2026 APFC® Certification Bundle

Become a Confident, Skilled, and Certified Financial Coach

This comprehensive three-part training program is designed to take you from foundational knowledge to advanced coaching skills and professional certification. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to refine and validate your expertise, this bundle offers a clear path toward becoming an Accredited Personal Finance Coach® (APFC®).

The Fall 2026 APFC® Certification Bundle begins with Financial Coaching Foundations, continues with Deepen the Learning APFC®, and includes APFC® Certification & Mentoring sessions.

Enrollment deadline: September 9, 2026
All session times are in Pacific Time.

Course 1: Financial Coaching Foundations

Build essential coaching skills and explore how financial beliefs and barriers shape client behavior. Learn how to ask powerful questions and guide clients from awareness to action.

This intensive course is held virtually over 3.5 days on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Total Training Hours: 21

The Course Schedule

All session times are in Pacific Standard Time. Each of the first three sessions includes small breaks totaling one-hour.

Learning Experience and Completion

Throughout Financial Coaching Foundations, participants engage in live training, cohort discussion, practice activities, and growth work through the online learning lab.

Alongside live training, you’ll complete self-assessments and session assignments designed to help you track your progress, reflect on your learning, and deepen your understanding of the course material.

What to expect in this course

Session One: Foundations of Coaching, Financial Wellness, and Core Coaching Skills

Learn fundamental financial coaching principles and philosophies while discovering who you want to be as a coach through a lens of financial wellness. You’ll also begin practicing core coaching skills, including empathetic listening, curiosity, and effective exploration.

Session Two: Coaching Self-Awareness, Intuition, and Trauma-Informed Financial Coaching

Explore the internal awareness, self-management, and intuition required for effective coaching. You’ll also examine the psychological factors behind financial decisions and learn how to approach coaching with empathy, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed awareness.

Session Three: ICF Standards, Coaching Agreements, and Discovery

Familiarize yourself with the ethical standards set by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and learn how to create clear coaching agreements with clients. You’ll also explore discovery in coaching, including how to support values-aligned goals and meaningful client-centered direction.

Session Four: Action Planning, Accountability, and Engagement Lifecycle

Practice creating action plans that keep clients engaged and on track toward their goals while learning how to provide ongoing support as their life circumstances change.

Course 2: Deepen the Learning APFC®

Deepen your coaching practice through advanced application, skill-building, reflection, and practice. Engage in role-play, case studies, and peer feedback to prepare for high-impact client relationships and real-world challenges.

The Course Schedule

All session times are in Pacific Standard Time. Each of full session includes small breaks totaling one-hour.

Learning Experience and Completion

To complete Deepen the Learning APFC®, participants engage in live training, applied practice, cohort discussion, and self-paced growth work through the online learning portal.

Alongside live training, you’ll complete growth work for each session in our online learning portal. This includes self-assessments and session assignments designed to help you track your progress, reflect on your learning, and deepen your understanding of the course material.

What to expect in this course

Session Five: Ethical Practice and Coaching Mindset

Align with your vision as a coach, explore ethical coaching practices, and develop a mindset that inspires positive change in your clients’ financial behaviors. 

Session Six: Co-creating the Coaching Relationship

Learn how to build trust with clients, set clear expectations, and create a safe space for productive, open dialogue throughout the engagement lifecycle. 

Session Seven: Effective Communication

Sharpen your active listening skills and learn how to help clients clarify their values-based financial goals and aligned actions for progress. 

Session Eight: Cultivating Learning and Growth

Develop skills for facilitating client growth and helping clients integrate healthy financial habits into their lives, ensuring they continue to thrive long after your coaching sessions end. 

Session Nine: Case Study Application

Create your own case study and collaborate with your cohort peers to explore how you would handle different coaching scenarios. This role-playing opportunity is a chance to bring in real-life challenges you’re facing with clients alongside the prepared case studies we provide for practice. 

Session Ten: Full Engagement Practice

Build on the skills you practiced in Session Nine by working in triads, rotating through roles as coach, coachee, and observer to immerse yourself in more coaching scenarios. This practice will strengthen your ability to apply coaching frameworks to complex situations and keep clients focused and motivated throughout the coaching process.

Session Eleven: Business Development

Refine your skills with additional rounds of full engagement practice and feedback from your triad peer group. You’ll also revisit your coaching vision, create a one-page business plan, and learn about essential business practices like budgeting, insurance options, and business protection, whether you want to build a solo, group, or team coaching practice. 

Session Twelve: Closing Activities & Graduation

Complete your Deepen the Learning APFC® training with a final round of triad peer group practice, reflection, integration, closing activities, and a graduation commencement to recognize completion of the course.

Course 3: APFC® Certification & Mentoring

Through a combination of one-on-one and group mentoring sessions, plus independent experience with real clients, participants reinforce their coaching skills in preparation for the final APFC® performance evaluation.

This course is also open to practitioners who need mentor coaching hours for certification, credentialing, or continued professional development.Complete your certification with mentorship, real client experience, and performance evaluations. This final step helps you demonstrate your coaching ability with confidence.

1:1 Mentorship: 3 one-hour sessions

Group Mentorship: 7 total hours

Total Mentoring Hours: 10

The Course Schedule

All session times are in Pacific Standard Time.

Learning Experience and Completion

Outside of the mentorship sessions, you will have up to two years to complete your experience hours and final evaluation to earn your APFC® certification.

What to expect in this course

1:1 Mentoring Sessions

Before each one-hour session with your Mentor Coach, you’ll submit a 20-30-minute audio recording of a coaching session. You’ll receive feedback based on the ACC Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales framework, helping you identify your strengths and areas for growth.

Group Mentoring Sessions

Attend a total of 7 hours of group mentorship to engage in peer-to-peer coaching practice. In each 30-minute demo, you’ll alternate as coach and coachee. Your Mentor Coach will observe and provide both verbal and written feedback to help you make adjustments to your approach.

Self-Paced Requirements

100 Experience Hours

We’ll help you figure out how to find clients so you can apply your coaching skills during real paid or pro bono sessions. These independent experience hours are an opportunity to practice everything you’ve learned throughout your training. 

Evaluation Submission

For your final performance evaluation, you’ll submit one audio and one video recording with transcripts of a full coaching session with a real client for an assessment of your coaching skills based on ICF Core Competencies. 

Co-requisite Completion/Financial Competency Requirement

To earn the APFC® certification, participants must demonstrate financial competency. This requirement may be completed before or during the APFC® program, but documentation must be submitted before the APFC® certification is awarded.

This requirement may be met through one of the following:

• An approved financial credential, such as AFC®, CFP®, ChFC®, CFA, CFT, or CPA
• Completion of a certificate, certification, or degree program in personal finance, financial counseling, financial planning, financial education, accounting, economics, or a related field
• Substantial academic coursework in personal finance, financial counseling, financial planning, financial education, accounting, economics, or a related field

The financial credentials listed above are provided as examples and are not intended to represent all credentials that may satisfy this requirement.

Documentation may include a certificate, credential verification, transcript, or other official record showing completion.

If you are unsure whether your prior education or credential applies, email certification@sagefinancialsolutions.org for review.