be able to work through a simple equipment-purchase decision and explain whether it looks financially worthwhile.

Is this course more conceptual or hands-on?

It's more concept-first than project-first. Most of the course is built around explanations, worked examples, and quizzes, with the capstone case reinforcing how the tools fit together. That's a good match if you want to understand why finance methods work, not just memorize formulas.

Why choose this course over other finance courses?

This course is a strong choice if you want an intuitive, MBA-style overview of finance without assuming prior finance training. Instead of staying on one narrow topic, it connects valuation, capital budgeting, cash flow, and cost of capital into one decision-making framework, then brings everything together in a capstone case. If you're looking for a broad roadmap to how finance professionals make decisions, this course is likely a better fit than a more specialized deep dive.

Finance for Non-Finance Professionals

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Finance for Non-Finance Professionals

This course is part of Business Finance and Data Analysis Fundamentals Specialization

Instructor: James Weston

199,294 already enrolled

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5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

2,840 reviews

Beginner level

No prior experience required

Flexible schedule

1 week at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

96%

Most learners liked this course

5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

2,840 reviews

Beginner level

No prior experience required

Flexible schedule

1 week at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

96%

Most learners liked this course

Skills you'll gain

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Assessments

10 assignments

Taught in English

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There are 5 modules in this course

This short course surveys all the major topics covered in a full semester MBA level finance course, but with a more intuitive approach on a very high conceptual level. The goal here is give you a roadmap and framework for how financial professional make decisions.

We will cover the basics of financial valuation, the time value of money, compounding returns, and discounting the future. You will understand discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation and how it compares to other methods. We also step inside the mind of a corporate financial manager and develop the basic tools of capital budgeting. We will survey the how, when, and where to spend money, make tradeoffs about investment, growth, dividends, and how to ensure sound fiscal discipline. Our journey then turns to a Wall Street or capital markets perspective of investments as we discuss the fundamental tradeoff between risk and return. We then synthesize our discussion of risk with our valuation framework and incorporate it into series of direct applications to practice. This course requires no prior familiarity with finance. Rather, it is intended to be a first step for anyone who is curious about understanding stock markets, valuation, or corporate finance. We will walk through all of the tools and quantitative analysis together and develop a guide for understanding the seemingly complex decisions that finance professionals make. By the end of the course, you will develop an understanding of the major conceptual levers that push and pull on financial decision making and how they relate to other areas of business. The course should also serve as a roadmap for where to further your finance education and it would be an excellent introduction of any students contemplating an MBA or Finance concentration, but who has little background in the area.

Module details

Welcome to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this section you will find general information about the course and instructions on how to navigate the course. For the first week of lectures, we will be covering the basics of financial valuation. We will start with the basics of compounding and discounting rates of return over time. Using these tools we will then move on to valuation using the discounted cash flow method. Along the way, we will demonstrate our valuation tools with a variety of practical examples and compare our analysis with other valuation techniques.

What's included

15 videos3 readings2 assignments1 discussion prompt

15 videosTotal 101 minutes

Course Trailer2 minutes
Course Overview & Demonstration2 minutes
Week 1 Overview1 minute
Human Nature and the Time Value of Money8 minutes
Compounding and Earning Returns Over Time12 minutes
Basic Principals of Valuation and Discounting4 minutes
Discounting Future Cash Back to the Present12 minutes
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) as the Basis for All Valuation6 minutes
DCF Practical Example12 minutes
Valuation by Comparables9 minutes
Examples and Applications: Bonds9 minutes
Examples and Applications: Mortgages5 minutes
Examples and Applications: Annuities9 minutes
Examples and Applications: Capstone Example6 minutes
Conversations with a Practitioner5 minutes

3 readingsTotal 30 minutes

General Course Information10 minutes
Discussion Forum Guidelines10 minutes
Pre-Course Survey10 minutes

2 assignmentsTotal 60 minutes

Homework Assignment30 minutes
Week 1 Quiz30 minutes

1 discussion promptTotal 10 minutes

Real World Application: Introduce Yourself!10 minutes

Welcome to the second week of Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this week of the course, we will build on the basic valuation tools from week one to start making capital budgeting decisions. Our capital budgeting review covers the basic tools like Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Payback period, and return on capital. Our discussion of the relative advantages of each different tool leads us into sensitivity analysis and the advantages of spreadsheet modeling.

