Personal Finance Reflection - Sutton Walsh

Sutton Walsh

Dr. Ott

Personal Finance

16 January 2020

Personal Finance Final Reflection

The knowledge I gained from the Personal Finance J-Term course is knowledge I will carry with me, truly, for the rest of my life. Taking part in this class made me realize how clueless I would be starting my adult life no financial foundation or plan for becoming a FIr. I wouldn’t even know that was something to become! From readings to speakers, presentations, and activities, this two week period has changed how I view my future.

“Your Money or Your Life” and “Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?” were fantastic readings that consolidated critical information and taught me lifelong lessons. “Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?” shared concise and simple teachings that will help me to save tens of thousands of dollars and not make disastrous decisions regarding my hard-earned money. The book paired perfectly with “Your Money or Your Life”, an inspirational step-by-step reading to becoming financially independent, retiring early, and making the most out of your time. 

The speakers that came were professional and compelling. Champ Warren gave an in-depth presentation on the U.S. economy and whether or not we were heading into a recession. He showed us many graphs that, without his explanation, I wouldn’t have been able to interpret. The way he explained the graphs made it super simple to understand, even for beginners like myself. I learned so much about what factors play into a recession and what a non-recession versus a recession period looks like on a graph. His speech was a highlight of the course and I think he should come and give a similar presentation to the entire high school. Alan Ying’s talk differed greatly from that of Champ Warren. It was more conversational and open to questions. He talked about starting a career and critical qualities needed to undergo this process (specifically persistence and a positive attitude). He also talked about how 100% of his friends who went to graduate school are still paying off their debt. This comment impacted me as I am deciding whether or not I would like to attend graduate school. Overall, the speakers, despite presentation styles and topics, taught me so much valuable knowledge to consider as I strive towards Financial Independence.

The mini-research projects, while “mini”, taught me fascinating skills to help me make smart decisions with my money. The “city 4-plex” lesson showed how drastic the cost of living was depending on your location and the perks of investing in a rental property during college and graduate school. I learned that you can make great amounts of profit by investing in a property to rent to college grads (NOT college students, they love to party). The "practicing technical analysis strategy" mini-project will serve in handy, especially when I begin to invest in stocks in the future. I used the simple “crossover” strategy - applying a long term moving average and a short term moving average to a chart and buying or selling based on which line crosses over which. This strategy proved to be effective and I gained a high amount of reward. It motivated me to learn other strategies too, as I realized that technical analysis doesn't have to be as challenging as its name sounds.

Movies in Personal Finance? Of course! The movies we watched made it easier (and more fun!) to understand bank scandals to other financial catastrophes. While my gluteus maximus began to ache from sitting on the stools for hours on end, the knowledge I took out of the movie-watching experience was worth the pain. While some movies I still don’t quite understand, I learned how the bank can be untrustworthy and if something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. 

Last but certainly not least is the Investopedia Stock Simulator! Boy did I have fun experimenting with stocks. At first, I was terribly confused because I had no idea how investing in stocks work, what stocks I should buy, when I should sell, how many shares, why am I in last place!? Over the course of the J-Term, I was able to make my way up to 5th place(!) by investing in stocks after doing some research, understanding the right time to buy and sell, and spending my cash in an intelligent manner. I developed a minor addiction to this simulator and it got me both excited and a little nervous to start investing in the real stock market. With some experience under my belt, I felt better about the future (of course, I will paper trade for a year before starting to invest in the stock market).

In conclusion, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of information I learned about finance in this short period of time. While it doesn’t sound as “cool” as a trip to Spain or Jamaica, I think it has taught me so much more in the long run. I am so thankful that I was chosen to participate in this course because I can’t imagine going to college with no plan whatsoever about my life! I now have a functional budgeting system, experience investing in the stock market, and so many more advantages that the majority of high schoolers do not receive. I am seriously debating taking this course again because it has changed my life and is the reason I am motivated to become financially independent and retire early!

