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 debt as well as how to pay off your debt in the most efficient way. It also made me think about how easy it might be for me to incur debt, especially with credit cards. I really think I should avoid credit cards until I am much more responsible with my money. I had fun with Investopedia, it taught us a lot about paper trading and the stock market.
The only thing I did not enjoy about the Game of Life was that if you have a hard time with figuring out how google spreadsheets work, it is very hard to fill out all of your tables. It was very difficult for me to figure out, especially because I did not ask for help in the beginning, and I just now figured out how to better use the program.
My favorite guest speaker was Mr. Warren from Merrill Lynch because I learned that politicians have messed up everything for my generation. They are still messing everything up for us because we currently have $100 trillion in liability. This means that when we’re working with steady jobs and making a lot of money, we’ll have to pay a ridiculous amount of extra taxes if we do not do anything about it. We think taxes are bad now, but based on our current situation, if we wait ten, twenty, or thirty years, we will be making so much less money. This is because we will have to pay a greater percentage of our money to the government to fix the mess the politicians have created. This means that the government is essentially borrowing today from the future productivity of the country’s younger generation. We will be the first generation to be less successful than our parents if we do not do something about this issue.
In conclusion, I expect to apply the information I learned in this class in many ways, most specifically in the areas of avoiding debt, avoiding credit cards until I am more responsible with my money, and renting in apartment buildings. My goal for college is not getting in any debt. I have learned how to better manage my money in the future, and what kind of apartments I should look into when I get to undergraduate or graduate school. I am also thinking about a different career path that has something to do with design, maybe architecture. It is something that I can apply my talents to and still earn a good salary while not having to go to school for as long.
Finally, I would recommend personal finance to my peers because it really helps you think about your future in a better, more realistic way. I think more of my peers should be aware of how easy it is to get into debt, especially when you are in college. Most college students that get in debt end up having to spend their whole college experience and beyond paying off that debt.
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