One of my favorite financial websites is Acorns.com.

There you can register your credit and debit cards, so that all of your purchases are automatically rounded up a few cents to the nearest dollar. And when those cents reach $5, the money is automatically transferred from your registered checking account into an investment portfolio, featuring five choices that range from conservative to aggressive.

Every little penny adds up, and in the four years since I first wrote about Acorns, the company has grown to more than 2.9 million users. The five investment portfolios using ETFs were designed by Nobel-prize winning economist Harry Markowitz.

Acorns’ fees are $1 per month for all accounts with a balance under $5,000 and .25 percent of the balance per year on accounts over $5,000. The fees are nominal, but you should pay attention to them. If you only have $100 and you’re charged $1 a month, you pay $12 a year. That’s a substantial chunk of your $100.

Now Acorns has a new feature: financial education. Along the way to helping pennies grow into investment dollars, Acorns recognized that it was reaching people who desperately needed basic personal finance advice. Thus was born a simple but clever online financial education course: The Acorns Guide to Personal Finance.

It is the answer for every parent who has wondered how to introduce their high school children to money topics. It is the answer for everyone who is afraid to admit they never learned the basics of money management. And it is a must for every spouse who has argued with a partner about spending and saving.

The course has five online modules called “5 Steps to Building Wealth.” They are: How to Budget Better; Pay Debt Off Faster; Save More; Earn More; and Make Your Money Work for You.

Each section walks you through a video with simple, user-friendly steps to improve your financial situation. Acorns partnered with Udemy, an online learning platform, to create the course. It helps you learn everything from asking for a raise or negotiating a better job offer to figuring out the smartest way to pay down your debt (from credit cards to student loans).

Included are downloadable worksheets that help you understand everything from your net worth to your goals to a simple way to create your own budget.

Jennifer Barrett, chief education officer for Acorns, editor of its online magazine, GROW, and a former personal finance editor for CNBC digital, is the video personality who takes you by the hand and walks you through the program, step by step. The course is priced at $11.99 for February at udemy.com/acorns-guide-to- personal-finance/. (Or simply go to Udemy.com and search Acorns Guide to Personal Finance.)

There also are lots of free resources on the internet to help you learn about money.

CNN Money offers a series (money.cnn .com/pf/money-essentials-budget/index. html) that covers many of the topics mentioned above. There are online calculators that help out.

Money Management International (moneymanagement.org/Financial- Education.aspx), a member organization of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, offers advice on basics of credit and debt, and a section for younger people.

You can search for MOOCs (massively open online courses) to learn all aspects of personal finance. And almost all financial services companies feature educational programs on their websites to help Americans become responsible consumers.

Judging by the levels of debt in America, and the lack of adequate retirement savings, there is room for more learning.

Search for a course to give you some tips or find a budgeting app that’s right for you and get started on saving. And that’s The Savage Truth.

Terry Savage is a registered investment adviser and the author of four best-selling books, including “The Savage Truth on

Money.” She responds to questions on her blog at TerrySavage.com.