Final Reflection - Connor Kissack

Connor Kissack

Dr. Ott

Personal Finance

17 January 2020

Personal Finance Reflection

My time being in the Personal Finance J-Term has been absolutely incredible. I started the course with no knowledge of finance and have now come out of it with enough knowledge of the best way to use your money with it having a positive affect on my future. The books we read were astonishing as they talked about the best way to manage one's money and the principles of how to use one's own money. This is exactly why I came into the class; to become financially independent and know the correct way to manage money. Throughout my life, when I am given money, I immediately spend it with no in-between thought on how it would be better for me to saving the money granted to me. That habit has been completely changed as I have had a realization that I will be better off if I saved my equity. As the J-Term has continued on, we have done multiple projects which have been eventful. We had projects that carried on our own interest that we had in our class. Mine being a project about the stock market and how it works. We also set up a finance game called "The Game of Life" which projected what our net worth would be in the future if we took certain projections. We then used our spreadsheet to play the actual game where we rolled the dice and saw what number it landed on. With the number in mind, we had another spreadsheet where it showed what event would happen that corresponded to the number. We also had a project where we had to find a fourplex and calculate the total cost of it. We used this to see if we could in turn make a profit off of the other roommates living in it. I learned a lot from both of these experiences as it taught me about real estate and the other gave me a projection of what my life might look like if I took these certain precautions. After a long day of some of the days of learning about personal finance, we watched films about people switching roles, believing in what is right, and a greedy man who comes to his senses and learns about the importance of life. These films have taught me that money may be important, but it isn't so important that I should only have my mind on how much money I have at the present time. I am thankful that this experience has taught me smarter ways for me to manage my money. This may be my first J-Term experience, but it certainly has had a lifetime lasting impact on me. 

J-Term Reflection- Luke

Luke Kirchner
Dr. Ott
PF
17 January 2020

Reflection 

     During this J-term, I learned many valuable skills that I think I will use for the rest of my life. This was nothing less than a life changing experience. Before I started this J-Term, I was not sure of great ways to budget money, invest in stocks and I had basically no knowledge on home ownership. After two weeks, I now know quite a lot. The books we read we very helpful and taught me a lot. Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School was very nice and have some great tips. Your Money or Your Life taught me new ways to think of our time and 'life energy'. During the two weeks we were running an Investopedia stock trading game. I learned more about stock trading strategies and how to invest money. After the two weeks, I finished 3rd in placement. We had many activities where we researched different stocks and justified our purchases. We learned about house interest rates and how mortgages work. This is very useful information as I knew practically nothing about this before I took this J-Term. The course also showed us about the value of money and how hard it is to make. The movies, while very entertaining, also taught us some great life lessons and lessons about different jobs. My favorite was trading places. Other activities included calculating our net worth, seeing how much money given to us was still in our life, and our first memory of money.

In the end, this J-Term was a great success and I had a fun time! Dr. Ott is great!

Clark's Reflection

Clark May II

Dr. Ott

Personal Finance

17 January 2020

Reflection

My expectations going into Personal Finance this year were much different than my expectations last year. This year, I was expecting to really build on all the knowledge I had learned from last year. In the course this year, I really felt as if I could dive deeper into my topics of interest, especially stock options. Being able to read my own book allowed me to truly pursue my interests. I got the chance to present on my book and my topic to the class and I really enjoyed the extra work I had to do for being a returning student. As I said, it allowed me to further delve into topics of my interest and the extra presentation I had to do enabled me to share my prior knowledge, and I feel as if my experience was utilized very well throughout the time of the course. I was able to take more of a leadership role and I thoroughly enjoyed helping other classmates with projects we had done last year. This is not to say that the course was a repeat of last year or not challenging though. We did a lot of new projects such as looking for quadplexes in different cities and using charts, historical data, and technical strategies to choose whether or not to invest in stocks. Reading my book on advanced stock option strategies has been one of the most difficult tasks that I have taken on and it has proven to be one of the most informative and intriguing projects I’ve ever done. It’s taught me so much about the complex world of trading stock options and it has introduced me to information I will need if I choose to go down the route of options trading.––

The last reason why I loved this course was that it has made me feel more prepared and confident for the A-Term I am leading with Sierra in March. Being in this class has shown me great teaching strategies that we will use during the A-Term and there are many activities we’ve done that we will take inspiration from to make our course more interesting and fun. The lessons I’ve learned this year are so valuable and I can’t wait to take the information I’ve learned from this class and introduce it to the Investing A-Term class in a few months. Personal Finance has been the most valuable course I’ve taken at Post Oak and all of the information will help me in the future when I begin on my financial journey. 

