You are using the member interface.
Log out of the member interface →
Money is an important subject that concerns everyone. Even primary-school students are aware of its importance. As a result, what to study in order to get a good job, and what to do in order to earn more money, become guiding principles behind many people’s life decisions.
Yet life is a richly coloured, multidimensional tapestry. We do not live merely to earn money: we also have interests and passions to nurture, relationships to care for, and contributions to make towards a better society. This is why work–life balance is something many people aspire to, yet still find difficult to achieve. Spaces and opportunities to talk about life, work, and money are therefore a very real and essential need.
However, we still lack spaces that are open, safe, and inclusive enough for meaningful, in-depth conversations about money and finance, as well as high-quality education programmes on finance and personal finance. This directly affects collective well-being and the sustainability of the economy as a whole.
Consequently, people in Vietnam in general—and young people in particular—face challenges in managing their finances effectively, often leading to uncontrolled spending, mounting debt, and insufficient savings. A survey by the State Bank of Vietnam indicates that Vietnamese students’ financial knowledge remains generally low, with many unable to save or manage money effectively. Vietnam ranked 26th out of 28 countries in an OECD financial literacy survey. The lack of research focused on young people’s financial knowledge—especially concerning given their vulnerability as they begin becoming financially independent—is worrying. [1]
We believe this is not an individual failing, but a shortcoming of the education system. Financial education has largely revolved around public finance or corporate financial management—fields that serve macro-level or business management and administration—rather than helping a specific individual manage their life. In other words, education that builds the foundational knowledge for a happy life is still greatly lacking.
Given this reality, each of us needs to take responsibility for educating ourselves—and one another—about personal finance, rather than passively waiting for guidance from outside. Yet personal finance is not a simple subject for many people. Many have shared with Vcil Community that they feel confused and overwhelmed when beginning their own personal-finance learning journey in the face of a vast sea of information that is sometimes fragmented and disconnected. Their daily work and lives also take up most of their time and attention, leaving little room for something that may seem as “dry” as personal finance.
Understanding this, and recognising the urgency and importance of personal finance, Vcil Community is organising the learning programme **“Money IQ – Money EQ: Personal Finance for Flourishing and Regeneration”**. The programme creates a healthy learning space and offers a systematic approach to personal finance. Its aim is not simply to provide technical knowledge, but also to share systems-based approaches: understanding the nature of money and finance, building a healthy relationship with money, and ultimately helping each person feel more confident on their journey towards nurturing their own happiness. More importantly, it seeks to make the language of finance and economics widely accessible—so that it can become a shared language for the majority of people.
People rarely have a direct relationship with money. What they truly have is a relationship with their “story about money.” Money is simply a tool, or a technology, for storing and exchanging value. Yet how we earn, spend, save, invest, give, or worry about money is shaped by the beliefs, emotions, and experiences we have accumulated.
In financial psychology, these unconscious beliefs are known as **Money Scripts**. [2] This term describes how a person’s financial behaviour is determined not primarily by financial knowledge, but by “scripts” about money that form very early—often before we are old enough to understand what money is. Someone may believe that “rich people are all greedy,” “earning a lot of money means losing friends,” “I do not deserve to have a lot of money,” or, conversely, “spending money proves that I am successful.” These beliefs are rarely chosen consciously; they come from family, school, culture, and early-life experiences. They are what quietly guide our financial decisions in adulthood.
Understanding our different money scripts is an important first step in reshaping our relationship with money, because these images and assumptions about money—not financial knowledge—are what determine our financial behaviours and attitudes. We call this **Money Emotional Intelligence, or Money EQ.
In any economy, individuals, households, businesses, and the state are important actors that interact with one another. A change in one factor can affect how the entire system functions. Personal finance therefore cannot be separated from macroeconomic shifts.
Learning the basics of banking, securities, insurance, and macroeconomics can help individuals anticipate, prepare for, buffer against, and make effective financial decisions. We can make and take ownership of micro-level decisions every day, but we cannot control macro-level shifts.
Changes in bank interest rates affect the cost of a home loan and returns on savings deposits. Inflation gradually erodes purchasing power over time. Exchange-rate fluctuations affect the price of imported goods and the cost of travel or studying abroad. Changes in the labour market make some occupations short of workers while others are displaced by technology. Tax policy, social insurance, and urban planning also affect every family’s finances.
Money IQ – Money EQ therefore provides a shared systems-level understanding, so that each person can gain an integrated overview of today’s economy and financial system—an important foundation for making appropriate financial plans and taking action.
Vcil Community sees personal finance not only as the ability to manage money, but also as the ability to understand the system within which money operates. Alongside learning to use the financial tools of the modern economy effectively, we will revisit the foundational assumptions of today’s economic system and recognise its limitations in the face of inequality, ecological crises, and declining quality of life.
