Adulting 101 Classes Provide Free Knowledge on Insurance, Budgeting, Traveling, Meal Planning, More
How many times a week do you ask yourself, “Why didn’t they didn’t teach me this in school?” If the answer is too many times, then the MSU Extension 4-H can provide assistance.
4-H is offering a free series of Adulting 101 classes available to anyone and all ages. These virtual Zoom sessions provide experienced instructors and industry experts to discuss different topics each month. There are sessions for all types of people, including medical insurance, organizational tips, wealth building, safety, travel, meal planning and more.
Kathy Jamieson is an Extension Educator at MSU, and delivers programs statewide, focusing on career exploration, workforce preparation, entrepreneurship and money management. Within MSU Extension, the department has provided life skills education for over 100 years.
Jamieson said the Adulting 101 sessions were born out of the pandemic.
“A lot of the kids needed programs, they were out of school, and needed some education,” she said. “We had a lot of people reaching out to us to provide programs. We ended up working with a team of educators across the university and identified things that would help young people live independently on their own.”
Initially, these virtual no-credit, hour-long sessions were geared towards high school to early college age students. 40 different classes were identified and marketed towards this specific population, but the classes have proven helpful people of all ages.

“We try to identify topics that aren’t necessarily very common in the school system, or ones they wouldn’t have access to,” Jamieson said. “For example, the one in February is on medical insurance, and that’s a very uncommon class you would find in high school. We find experts that know the topic and make them very interactive, we provide polls, chats and activities to engage the audience.”
Since offering these Adulting 101 sessions for the past few years, Jamieson said the community’s response has been positive.
“Our mission is to bring the knowledge and the resources from the university into the community, and this is one way we can do that,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of people who returned and are very committed, they take all of them, and find them very useful. They’re always coming away with something that they can use.”
Some of the more popular sessions are those geared towards finances, budgeting, credit, investing, and the psychology of spending and saving, which draw anywhere from 400-900 attendees. The sessions are also usually recorded so folks can look back and view the videos online. The sessions draw participants from all over the nation, said Jamieson.
“We feature topics that are helpful to just about anybody,” she said. “If they never received this kind of education from the formal system, it’s just practical skills that you want to lead a more successful life.”
Even if lifelong learners have been out of academia for a while, or perhaps they took a semester-long class on a topic decades ago, these sessions can help provide refresher bullet points or prompt lessons learned awhile back.
Last year there were close to 5,000 people who registered for the Adulting 101 sessions, something Jamieson and her colleagues, Laurie Rivetto and Janice Zerbe are proud of.
“It demonstrates the need for this kind of programming,” Jamieson said. “It’s helping to create a network of educators through extension, that can provide resources across the state that otherwise wouldn’t have taken place without that coordination. The extension system has so many valuable resources, and I’m sick of it being a secret. This was a great way to get the word out about all of the great programs that we do.”
Registration for Adulting 101 sessions is available online. The full lineup of February to November 2025 classes is available here. These free sessions are online via zoom and are typically held in the evenings after 5 p.m. EST. The next few scheduled sessions include: Medical Insurance 101 on Feb. 10 at 5:30 p.m., followed by Time and Organization Tips to Thrive on March 3 at 7 p.m., and Wealth Building on April 8 at 5 p.m.