Final Reflection

This year’s Personal Finance J-Term went well for the most part. As a returning student, the lack of a third week was noticeable in the curriculum, as we had much less time to talk about investment strategy and cashflow options and could only get through the basics. The schedule was far more rigid and the work was a bit too condensed, but the term was still overall a success despite this. It was a good refresher course on what I learned last year, and I got some new information along with it. I got to employ what I learned about investment strategy last year in paper trading and while I wasn’t great at it, I did make .3% profit. The low percentage was partially because I forgot to actually use about half of the money and got sidetracked by financial aid apps for colleges when Amazon killed my portfolio. Good times. What I enjoyed most was researching how investments and cashflow worked for US citizens abroad, mostly because it often just didn’t work. My example country, Finland, has excellent opportunities for investing in funds and equity. The banks and companies one can buy into have near 10% returns at times and are excellent potential diversification for foreigners with Finnish bank accounts. For Americans investing in these funds, however, the devil is in the details, and this particular devil is the IRS. Real estate also requires a staggering level of capital to break into, and the supply of renting residencies is gargantuan, making cashflow extremely difficult to obtain through real estate. With interest rates regulated to <1%, the down payments and total prices of land in urban areas, the only areas in Finland with a profitable housing market, rising, finding investment opportunity locally becomes exceedingly hard for expatriates. In terms of the normal curriculum, going over everything a second time helped me understand how money works and how I can make it work for me. Things I didn’t quite get before, like shorts, options, futures, and such, make far more sense to me now. I learned a lot about investing from this course is basically what I’ve spent the last paragraph trying to say.

My J-Term Reflection

Andreas Cantu 
Dr. Ott 
Personal Finance 
17 January 2020 

A Reflection 

My time at the Personal Finance was nothing less than a blessing. I have spent my whole life not to worried or concerned about the concept of money. There were very few times when I felt like I was lacking the proper knowledge of money and how to properly use it. Well by the time the first day of personal finance ended I instantly knew that there was so much to learn. There is so much information out there in the world of finance and the fact that there was so much I did not know and still have to learn is outstanding. The books that we read alone had more useful information regarding personal finance and how to properly use your money so as to not end up in debt. This course was so perfectly crafted for students our age because, we are all at age where money becomes more and more apparent in our life and if we don't learn how to properly manage and use our money now than it will most definitely affect us later on in the future. 
I especially appreciated the activities that we did during this term because, of how beneficial and relevant they were to our course. This activities included: determining your net worth, simulating all of your future expenses all the way to death, keeping track of all our purchases and much more. So in the end I am very grateful for this J-Term and I know that this is most definitely one of the most important classes I have/will ever take and know I will use these lessons for the rest of my life. 

