Credit and Debt: Fix Your Financial Foundation
Signature Course No. 482 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Credit and Debt: Fix Your Financial Foundation course, in the Personal Effectiveness & Well-Being category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
Most households in money trouble cannot see their own position whole. They know the loudest bill and the most recent collector call, but they have never had every balance, every rate, every minimum, and every due date on one page at the same time — so every decision is made against a fraction of the facts. This course reverses that: it begins with a complete inventory and an honest cash-flow count, on one household whose figures are printed in full — Rosa and Ben Alvarez, two earners with four debts totaling $30,050 and a monthly surplus that keeps disappearing before it can do any work.
It starts with the page. State your total debt, your total required monthly payments, and your monthly surplus or shortfall — and say which of the three you are least sure of; name the debt that is missing from your mental picture most often, the one with no statement and no collector to remind you; and say where your household's unassigned money actually goes in a normal month, and what record — not what guess — tells you so.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — See Clearly, Then Stop the Bleeding — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Foundation Audit and 90-Day Plan; then, Module 2 — Repair, Resolve, and Build — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The One-Year Repair-and-Build Dossier.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a foundation audit and 90-day plan for a real household: the audited one-page inventory with every total recomputed, the priced rent and the defended payoff order, the credit-file findings with their actions and clocks, the rights sequence, and the five-section plan with named payments, dates, and guardrails; and a one-year repair-and-build dossier: the year closed on paper, open collections and settlement offers resolved on verification and in writing, the protection schedule and annual review calendar, the rejection memorandum for a relief-industry offer, and an honest readiness verdict, graded condition by condition.
The honesty standard is part of the course. No page of this course promises a score increase, a deletion, a timeline, or an approval: lawful credit repair is accuracy and time — correct what is wrong, pay in a way that leaves a clean record, and let the record age. Scores are taught at mechanism level, because models differ and no single score, weight, or range is universal; statutes are cited by name; and where a decision turns on your tax position, your legal exposure, or bankruptcy, the course teaches the question to ask and the moment to stop and consult a qualified professional. Nothing in the course is personal financial advice.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Credit and Debt: Fix Your Financial Foundation is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning delivers.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
Already enrolled? Enter the course →
Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with your page. State your total debt, your total required monthly payments, and your monthly surplus or shortfall, and say which of the three you are least sure of; name the debt missing from your mental picture most often — the one with no statement, no app, and no collector to remind you it exists; and say where your household's unassigned money actually goes in a normal month, and what record, not what guess, tells you so. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Foundation Audit and 90-Day Plan for Module 1 and The One-Year Repair-and-Build Dossier for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Accuracy and time, in that order — the repair sequence never reverses. First make the record true, then make the record good, then let the record age while you keep it good. Every concept that touches the credit file — disputes, collections, building, protecting — is that sequence applied at a different point, on figures you can recompute and statutes you can look up.
Module 1 teaches you to see clearly, then stop the bleeding. The one-page inventory and honest cash flow; interest as rent on money and the minimum-payment mechanism that can retire five cents of principal on a $160 payment; your reports from all three bureaus through the federally authorized channel, and who may lawfully see them; the score at mechanism level; disputes with evidence inside the statutory clock; your rights when a collector pursues you; a payoff order chosen on cost, behavior, and your own evidence; cash-flow fixes that require no new borrowing; and your first written 90-day plan.
Module 2 repairs, resolves, and builds. Negotiating with original creditors and getting any arrangement in writing; collections and charged-off accounts, verified before anything is paid; relief options and their traps, with the advance-fee prohibition as your shield; bankruptcy in honest outline, at education level, with an attorney as the required next step; building a positive file through systems; borrowing safely on total cost; cards used inside the grace-period mechanism; freezes, alerts, and identity-theft recovery; and the maintained foundation — an annual review calendar and an honest account of what ready to invest actually requires.
And it holds its boundary throughout. This course builds the foundation and teaches no investing: no asset allocation, no funds, no account selection, and no return figures. That ground belongs to its neighbor in the series, Personal Investing: Building Wealth Step by Step, which assumes this foundation — its payday order already clears high-cost debt and builds a safety net before investing.
What you will learn
- Assemble your complete position — every debt with its balance, rate, minimum, and due date, and your net monthly cash flow — on one page
- Compute what a debt costs: interest from a stated APR, and how the minimum-payment mechanism stretches a balance and its total interest
- Obtain and read your credit reports through the federally authorized channel, and state who may lawfully see your file and why
- Explain, at mechanism level, what scoring models weigh — payment history, utilization, history length, mix, and new credit — and why no single score or weight is universal
- Dispute an error with evidence, inside the statutory process, and track the investigation to its conclusion
- State and use your rights when you are pursued: validation, communication limits, and prohibited collector conduct
- Choose a payoff order — avalanche, snowball, or a defended hybrid — from cost, behavior, and your own evidence, and compute its first moves
- Negotiate with creditors, verify collections before paying, refuse relief-industry traps, and recognize the points where a qualified professional is the required next step
- Maintain the foundation: protect the file, borrow safely when you borrow, and run an annual review that keeps the foundation clean
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Credit and Debt: Fix Your Financial Foundation, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Foundation Audit and 90-Day Plan and The One-Year Repair-and-Build Dossier
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for anyone fixing their own financial foundation
Anyone carrying consumer debt they cannot describe in one page — balances, rates, minimums, and due dates not yet assembled in one place; and readers who pay every minimum and watch balances barely move, who want to understand the mechanism before choosing a different order.
Anyone who has never read their own credit reports — or who has found an error and does not know the dispute process, the evidence standard, or the clock; and people dealing with collectors or charged-off accounts who want to know what the law requires, what it forbids, and what to verify before paying anything.
Households considering a relief company, a settlement offer, or bankruptcy — who want the traps named and the legitimate options compared before they sign anything; and anyone whose foundation is nearly clean who wants the maintenance system, and an honest test of readiness, before investing begins. This course assumes comfort with basic arithmetic and no finance background at all.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Where You Stand
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Credit and Debt: Fix Your Financial Foundation is Signature Course No. 482. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.