Skip to main content

Final Reflection 2019


         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 certainly met. First, I was able to learn about many foreign financial topics that, if it weren’t for this class, I might have learned about them for the first time in my mid 20’s. Things like managing debt, creating budgets and applying for loans are all things I can feel confident about as I enter adulthood. Next I was able to create a financial plan. The life game simulation certainly helped me out with this. For all my life I’ve desired a big family with many kids of my own, however through this game I’ve learned that I can’t have everything and that each reward comes with a sacrifice. For instance, I might have to give up buying the Lamborghini if I want my kids to go to private school. These are critical life decisions that are better thought about earlier rather than later, and due to this course forcing me to decide in the simulation, I will have an easier time deciding when the real thing comes around. Finally I was able to develop a new passion: Investing! One of my favorite aspects of the course was paper trading stocks on Investopedia. Though I came in last place on the leaderboard, I believe my failures allowed me to learn and grow more than the others in the class. I enjoyed this trading experience so much, that I was inspired to create an actual investing account with real money. So far since I created the account, I’ve made a grand total of $15 in profit. Luckily for me, I made all the mistakes during the simulation. 
      Overall this experience was incredible and I have no regrets choosing it as a J-Term. It made the boring aspects of finance enjoyable through books, movies and games. In addition to the course being fun, it was equally practical. In fact some of the things I learned during the month will be directly applicable to my life in a couple of years; things like taking student loans and paying rent will cease to be a future  circumstance, but rather an immediate reality.  This course is both good for those who know nothing about finance and want to be introduced, but also those who are already experienced and wish to broaden their knowledge through experts and simulations. I would recommend this course to all!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Reflection

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 it
3 comments
Read more

final reflection

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 apartment complex
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflection - Tommy

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.
Post a Comment
Read more