A question that I frequently get is, “Which
financial modeling course should I use?”, or “Should I go for a classroom based
coaching or will online courses be good enough?” In my experience, coaching is not required as long as you
have a basic commerce background (CA or B.Com students) and are comfortable
with MS Excel.
So in this post, I’ll provide you some free resources which you can use to
learn everything you need to know about financial modeling.
During my own efforts of breaking into finance, I came
across some invaluable resources by the simple strategy of Googling “free
sample financial models”. So luckily for you, I can cut through the chaff and lead you directly to the best resources available online - the most suitable and relevant ones.
The first is a database of every type of
financial model that you can imagine, which you can access here. This website
provides fully built excel files which you can use as templates and glean ideas
for refining your own models. Some of them are really good, while others not so
much. I’ll leave it to you to explore.
The second is www.macabacus.com – it’s a website that teaches
the finer technical points of investment banking and private equity for free. It’s easily the most valuable
website out there if you want to learn all you can about finance without
spending a buck. It provides step by step instructions for building every major
type of model, the technical aspects of deal making, coaching on macros…
basically everything that you need to crack technical interviews and then some.
It goes up to advance levels so feel free to go as far down the rabbit hole as
you can.
If you’re still not satisfied and are absolutely
adamant to get something in an instructional format, I suggest signing up for M&I’s Breaking
Into Wall Street (BIWS) free sample tutorials. They’re only demo tutorials
and don’t get into the meaty parts of modeling, but you’ll still get to pick up
a thing or two and they give a great idea of what to expect from the full
course. Also sign up for Brian’s newsletters – he’s been sharing free technical
material since forever and it’s incredibly useful.
(If this
reaches you, sorry, Brian! But you should continue reading before you accuse me
of discouraging potential customers.)
However, if push comes to shove and you decide to
take the plunge with paid coaching, I wholeheartedly suggest M&I’s BIWS
course. If online coaching is not your thing, there are a number of
classroom coaching providers in India who have courses on financial modeling. However,
having never used them or met anyone who used them, I’m afraid any suggestion regarding
the same would be injustice to you.
In summary, see this
database of excel files and this website for detailed tutorials on
financial modeling and everything else you need to know about technical aspects
of investment banking. It’s been over a year since I used these resources, so if you Google for free stuff today, I’m sure you’ll come across even more resources than I did. Happy learning!
Disclaimer: Bateman Begins
is not associated with any of the websites listed above. The suggestions in the
above post are the unbiased view of the author and not paid endorsements.
certified financial analyst - In corporate finance, investment banking, and the accounting profession financial modeling is largely synonymous with financial statement forecasting. This usually involves the preparation of detailed company specific models used for decision making purposes and financial analysis.
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ReplyDeleteNice post, thanks for sharing...!!
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