What's included

11 videos1 reading2 assignments

11 videosTotal 72 minutes

Week 2 Overview1 minute
Overview of the Capital Budgeting Process6 minutes
Net Present Value (NPV)8 minutes
Payback Period8 minutes
Accounting Ratios7 minutes
Internal Rate of Return (IRR)8 minutes
Wrinkles with IRR8 minutes
Using All the Metrics Together4 minutes
Sensitivity Analysis7 minutes
Spreadsheet Modeling10 minutes
Conversations with a Practitioner5 minutes

1 readingTotal 10 minutes

Real World Application: A Refresher on Net Present Value10 minutes

2 assignmentsTotal 60 minutes

Homework Assignment30 minutes
Week 2 Quiz30 minutes

Welcome back to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In our third week together, we will go on a treasure hunt through the financial statements. Using discounted cash flows as our motivation, we search through the income statement and balance sheet for all the uses and sources of cash. Our search leads us to our primary measure of value creation: Free Cash Flow. Free cash flow will form the basis of most financial analysis and this module gives us a roadmap for estimating and forecasting cash creation within any organization.

What's included

10 videos1 reading2 assignments

10 videosTotal 60 minutes

Week 3 Overview2 minutes
Brief Overview of the Financial Statements8 minutes
Hunting for Cash Creation6 minutes
Working Capital Adjustments8 minutes
Depreciation and Capital Expenditures5 minutes
Salvage and Terminal Values7 minutes
Taxes4 minutes
Calculating Free Cash Flow7 minutes
Using Capital Budgeting Tools8 minutes
Conversations with a Practitioner5 minutes

1 readingTotal 10 minutes

Real World Application: Obama Administration Releases Report Outlining Benefits of Expensing Proposal in Encouraging Business Expansion, Hiring Now10 minutes

2 assignmentsTotal 70 minutes

Homework Assignment35 minutes
Week 3 Quiz35 minutes

Welcome back everyone! In our final week together in this course, we switch gears and take an external view of the firm from a Wall Street, or capital markets, perspective. We think about the basic tradeoff between risk and return, how to measure risk, and how to put a risk premium on different kinds of investments. We then take our analysis of risk and return and use it to estimate a firm's cost of capital. Finally, we circle back to free cash flows, capital budgeting and valuation to tie together all four weeks and get ready for our capstone case analysis.

What's included

10 videos2 readings2 assignments

10 videosTotal 72 minutes

Week 4 Overview2 minutes
Debt vs. Equity Financing9 minutes
Risk Free Rate7 minutes
Historical Risk and Return7 minutes
The Equity Risk Premium6 minutes
Beta and the Cost of Equity10 minutes
Credit Ratings and Quality Spreads6 minutes
Estimating the Cost of Debt7 minutes
Putting it All Together as the WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital)13 minutes
Conversations with a Practitioner7 minutes

2 readingsTotal 20 minutes

Real World Application: U.S. oil companies closer to balancing capital investment with operating cash flow10 minutes
Real World Application: Why aren't companies spending?10 minutes

2 assignmentsTotal 60 minutes

Homework Assignment (Optional)30 minutes
Week 4 Quiz30 minutes

In this final part of the course we bring all of our analysis to bear on a realistic case study. We will evaluate the investment prospects of Sunrise Bakery. As their CFO considers a large capital expenditure, she needs to think about the tradeoff between spending money today and generating more free cash flow in the future. Our job in this case is to forecast the amount of cash generation the new equipment will produce, discount the cash flows, and use all of our capital budgeting tools to make a sound financial recommendation.

What's included

1 video3 readings2 assignments

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Instructor

Instructor ratings

(639 ratings)

James Weston

Rice University

10 Courses218,624 learners

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Rice University

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Reviewed on Sep 25, 2022

Very good course and materials. Learned a lot. The pace was very fast for me and had to watch some classes more than once, but they provide all the information needed for this subject,

Reviewed on May 22, 2023

I come from untraditional background but I find this course is very helpful! The course is very well-structured, allowing me to simply and easily understand finance foundation.

Reviewed on Mar 27, 2020

Great Course, Very solid start for those who are trying to enter Finance world. It makes you love this field if you are not familiar with it and have no previous experience. Great Job Professor.

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