Drawing on nearly ten years of research into economic systems and engagement with networks of new-economy initiatives around the world, as well as more than three years of directly experimenting with community economic models within the membership ecosystem, the programme will open up other possibilities for a new economy—one already being brought into reality globally and within the Vcil Community ecosystem.
We would like to explore with you models that are already operating today, around the world and within the Vcil Community ecosystem. Examples include:
- Economy for the Common Good (ECG): a global movement that measures businesses and individuals by their contributions to human dignity, solidarity, ecological sustainability, transparency, and co-determination.
- Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth: an approach that argues the economy must operate within planetary boundaries.
- Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy Philosophy: grounded in moderation, self-reliance, and resilience against external shocks.
- Ethical banking, community banking, and credit cooperatives: including Triodos Bank, the Hansalim consumer cooperative, and iCOOP in South Korea—large-scale models of community and cooperative economics.
- Impact investing, slow investing, and socially responsible investing: alternatives to conventional stock-market investing that contribute to ethical, regenerative, and socially impactful economic practices.
- Gift economy and community finance: experiments initiated by Vcil Community through its ecosystem, including Lúa, Gift Bank, the Pay-it-Forward Fund, the Offers & Needs Market, and Consumer Club.
Through this new content, Vcil Community hopes that together we can co-create an economy that is kinder, more generous, more collaborative, and more regenerative—an economy that is already becoming real—where true wealth is measured by meaningful relationships, people and businesses that contribute to society, and real assets such as land, rivers, and forests.
Each of us has our own money story. How we earn, spend, save, or invest is shaped, to some degree, by experiences, beliefs, and emotions formed early in our families and living environments.
The first session helps participants reflect on their personal journey with money through early memories, and identify the unconscious beliefs (Money Scripts) influencing their current financial decisions. The programme also introduces an overview of personal finance: its six pillars—income, spending, saving, protection, borrowing and debt, and investing—along with a model of the stages of financial freedom and the two forms of capital that create a person’s wealth: Human Capital and Financial Capital.
One reason many people constantly feel short of money is that they have never seen the full picture of their own finances. This session guides participants in building a “personal finance map” through a balance sheet, an income-and-expense statement, and financial tracking tools.
Participants will then learn to set short-, medium-, and long-term financial goals using the SMART method, while becoming familiar with the Asset Pyramid as a framework for building a strong financial foundation over time.
Financial management is not merely about saving more. It begins with understanding our own cash flow. This session explores different sources of income through the Cashflow Quadrant model and the mindsets of employees, self-employed people, business owners, and investors. It also introduces basic tax principles and ways to build multiple income streams.
On the other side, we will revisit the unconscious drivers behind spending. Why do some people shop when they are stressed, lonely, or celebrating? What creates the cycle between compulsive spenders and people obsessed with saving? Through the concepts of “Happy Money” and “Unhappy Money,” participants will practise distinguishing needs, wants, and expenses that genuinely reflect their life values.
Life always contains unforeseen events. A good financial plan not only helps us grow our assets, but also protects what we already have.
This session introduces common financial risks in life; how life insurance, health insurance, social insurance, and property insurance work; and how to determine an appropriate level of protection for each individual’s circumstances.
More importantly, this is also a session about emotions. Together, we will explore why people often avoid preparing for illness, accidents, or death; the relationship between anxiety, control, and a sense of security; and the practice of gratitude and sufficiency as foundations for reducing financial decisions driven by fear.
Behind every loan, savings account, and credit-card transaction is a complex financial system that most of us have never been taught about.
This session helps participants understand how banks operate, how money is created through credit, the role of central banks, personal credit, simple and compound interest, credit scores, and the strategic use of credit cards.
From there, the programme expands into community-finance and alternative-banking models practised around the world, such as Triodos Bank, Beneficial State Bank, credit cooperatives, Hansalim, and iCOOP, as well as Vcil Community experiments such as Gift Bank, the Pay-it-Forward Fund, and the Lúa system. Through a community-currency design activity, participants will imagine financial systems that can be built on cooperation, trust, and the common good.
Investing is not simply about seeking the highest return. It is also a way of choosing what we believe deserves to be nurtured in the future.
This session introduces core asset classes such as cash, bonds, stocks, real estate, businesses, and investment in oneself; as well as principles of asset allocation, risk management, and building a long-term investment portfolio suited to different risk tolerances.
Participants will also learn about the stock market, index funds, and the limitations of stock markets. The session then introduces alternative investment philosophies and approaches, such as Slow Investing and investing in the real economy, as ways to balance returns, values, and social impact.
Every individual financial decision takes place within a broader economic system. Understanding that system helps us make wiser choices and feel less powerless in the face of social change.
This session introduces key features of the modern capitalist economy, the process of financialisation, and the roles of banks, capital markets, and insurance. Together, we will also revisit the limits of indicators such as GDP, the problem of inequality, endless growth on a finite planet, and their impacts on human life and ecosystems.
