Finance & Accounting
How money is counted, checked, taxed, invested and priced, and how the financial system holds together or breaks.
For: anyone running a business or a household budget, anyone thinking of studying finance or accounting, and anyone who wants to read a balance sheet or a market headline with understanding.
Shaped by the CFA Institute's Candidate Body of Knowledge, the AICPA and ICAEW professional syllabi, the IFRS and US GAAP frameworks and programmes such as MIT Sloan's and Wharton's finance and accounting cores; companies and portfolios in the examples are invented, and nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice.
Year 1 · The language
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01ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min
Calculus I: Slopes, Totals and the Bridge Between Them
Growth, discounting and compounding are calculus.
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02ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Probability & Statistics: Reasoning with Uncertainty
Risk is probability; returns are statistics.
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03ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Microeconomics: Why Nothing Is Free and Every Price Is a Message
Markets, prices and incentives.
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04ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Accounting: Every Transaction Has Two Sides
The double entry that every number in finance rests on.
Year 2 · Accounting
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05ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Financial Accounting & Reporting: Profit Is an Opinion With Rules
How companies report: statements, standards and judgement.
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06ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Managerial & Cost Accounting: What Things Really Cost, and Which Number to Use
Costs, budgets and decisions inside a firm.
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07ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Auditing & Assurance: Checking Some to Trust All
Who checks the numbers, and how fraud is found.
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08Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Taxation: Who Pays, On What, and Why Systems Differ
How taxes work, and how systems differ around the world.
Year 3 · Finance
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09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min
Corporate Finance: The Price of Time and Risk
Valuing projects and choosing how to fund them.
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10ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Investments & Portfolio Theory: Building a Bundle, Not Picking a Winner
Risk, return and diversification.
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11ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Financial Statement Analysis & Valuation: Reading the Past to Price the Future
Reading statements to value a business.
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12ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
Macroeconomics: The Economy as One Machine, and Why It Stalls
Interest rates, inflation and the cycle.
Year 4 · Markets and risk
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13Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min
Derivatives & Risk Management: Pricing Promises and Hedging What You Cannot Predict
Options, futures and swaps: pricing and hedging risk.
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14Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Financial Markets & Institutions: Banks, Central Banks, Markets and Crises
Banks, central banks, markets and crises.
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15ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min
International Trade & Finance: Why Countries Swap, and Why Currencies Swing
Exchange rates and capital across borders.
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16ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min
Behavioral Economics: How People Actually Choose
Why investors are not perfectly rational.
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17Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min
Business Law & Ethics: Who Is Allowed to Do What, and Who Pays When It Goes Wrong
The law and ethics of business.
You have read every subject on this route: the intuition a graduate keeps. Pick your next major; the ones that share subjects with this one will go faster.
the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's Personal Finance & Credit category (03).
Study it in depth, for free
These pieces give you the intuition. To learn the major properly, these are the courses and texts universities use, free to read or audit, and the standard textbooks if you want to own one. Links checked November 2026.
The whole major, free: No one free route covers the whole major; the closest is OpenStax's free Principles of Accounting, Volume 1 and Volume 2 and Principles of Finance, followed by MIT Sloan's accounting and finance courses and Yale's financial markets lectures in the order below.
Free courses and texts
- Principles of Accounting, Volume 1: Financial Accounting · OpenStax · double entry and the three statements; Years 1-2
- Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting · MIT OCW, 15.501 · statements, costs, budgets; Year 2
- Financial Accounting · MIT OCW, 15.515 · how companies report and the judgement in it; Year 2
- Principles of Accounting, Volume 2: Managerial Accounting · OpenStax · costs, budgets and decisions inside a firm; Year 2
- Management Accounting and Control · MIT OCW, 15.521 · budgeting and control; Year 2
- Taxes and Business Strategy · MIT OCW, 15.518 · how tax shapes decisions; Year 2
- Finance Theory I · MIT OCW, 15.401 · valuation, capital budgeting, risk and return; Year 3
- Finance Theory II · MIT OCW, 15.402 · corporate finance and financing choices; Year 3
- Business Analysis Using Financial Statements · MIT OCW, 15.535 · reading statements to value a business; Year 3
- Investments · MIT OCW, 15.433 · portfolios, risk, return and pricing; Year 3
- Financial Theory · Yale (Open Yale Courses), ECON 251 · risk, portfolios, derivatives; Years 3-4
- Financial Markets · Yale (Open Yale Courses), ECON 252 · banks, markets, crises; Year 4
- Analytics of Finance · MIT OCW, 15.450 · quantitative finance and derivatives; Year 4
- The Law of Corporate Finance and Financial Markets · MIT OCW, 15.617 · law of securities and companies; Year 4
The standard textbooks
- Financial Accounting (Weygandt, Kimmel and Kieso; or Harrison, Horngren and Thomas) · first accounting course
- Intermediate Accounting (Kieso, Weygandt and Warfield) · the standard second-year accounting text
- Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis (Horngren, Datar and Rajan) · management accounting
- Principles of Corporate Finance (Brealey, Myers and Allen) · standard finance text
- Corporate Finance (Berk and DeMarzo) · alternative corporate finance text
- Investments (Bodie, Kane and Marcus) · portfolios and markets
- Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (Hull) · derivatives
- Financial Shenanigans (Schilit) · for self-learners, how reported numbers mislead
Education
How people learn, how teaching works, how learning is measured and how school systems around the world are built.