Personal Finance 2019

Nathaniel Samuels Dr. Ott Personal Finance January 28, 2019 Final Reflection In Personal Finance we learned many things from early in life dealing with student loans to later crossing the crossover point where you no longer have to work for money. My favorite part of the class was the hypothetical discussions of if you spend more some points of your mortgage or put more away to investments. It was very cool to see the effects from these and how some go from 200,000 to 1,000,000 in an extra 5 years of investing. In the life game at first I thought it would be unreasonable to have to predict finances 50 years in the future. As I continued it became easier and it became fun to see net worth go up and down as I bought a house and had children and then see the skyrocket at the end when my kids graduated and my mortgage was paid off.  With the rolls of the dice at first it made me go into crippling amounts of debt but as i rebalanced and took money out of an emergency fund...

Blake Peterson Dr. Ott Personal Finance 25 January 2019 Final Reflection     Over the past three weeks in personal financing I have learned a lot about the basics of financing and what to expect financially in the future. The things I found the most interesting was learning about investing and the life game. With investing we learned a lot about things like the stock market and also real estate investing. In stock market investing we had a speaker named Champ Warren, who is a financial consultant and investor. He talked about his method with investing and we looked at the market and analyzed if there was going to be a recession anytime soon. For investing we also started an Investopedia game and played it throughout the class. We also learned about the real estate side of investing. We had three people come and talk to us, each of them giving us a new perspective on real estate investing. My favorite part of the real estate investing was when we went to an apa...

Throughout this course, I have more than doubled my knowledge on managing finances and the meaning of investment and real estate. At the beginning of this J-Term, I thought real estate was owning property because you had the money to own multiple properties. Little did I know that is not only not the definition, but there is so much more to it that I didn’t know. I now know that I am actually interested in real estate; maybe not as a career, but definitely as a hobby or side job. I knew that investing was always important when it comes to making money, but I never knew strategies to help me make money other than save up in a bank account. Investing towards retirement, asset allocation, the bull put, stocks, bonds, these are all things I knew nothing about, and now I at least have an idea about what they are. I would say that most beneficial thing I got out of this J-Term was that I learned different aspects of financial literacy that I will be using for the rest of my life. I kno...

Final reflection Tommy Johnson This course, to me, was one of the most informative and productive class I've ever taking teaching life skills I am glad I know. I feel a lot more financially confident and prepared for life. We covered many of the financial concepts that everyone will eventually need to understand such as taxes, mortgages and debt, but to me the part of this course that will be most helpful in my life is the knowledge that some people will never know. the course is littered with tips and knowledge that will give everyone in the class a strong upper hand in the financial world throughout their entire life.

The Personal Finance course taught me a great deal of things, like how I could accidentally end up a millionaire by way of retirement accounts, how much work real estate is if you can’t hire people, how much debt there is just about everywhere, and most strikingly, just how boring it all was. Sure, learning how to become a well adjusted adult and pay my student loans off before I get a mortgage is excellent information, and learning about how I can make the most out of investments to comfortably retire early with a moderately well paying job and some elbow grease is undoubtedly going to be immensely useful later in my life. However, if I were to say one thing about finance, it’s rather dull. While making a general finance plan for the rest of your life is incredibly important, at some point when I was looking at what state real estate might be in during my 30s, it clicked in my mind that all this planning seemed about as fulfilling as trying to get the last bit of water out of a cup ...

My Future and Personal Finance Reflections The Game of Life helped me learn how to realistically plan out the rest of my life. Firstly, it helped me identify which colleges I would like to consider. Additionally, it helped me realistically look at which careers might be a good fit for me in the future and which would not. Lastly, the Game of Life gave me a better understanding of realistic expenses. I had a realization that being a psychiatrist requires a lot of school, and I am not up for that. I know that I will not enjoy having to go to school for an extra eight years, so I started thinking of a more realistic career plan for me. The most useful material in the Game of Life is calculating the net worth for each year as well as learning to calculate inflation and how that might affect your future income or expenses. This is useful because it will greatly help you plan out your future success. If you have debt in the future it will teach you how long it will take to pay off the...

         Most young adults after they’ve graduated wish that they were able to take a class that was purely about money management and how to take care of simple financial duties such as loans, investments, mortgages, taxes and budgeting. For the past three weeks that is exactly what I’ve been doing: essentially taking a money management 101 class. After all, money is what motivates us to do anything; it’s why we go to school, it’s why we get a job, and to many people, it makes them happy. Contrarily money can make some people go crazy, it can make them deppressed and can lead various individuals to make irrational and unethical decisions. In this class, we learned not only the technical definitions of common financial concepts, but also the psychological aspect of money and how if used appropriately, it can be a tool to happiness and fulfillment.         There are several ways in which my expectations for this class were ce...

