What this course covers
Read this first. It takes three minutes and it tells you whether the rest is worth your time.
7 min read
This is a plain-language course in personal finance, built for Australia, written from an Islamic foundation. It assumes no prior knowledge and no maths past percentages.
Before you start, here is the whole thing on one page. Knowing the shape of things makes it far easier to finish, and it lets you jump straight to whatever is actually in front of you rather than reading in order out of obligation.
Who this is for
Two audiences, deliberately. Muslim investors get the full thing: the Islamic material is real, sourced, and honest about what is disputed rather than pretending everything is settled. Everyone else gets a complete general personal finance course, because the Islamic content is deliberately isolated into specific modules rather than sprinkled through everything. Those modules carry a badge so you can see them coming. Nothing outside them requires you to be Muslim, or to care.
It is also written for people who were never taught this. If you have a career, a salary and no idea what your superannuation is invested in, you are the intended reader and you are not unusual.
What each module does
- The Islamic Foundation. Wealth as a trust rather than an outright possession, and what separates permitted money from genuinely good money. The intention underneath the rest.
- How This Course Works. What not knowing costs you, why finance is far simpler than the industry benefits from admitting, and why retirement is a number rather than an age. You also meet Zaid and Amina, two people on identical incomes, followed to the end.
- Getting Your Base Right. What you actually spend, the emergency fund, exactly what you owe, the difference between consumer debt and the very short list of good debt, and the order it all happens in.
- Earning and Spending on Purpose. Every purchase priced in hours of your life, why every pay rise disappears, and why asking for more money is normal rather than aggressive.
- Riba and the Core Prohibitions. What riba actually is, the two prohibitions that sit beside it, and how to judge the products you are probably already holding.
- Investing Fundamentals I. What a share is, why boring beats clever, compounding, diversification, and why time horizon decides everything.
- Investing Fundamentals II. Putting money in. Your savings rate versus the return rate, what waiting a year costs, and the line between investing and speculating.
- Shariah-Compliant Vehicles. How screening works, how to read a verdict, why a fund's label is not a guarantee, and a dedicated lesson on sukuk and the missing half of the portfolio.
- Real Estate vs the Stock Market. Where property's real edge comes from, the Islamic home finance alternatives, and whether the tax perks change the answer.
- Superannuation. The largest account most Australians will ever hold, usually in a default option nobody chose. Fixing it is one form with thirty years of consequence.
- Zakat. Nisab, hawl, 2.5% on what you hold, and how to purify the incidental impermissible income a screened portfolio still carries.
- Protecting What You Build. Falls are normal, insurance is a hard question that mostly goes unasked, and a will is the one thing that cannot be fixed later.
- Bringing It Together. Your actual number, what your savings rate is worth in years of your life, and what to do this week.
If you have already finished the free short course, twelve lessons here cover the same ground in more depth. A banner will offer to skip each of them, or to jump straight to what is new where a lesson adds new material, or you can read the full version anyway. One lesson, on time in the market, has different enough content that skipping is not offered at all.
How to use it
- Read it in order if you are starting from zero. Each module assumes the one before it, and the early modules are the ones that change outcomes most.
- Jump if you have something specific in front of you. Every lesson stands alone. Financial terms are explained in full the first time they appear and then carry the same short reminder in brackets every single time after, forever, so nothing depends on remembering a definition from thirty lessons ago.
- Skip the badged modules if they are not for you. The Islamic content is marked. The rest is general financial literacy and works without it.
- Use the calculators as you go. Most lessons point at one. Running your own numbers is the difference between reading this and it mattering.
Check yourself
2 questions on this lesson. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
1How is the Islamic content organised in this course?
That is deliberate. Non-Muslim readers get a complete general course, and Muslim readers get the full thing.
2Why does every financial term carry the same short reminder in brackets each time it appears?
It costs three words and removes the entire effort of recall, which is what lets every lesson stand alone.