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Final Reflection - Julian

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 of ice. Bad metaphor aside, it really seemed like my life was gearing up to be 30 years of work and a comfortable rest of my life with a small business and no need for Social Security. This is a pretty sweet deal, but I wasn’t prepared for how aggressively conventional it felt to run the numbers. When you lose the crushing uncertainty of adulthood, things just become kinda normal, and kinda boring. Sure, finances aren’t the only stereotypically scary part of adulthood, who could forget the teenage fear of getting old, but they provide a lot of the anxiety. After all, who cares about Arthritis when the bank is on your case about credit card debt? It may be boring, but boredom is generally better than bankruptcy.

This is a course to take not for the fun of it, you aren’t converting a Supra to electric, you aren’t making pizza, and you certainly aren’t going to Ireland (have you seen airline prices lately?), instead, you are learning about retirement accounts, investment portfolios, and real estate. “Fun” isn’t a word I’d choose to describe personal finance. Don’t take this as a condemnation, though, this course is perhaps the most simply practical thing you can find on the J and A term course lists, and I’m surprised personal finance isn’t a mandatory high school subject. It should be. It arms you with information about accumulating wealth and having a stable monetary situation throughout your life, which while it may not be heaps of fun, gaining valuable information and tools for the future far outweighs any negatives that a lack of fun might bring. We still managed to enjoy ourselves, though, because we’re just that awesome.

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