Money is connected not only to how we consume, but also intimately to how we make a living.
This session introduces Vicki Robin’s concept of “life energy” for calculating the real value of each hour of work. It also explores impact-oriented business models such as post-growth entrepreneurship (PGE), cooperatives, employee-owned companies, and the Economy for the Common Good.
Through the concepts of Alivelihood and Deadlihood, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their current work, locate themselves along the Alivelihood–Deadlihood spectrum, and contemplate a life in which money is no longer the sole constraint determining career choices.
Around the world, more and more economic experiments are emerging in pursuit of equity, well-being, and regeneration. This session introduces models such as Doughnut Economics, Economy for the Common Good, Sufficiency Economy, Ethical Banking, Community Finance, Impact Investing, and Gift Economy, alongside many other community-economy initiatives that Vcil Community has had opportunities to research, experience, and collaborate with across different countries.
More importantly, we will discuss: as individuals, families, or small communities, what changes can we begin making today to help co-create a more humane and regenerative economy?
The final session is an opportunity for each participant to look back on the full journey, connecting their insights about themselves, money, and systems into a concrete action plan.
Each person will create their own financial life design, including financial goals, directions for developing income sources, investment strategies, learning plans, and commitments to practise after the course. This is not simply the end of the programme, but the beginning of a healthier relationship with money and a life journey oriented towards sufficiency, flourishing, and regeneration.
---
**Time:** Five consecutive days, 1–5 August 2026
**Location:** Da Nang, Vietnam
**Meals and accommodation:** Participants arrange and cover their own meals and accommodation.
**Group size:** Approximately 20 participants. **THIS IS A MEMBERS-ONLY TRAINING PROGRAMME. YOU MAY REGISTER FOR MEMBERSHIP IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE.**
Money IQ – Money EQ is not a course about getting rich quickly or investing for short-term returns. It is designed for people who want to build a solid foundation for understanding money, themselves, and the economic system in which they live.
The programme may be right for you if you are on one of the following journeys:
- You are just starting work or have recently become financially independent, and want to build a healthy financial foundation from the outset instead of learning through costly mistakes.
- You have been working for years but money still feels like a source of pressure: your income has increased, but your peace of mind has not. You want to revisit how you earn, spend, and plan your life.
- You are changing careers, starting a business, or seeking a new direction, and need a financial plan that gives you greater agency and freedom of choice.
- You work in education, community development, social enterprise, sustainability, or impact initiatives, and want a deeper understanding of economics and finance so that your projects can develop more sustainably.
- You are interested in new economic models, regenerative economics, impact investing, or approaches beyond the conventional financial system, but do not know where to begin.
- You simply want to build a healthier relationship with money: less anxiety, less avoidance, and more confidence in making important financial decisions in life.
The programme does not require prior knowledge of economics or finance. All content is designed to be accessible to beginners while offering sufficient depth for those who already have a foundation.
Above all, the programme is for people willing to question what they may once have assumed was true: What is money? What is wealth? What does a life of sufficiency look like? And are there other ways for us to earn and use money, and to organise the economy, that are oriented towards human flourishing and the regeneration of nature?
Rather than setting one fixed fee, Money IQ – Money EQ invites you to choose a contribution level appropriate to your circumstances.
### Supported Rate | VND 0
For members experiencing financial hardship: those with unstable income or income that does not cover basic needs, those who are unemployed or changing jobs, or those carrying debt. If paying the basic rate would mean using money needed for food, housing, or caring for dependents, this rate is for you.
*(This option applies to members who have been members for more than one year.)*
### Minimum Rate | VND 1,000,000
For members with a stable income, sufficient for living costs, and a small amount left over. You can pay for the course without sacrificing essential needs.
### Basic Rate | VND 2,000,000
For you if your finances are stable: you have a good income and savings, and can pay for the course without much hesitation.
### Generous Rate | VND 5,000,000
When you choose this rate, your additional contribution will directly support another community member to participate.
Please note: The above contribution covers coordination, programme design, learning materials, and the venue during the programme only. It does not include meals, accommodation, or travel to the learning venue.
Register here: https://luma.com/p2wgs5bf
Because the programme has limited places and places emphasis on fit, each interested person will complete a short application form so that we can better understand you and what you are looking for.
Registration deadline: 29 July 2026 (or until places are filled)
If you have questions about the programme, please contact us via:
- Facebook: Vcil Community
- WhatsApp/Phone: +84 768 217 586 (Vu Truong) or +84 836 243 541 (Huy Hoang)
- Email: vcil.group@gmail.com or Hello@vcil.education
---
Money IQ – Money EQ is a programme of **Ecoversity for New Civilization (ENC)**—Vcil Community’s alternative university, established to foster individual and collective transformation. It does so by providing courses and foundational training programmes for understanding ourselves and the world, along with practical tools to initiate and run social initiatives aligned with the principles of flourishing and regeneration.