I’ll be honest, this class was the most disappointing experience of my college career. I came in with high expectations, excited to learn practical financial advice from a professor that so many people held in high esteem. The sad truth, however, was that Ravetch’s nice, charismatic, and eloquent lectures hide his single biggest flaw - the dude cannot teach. His lectures and assignments were incredibly vague, and as others have pointed out, he uses a grading quota to curve down the number of As in his class to appear “tough,” without ever specifying his grading methodology in his syllabus. I had a 94% at the end of the class, but he curved me down almost 10% without ever explaining himself, despite my numerous emails. For Christ’s sake, this is supposed to be an introductory class, not some GPA killer like Comm 10. Anyway, my advice would be to take P/NP. He grades like an absolute dick, doesn’t care whether you actually get an A, and blows you off when you inquire further. You are a disappointment, Ravetch. Thanks for nothing.

This class did not fulfill any major requirements for me-- I just took it because I wanted to learn about finance. I'm pretty disappointed to say that I didn't learn too much. This class goes over a broad range of topics (buying a house, car insurance, credit cards, stock market, etc.) The thing is that each week/lesson goes into something new, and no topic is given enough depth, so in the end you learn such little information that you might have been better off just looking it up online.
He teaches each new topic by bringing in a guest speaker who works in the field, but the only thing is that many of the guest speakers aren't teachers and some of them really didn't seem that prepared to give a lecture. You feel like you're in some random presentation or even a marketing pitch for their company as opposed to an actual class where you're learning practical information.
Also, he computed the grades in such a way that even if you got an A based on points alone, you would not necessarily get an A in the class. The syllabus does not tell you how he will grade the class, it does not tell you how much any of the assignments or projects are worth, you don't know anything until you get the grade. I really thought I was doing fine in the class until I got a B+ at the end (for reference, I've never gotten anything lower than an A- in any other class at all 4 years of university, even much harder classes like computing or chemistry)
I will say that there was a few highlights where I did learn something I considered valuable. Additionally, the professor does seem to be really caring and passionate about the class. But if you want to take it and it's not a requirement for your major, I would take it pass/no pass.

Professor Ravetch not only teaches practical skills that rarely get taught in higher education, but truly cares about his students and makes an effort to be a resource to them even after the class ends. I would absolutely take this class again, as it was not only the most useful class I have taken at UCLA, but also taught by one of the most caring and understanding professors.

I was really excited to learn about personal finance through Ravetch but felt his course assignments and project requirements were extremely unclear and hard to understand. He would briefly mention HW assignments for the week during the lecture and often times these assignments did not align with what was listed on the syllabus or on the CCLE page for that week. It was so hard to know what he wanted for each assignment and the grader was very harsh with points. In the end, a bunch of students got curved down, including me, even though we put in the work for the quarter to get good grades.

he's actually a dick. Grades super hard and makes his homework assignments super unclear or posts the instructions in three different places. The TA's grade hard as fuck and it's honestly really frustrating because even if you follow the directions you might get an 80. Class is easy and what not but for some reason he makes his assignments really confusing and then proceeds to grade harshly.

Life hack: take this class P/NP if you're not an econ major. This content is super interesting and useful, but everyone is turned off by Ravetch's unnecessarily unforgiving grading policy. Like why would I take a GPA hit if it doesn't even count towards my major?

Even though the class says "mandatory letter grade," you can fill out a Blue petition (ask the College) before week 6 and they'll let you take it P/NP as long as you're in good academic standing and don't need it for your major.

Anyway, the class is great. You'll learn about investing, retirement accounts, mortgage, budgeting, etc. I took it P/NP, loved every lecture, became WAY more financially literate because of it, and barely put in any work and passed the class. Everyone should do that!!!!

probably worst professor I've ever had; assignments are vague as hell, and points are taken off for little to no reason. you'd think that it's okay to lose 5 points here and there on homeworks, but not when the cutoff for an A is 98+...

Ravetch is one of the worst and laziest professors I have ever had at UCLA. There is some value to the class, as he himself does none of the teaching and brings in professionals from different fields to teach for him. However, his assignments have little to no detail, and he has no leniency with any issues even ones that were entirely his fault. Essentially he is awful at all aspects of the course that are under his control. Want to emphasize that he was the laziest professor I have ever had, and quite frankly knows little to nothing about the subjects he "teaches". I would strongly recommend taking this class, just with anyone except Ravetch.

I'm really not sure why this class is rated so low. I've been taking the class for 4 weeks now and have absolutely loved every lecture so far. Also, everyone else who I've talked to that took this class previously really enjoyed it. The workload is pretty light and all the assignments are relevant. For example, the most recent homework assignment for last week consisted of two parts: one was to analyze 3 credit cards and write a short summary about which one you liked the best, and the other part was to submit proof that you looked up your own personal credit report (which he shows you how to do in class). All the information I've been learning has been useful so far, and the guest speakers are very engaging. If anything changes, I'll update the review.

Looking at some of the older reviews, Ravetch must have changed the layout of this class because I thoroughly enjoyed this course. The lectures are primarily guest speakers who have some sort of insight into the weeks topic, which makes asking questions and getting further clarification very easy. Some of the material gets pretty complicated and involved but there was no tests besides weekly quizzes online which only count for 10% of the grade. Some of the assignments were pretty ambiguous, but as long as you hit the basic criteria he provides you'll do well on the assignments. Our course had material assigned weekly so you can kind of work at your own pace. Overall, I felt that Ravetch cared about our actual understanding of the class materials so that we could have experience dealing with these financial situations later on in our lives. Ravetch himself was a great professor with much more personality than most other lecturers, I would definitely recommend this course.