Asher's Final Reflection These past three weeks have been some of the most interesting and informative weeks I have had for a long time. This course has supplied me with the financial knowledge that many adults don’t even know yet. I have learned so many things, more than I can list on this blog. Although, some of the most important lessons I have learned were through the books that I read during this course. The book “Your Money or Your Life” has taught me things I should and shouldn’t do in the future. One thing is living below one’s means. Everyone should try and do this. Maybe don’t go out to lunch as often at work. If one can buy an $800,000 house, then why not settle for a $600,000 or $700,000 house. Try not to buy new clothes anytime one wants them. All of these things add up to a considerable amount of money which one could’ve saved. Another thing that struck me in “Your Money or Your Life” was how much life energy one is trading for money. Reading about this made me rea...

Sierra's Final Reflection This course was a great learning experience that completely changed my perspective on personal finance. I found so much of the course to be useful- including the exercises, the speakers, and the books. I learned a lot of material that I didn’t know that I found to be really important when it comes to my financial life. The things that I found to be really useful includes learning about investing, good tips and habits to have, what to watch out for, useful life skills and lessons, and the hands-on details about finance. A few of my favorite exercises were the life game, the fundamental and technical analysis of a company, and the blog and podcast report. The life game was my favorite exercise because it taught me a lot about the cost of life and how to budget and estimate the costs of things. I saw the real impact of saving and being smart about my money so I will be able to have enough to retire on. I also learned what it takes for me to reach my crosso...

Andrew's Final Reflection.         I'll start off by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this J-Term. We learned a huge amount, and the course was very information dense, but I think we all had a lot of fun. Our learning seemed to be very effective due to the fact that we covered items from so many different perspectives. By creating our own presentations, listening to presentations, watching movies, playing financial games, paper trading, reading books, seminaring, engaging with presenters from a multitude of backgrounds, and taking real estate field trips, we got our information from about as many angles as possible.         In relation to our initial presentations, some of our topics were quite complex, so in order to give an adequate presentation to the class, we had to put more effort into learning these economic related concepts more thoroughly than we would have just by listening to a lecture. When other students would present, we ha...

Henry’s Final Reflection  I learned so much during the three weeks in the Personal Finance course. Not only did the books that we read have a lot of very important and useful information, but the seminars that we had on them provided many different views and opinions that helped to expand my horizons. The book Your Money Or Your Life was very eye opening and taught me a lot about not just how to save and make more money but how to develop a good relationship with money. The book taught me some very interesting things about money like the fulfillment curve, the crossover point, and my life energy.  I learned so much about Mortgages and Loans including Long term, Short Term, Student Loans, etc.., Insurance ,Taxes, investing, real estate and so much more.      One of the most enjoyable and helpful things that we did in my opinion was The Life Game.The life Game gave me a roadmap for my life and showed me the real costs of living, how I will pay off my debt...

           Seeing as our Personal Finance J-Term was coming to an end, we figured today would be a good day to start recapping the main focuses and themes of the course so that we could put that information into a presentation to share with the school. Without spoiling too much, we also started brainstorming about a short video that we will play in addition to the presentation. After practicing our presentation a few times, we were introduced to a relatively new concept that we had briefly discussed in the past: Asset Allocation. Asa Forman was generous enough to come in and explain to us the basics of Asset Allocation and how necessary it is to develop a strong familiarity with it as early as possible.            Asset Allocation is essentially the idea of portfolio diversification and how you should invest your money. He explained to us the three different asset classes; Cash and cash equivalencies, fixed-income, and equitie...

This Wednesday began like any other average Wednesday, discussing the stock market. Specifically, we brought some stocks to the table and discussed the research we’ve done into them. We provided information on executives, events surrounding the company, and our recommendations about purchasing their stock. We were then visited by Ms. Quach, a real estate investor specializing in the Houston area. She discussed how real estate worked, the process of renovation, and how to make money. Unlike Mr. Gross, she specialized in single-family to quadplex homes rather than multi-family complexes, which offered an almost wholly different perspective on real estate. The lecture was enjoyable and informative, and offered insight on the often overlooked difficulties in real estate. The rest of the day was rather uneventful, we worked on the J-term presentation and some of us finished up or got help with our life games. Hopefully we take our long awaited lunch off-campus tomorrow, but...

Today we started off by having a speaker come in and present to us. Her name is Ms. Littlepage and she specializes in real estate. Over the last 25 years, she has bought over 250 different units and she talked to us about how she makes money from them. We walked through all of the expenses you pay when buying a property, and strategies to make renters pay your mortgage for you. Typically, she pays around $100,000 per 1,000 square feet for her properties (which are mainly located in Montrose). For example, one of her properties cost $400,000 and there were four different rooms which she could rent to four different tenants. She put 15% down of the house, which means she has to take a 20 year 340k dollar loan. That’s a monthly payment of 1,416$. She would likely rent the house out at around $900-1000. We’ll say $900 a month which means she makes $3,600 a month off rent. But she also has to pay insurance which is around $200 a month and property taxes which are $567 a month. That leaves 1...

