Final Reflection - Sierra

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 crossover point and what that means for me. Doing the fundamental and technical analysis was another activity that I found to be really useful where I learned a lot. Not only did I learn a lot about the company that I researched (AMD), but I learned the skill to doing the analysis and valuation of the company to see if it would be a good investment. I believe this is a really important skill to know because it will help me be smarter about my investments in the future. My other favorite exercise was reporting out on blogs and podcasts that we found useful. Not only was I able to read some great blogs and listen to some informative podcasts but I also got to hear from all of my peers about the blogs and podcasts they researched and what they found useful and what they thought was important. Doing this exercise introduced me to some great platforms, blogs, and podcasts that are very useful resources. Going into this I knew close to nothing about any kind of financial blogs or podcasts, but after doing this activity I know where to go when I need some financial tips, advice or a fun educational read! Another big part of this course was the speakers that came to talk to us. My favorite speaker was Mr. Warren from Merrill Lynch. He manages money for his clients and gives them investment advice. He was very knowledgeable in his field and I learned so much from his presentation. I learned a lot about stocks including the stock market and different indicators and factors that go into trying to give your best shot at predicting the market. I found it really interesting when he talked about the incredible amount of debt that the government is in and how the market never really recovered after the great recession around 2008. He covered a lot of material that I had no idea existed, such as a way that the government has tried to raise the market and what that means now, for my generation, and future generations. Overall, with Mr. Warren, I learned a lot about investing, stocks, and even politics. Another speaker that I found interesting was Mr. Gross. I found his presentation insightful when it came to investing in multifamily real estate and I really enjoyed going out to his apartment complex and looking at a few different units and learning more about them. Another real estate investor, Ms. Littlepage, came to speak about her experience with investing in real estate and some useful things to know about it. I found her story really interesting and a great example of taking advantage of extra money and savings to put towards a long term investment. Reading the three books was another highlight of this course for me because I learned so much, not only about ways to be successful when it comes to money but also what money really is and what it means to have a good relationship with money. In the book, “Why Didn’t They Teach This in School?”, I learned a lot of useful and important tips and things to keep in mind. There were also many ways to save money and be smart about your money which I found to be extremely useful. The book, “Your Money or Your Life”, was probably my favorite of the three because it wasn’t like every other finance book. This talked about the real concept of money and the relationships revolving around money. One of my favorite things I learned was how money is our life energy, I just found this to be really powerful. I felt like it gave good life advice and money and finance was weaved into it to give a more encompassing viewpoint on money in our lives. The last book, “Personal Finance in your 20s and 30s”, I feel like would be much more useful when I’m older and it gave a lot of the nitty-gritty details about finance. Since we have two more days left in the course, we are having two more speakers and a few more activities. I look forward to hearing from both Asa Forman on asset allocation and Mr. Shaw on investing in small businesses.
     Taking what I learned in this course, in the future, I will be budgeting every month and taking time at the end of each month to evaluate how that month went. I will track the flow of money in and out of my life, take some time out of every week to educate myself on personal finance, begin saving now and be educated on where my money is going, work on keeping a healthy relationship with money, and plan out and work towards financial independence.