Finance and Accounting
Personal finance and financial planning
Personal finance is the only branch of the field everyone practises, qualified or not. It covers a household's whole balance sheet: earning and budgeting, borrowing and credit, insurance, saving for retirement and passing on whatever is left. Financial planners do this work professionally, and the CFP Board's eight weighted domains show how wide it runs, from tax and investments to the psychology of how people really decide.
Why this topic exists: Budgeting, saving, credit, insurance, pensions and estates for a household: the CFP Board's eight Principal Knowledge Domains give the professional map; CISI's Level 2 Fundamentals the entry point for people who will work in the sector.
Household finance covers the same ground as a company's on a smaller scale, and with fewer rules forcing discipline: income, spending, debt, protection against disaster, long-term saving and what happens to assets after death. The clearest professional map is the CFP Board's certification exam, which weights eight domains as follows.
| CFP domain | Share of the exam |
|---|---|
| Professional conduct and regulation | 8 % |
| General principles of financial planning | 15 % |
| Risk management and insurance planning | 11 % |
| Investment planning | 17 % |
| Tax planning | 14 % |
| Retirement savings and income planning | 18 % |
| Estate planning | 10 % |
| Psychology of financial planning | 7 % |
Retirement and investment planning together take more than a third of the exam. The psychology domain is the smallest but perhaps the most practical: plenty of households know roughly what they ought to do, and plans fail on behaviour more often than on arithmetic. The exam has 170 multiple-choice questions spread over two three-hour sessions and leans towards applying knowledge to client situations rather than recalling facts.
Professional routes and the personal one
- Financial planners and advisers work in a regulated role in most markets. In the United States the CFP Board's certification is the reference; other countries run their own adviser exams.
- New entrants to financial services can begin with a foundation exam such as the CISI's Level 2 Award in Fundamentals of Financial Services, which has no entry requirements and introduces shares, bonds, insurance and the sector's vocabulary.
- Individuals managing their own money need no credential, but they gain from the checklist a planner works through: cash flow, debt, protection, retirement, then the rest. The neighbouring topics on tax and investing go deeper on two of those items.
- Accountants and tax advisers meet planning from the other side: tax planning carries 14 % of the CFP exam, and many household choices turn on how income, gains and pension withdrawals are taxed.
Much of the subject is about order and protection rather than returns. A cash buffer keeps a surprise bill from turning into expensive borrowing. Insurance moves the risks a household could not survive onto an insurer that pools them across many clients. Starting to save early matters because compounding rewards time more than cleverness. Estate planning, the domain people put off longest, decides whether any of the rest reaches the people it was meant for.
A spreadsheet in Excel or any budgeting app does the household arithmetic; what no tool supplies is the habit of reviewing it. Planners earn their fee as much by holding clients to a plan as by designing one.
Explanation, not advice
Getting Digital explains how pensions, insurance, credit and tax work. It does not tell anyone what to buy or which provider to use. Rules on pensions, tax relief and state benefits differ by country and change, so confirm the details with your national authority or a regulated adviser.
Next to this topic
- Accounting and bookkeepingDouble-entry, ledgers, the three statements and the reporting frameworks (IFRS, US GAAP): the base of ACCA Financial Accounting, AAT Levels 2 to 4 and CPA FAR; bookkeeping software (QuickBooks, Xero) is where most people meet it.
- Management accounting, budgeting and FP&ABudgets, forecasts, costing and variance analysis: what the CMA examines and ACCA Management Accounting and Performance Management teach; financial planning and analysis is the same work inside a corporate finance team.
- Financial statement analysis and modellingReading the three statements and rebuilding them in a spreadsheet: the CFA topic Financial Statement Analysis and the core of CFI's FMVA, whose curriculum weights modelling at 35 % and accounting at 20 %.
- Corporate finance and valuationTime value of money, cost of capital, capital structure, DCF and comparables: the CFA topics Corporate Finance and Equities, ACCA Financial Management and Advanced Financial Management, FMVA's valuation modules; where the field's fundamentals courses start.
- Investing and portfolio managementAsset classes, risk and return, diversification and portfolio construction: the CFA topics Equities, Fixed Income, Alternative Investments and Portfolio Construction; CFP's Investment Planning domain.
- Crypto-assets and blockchainDistributed ledgers, keys and wallets, smart contracts, tokens and DeFi: the technical side rests on the Bitcoin and Ethereum documentation, the consumer side on the FCA's warning that a crypto investor should be prepared to lose everything.
- Financial risk, regulation and complianceMarket, credit, operational and liquidity risk, Basel, AML and KYC and conduct rules: FRM Parts I and II, the CFA's Ethical and Professional Standards, CFP's Professional Conduct and Regulation; where finance meets the law.
- Banking, fintech and paymentsDeposits, lending and credit analysis, payment systems, cards and open banking: the UK Payment Systems Regulator's eight designated systems name the rails, CFI's CBCA the credit analyst's job; the field's newest titles live here.
- TaxIncome, corporate, VAT and sales tax, capital gains and returns: CPA REG and the TCP discipline, ACCA Taxation and Advanced Taxation, CFP's Tax Planning domain; the one finance topic every adult meets.
- EconomicsSupply and demand, national accounts, inflation, interest rates, monetary and fiscal policy: the CFA topic Economics; the macro context every other finance topic assumes.
Concepts to know
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters here.
- Compound interest
Interest on interest, and what fees and inflation do to it.
- Asset allocation
The household version of the same decision.
Certifications that test it
Vendor exams and free certificates; facts, cost and the preparation path are on each page, and the certifications hub has them all.
Frequently asked
- Is a financial planner the same as a financial adviser?
- The titles overlap and the legal meaning varies by country. Broadly, a planner looks at the whole household picture over many years, while an adviser may focus on recommending particular products. Check what the person is regulated to do and how they are paid before relying on either title.
- What does the CFP exam cover?
- Eight domains, from professional conduct and general planning principles through insurance, investments, tax, retirement and estates to the psychology of financial decisions. Retirement savings and income is the largest at 18 %, investment planning next at 17 %.
Courses in the directory
154 courses are filed here; the top 5 by our ranking, details and the provider link on each course page.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026 · Getting Digital