Today in personal finance we worked entering more numbers into our life game and ensuring all of the numbers were accurate and in preparation to begin playing and rolling the dice next week. There were also two presentations given, one on first time home buyers and the other on fundamental analysis versus technical analysis of a company. The presentation given on first-time homebuyers was by Tommy and Blake. They talked us through some of the common mistakes that first time home buyers make, involving budgeting, down payments, credit ratings, etc. Furthermore, they explained how not to make these mistakes and different ways one could correctly approach first time home buying. Another topic that was covered in the presentation were the different types of loans available when buying a home. The three that were talked about were FHA loans, VA loans, and USDA loans. Later, Dr. Ott gave a wonderful presentation on the complex topic of fundamental analysis versus technical analysis. Essenti...

       After yesterday's day out with our presenters, we spent today presenting and discussing some of the topics we learned about previously. I presented my investing presentation with two other members of the J-Term, and I took the section related to stock exchanges, stocks, and options. Most of the class was fairly familiar with stocks, but options were something new and confusing to many (including me). I had done some paper trading on investopedia.com with stocks and options, but I hadn't done too well. The concept of trading a contract for the movement of an underlying asset (derivative) is a bit confusing– we learned how the mortgage backed securities crashed in 2008 due to complications with these derivatives. Trading options is actually quite exciting, due to the potential for huge growth and limited losses. I've had some great luck and also misfortune with paper trading options, but the growth outweighed the loss due to the function of the option contracts....

Tuesday January 15  Tuesday was a very eventful day for the Personal Finance J Term. Dr. Ott was sick, so Mr. Roddy supervised us. Since we would be leaving campus our parents had to sign a permission form that Mr. Roddy sent to them. Unfortunately he accidentally sent the wrong form, so we had to get our parents to sign again. But it all worked out and we were able to go off campus.         Mr. Ying was kind enough to come into the school in the morning to talk to us about his experience not owning a car. He used the whiteboard to prove to us how not owning a car and only using Uber and Lyft is a lot cheaper. He did this by writing all of the expenses of owning a car (price of the car, gas, maintenance etc…)  and finding the price per day. He then did the same for Ubering and we found that Ubering is way cheaper per day than owning a car.  This depends on how and how much you use your car. Mr. Ying also talked to us about other ways...

Today in the personal finance J-Term Clark and Blake and I started by giving a presentation to the rest of the class about taxes and tax structures as well as the differences in deductibles you can get in different places. After this we had a discussion with the class where we shared different blogs and podcasts that we have listened to over the week such as Mr Money Mustache and NPR’s Planet Money. For me it was interesting to see the different types of blogs and podcasts and how they varied from short easy to understand ones to more specific and complex. After this we had our daily seminar on our readings where, among other things, we expanded our discussions on the value of tracking money when making a budget. This lets you figure out not only that you spent $200 a month on food, but $110 of it was specifically at CVS as opposed to what you thought was a small percent of your food budget. We were then given time to work on our life games, filling out as much as we could on expect...

     Today we learned about all different types of insurance, we had a really great seminar about our 3 readings, and we worked on our stocks. The group was given a presentation on home, auto, rental, and life insurance as well as the benefits and shortcomings of insurance. It was really great to learn about insurance, although I personally believe some of that won't be useful to me until we are in our twenties. Everyone learned something new from that presentation, which was super great. Our seminar was full of engagement, questions and fulfilling conversations. It was really nice to listen to and learn from. Our stocks were also a hot topic of the day. Some people hadn't started trading yet and today was their first day (me). Knowing nothing about stocks, it is a lot of fun just to jump in, it is much easier to get the hang of it. The rest of the day was set for working on our budgets, preparing for the Life Game, writing reflections and learning our net worth. Overall,...

    Today is the second day of Personal Finance. The first thing we did was talk about our reflections. These reflections include all the things we learned the previous day as well as things we thought were interesting in our readings. After this, we went over our top three values in life. This was difficult as many people had a lot of different ones that all seemed equally important. We all had to narrow down our list to come up with our top three. Some values that came up from multiple people were family and friends as well as being successful in life. After we finished with that activity, we moved into a seminar around the three books that we are reading over the course of this three-week term. These books are Your Money or Your Life, Why Didn't They Teach Me This In School?, and Personal Finance in Your 20s and 30s for dummies.  Once we completed our seminar Asher, Henry, and Francesco did a presentation on Loans. They talked about student loans, mortga...

Our first day in this course we began by answering a few questions about our personal relationships to money. We answered a few questions having to do with our relationships with money and then began discussing the relationship between financial success and overall happiness, but in order to better define financial success we separated spending into three categories. We determined goods can be classified as needs comforts luxuries or clutter. We did an exercise where we observed things around us run the school and determined if they were needs, comforts, luxuries, or clutter. After getting a better understanding of necessity of goods, we looked at a graph depicting the relationship between money spent and satisfaction. One saying that we thought fit in really well with the graph was: the two best days of being a boat owner are the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat. The idea is that stress not only comes around when you do not have enough money, but if you have too ...

Welcome to the 2019 personal finance J-Term blog!!!