Final Reflection

I took the personal finance last year and this year and I’m so happy I took both. I’ve learned so much, gotten more experience with finances, and grown in my relationship with money. I took last year’s course because I had no experience with money and managing money and I thought it would be useful to start learning then. I found money to be boring and complicated and just a pain in the butt. One of the only things that drew me to finance was the dream of being able to retire early and do with my life whatever I want. Taking that course opened my eyes to the world of finance and money and since then, my relationship with money has developed and changed for the better. I decided to take the course again because last year, I had just begun being introduced to finances and I didn’t understand everything and still had a lot of unanswered questions. Taking the course again allowed me to dive deeper into finances and work to understand concepts that I was struggling to grasp. Since Clark and I will be leading an A-Term about investing, this J-Term allowed us to review finances and observe how the class is run. I chose to take Personal Finance again so I could deepen my knowledge of finance and learn about new perspectives and since I’ve taken the course already I had a much easier time understanding things and could also bring more to the table. This course helped build my confidence in finances and bring awareness to many money-related things that I wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise- for example, the substantial difference in money paid between a 30 year mortgage and a 15 year mortgage. This time around we did a few new activities that were more hands on and which taught me a lot. Since I was a returnee, I presented on a couple of topics instead of one and this really allowed me to pursue and research in-depthly about topics of my interest. I also got the opportunity to read a book of my choice and I chose the book, “The Simple Path to Wealth”. I really enjoyed reading this book because it enforced the idea that finance doesn’t have to be complex and hard and “only for professionals”, finance can be for everyone. The author brought in a lot of new perspectives and financial tips that I wasn’t aware of before. I was also able to understand the movies so much better which was really nice and I got to enjoy the movies more simply because I knew more about what they were talking about. Last year’s class sparked my interest in finance and this year’s class helped me to pursue that interest. This has been one of, if not the, most valuable class I have ever taken.

Final Reflection - Alex Gross

Throughout the personal finance course, the group learned basic facts about Personal Finance that would help us in our lives, and we also started to delve deeper into some complex ideas. Over the past two weeks, there were two readings that we focused on, which taught us some tips to be financially smart, and how to get to Financial Independence. Financial Independence was defined as the point in your life where you are able to live off of income you receive from investment income. It also is based around the idea that you could quit your job and live unemployed. These ideas are based fully on what each person considers "enough" to live off of. To me, this taught a lot of skills that I will use in my life, and although the book Your Money or Your Life seems like it was created for adults; I believe that having the opportunity to read this book at my age will benefit me for the rest of my life. Some of the topics that were presented by fellow students were: first-time homeownership, federal taxes, the stock market, credit cards, and many other extremely useful topics.  Without this Personal Finance course, I don't know if I would have ever taken the time to learn any of what we covered because I never knew how much bulk there was to this topic. In these past two weeks, I learned more than I expected by far. Some of the in-class activities that I think benefited me a lot were mini-projects that taught us about buying and renting out a quadplex, creating a simulation for all of our income and expenses until we are 57 years old, and trying to list everything we have spent and taken in during our entire lives so far. All of these are reasons why I think everyone at our school and everyone in the country should be pushed to, or required to take this course. The only critique I think I would have is that this is not a full-time class at our school and only a two-week course. There is so much stuff that we did not have time to go into because of the short length of our time here. In the future, I believe that the impact of this course on everyone in this class will make our financial lives better. Something that seems very interesting and different to me is that this class didn't only teach us how to make more money. It also was trying to show that it is okay to have less and be content with it. As long as you are using your life in a way that you are making a living, instead of making a dying as some nine to five jobs do, the amount of money doesn't matter. There is no defining point at which you have enough to live off of forever. Everyone has different financial wants and needs. The statement that money doesn't buy happiness is true, even though you can buy some short term things that will bring you joy for a short time. It is true however that lack of money can bring great stress and sadness into your life. I don't think everyone in our class realizes it yet, but at some point, everyone here will realize what an impact this course has had on their life for the better. I already tried applying some things I learned in this class to my life and can see the impact it is having on me. I have a strong desire to take this course again next year because of the number of people that are retaking it this year, and that there are new concepts that they can study rather than doing the exact same thing they did the previous year.

Final Reflection - Asher

Asher Forman
Dr. Ott
Personal Finance
17 January 2020

Reflection

     Personal Finance is something that everyone needs to learn so that one can be prepared for their future. This was my second year of doing personal finance, and I learned so much more. Being a returning student, we had to pick a book of interest, and 'The Intelligent Investor' caught my eye. This book talked about speculation vs value investing, the defensive investor, and portfolios. Since I am a novice investor, I was curious about how I could further my knowledge around this topic. Another thing I did in Personal Finance was an in-depth research about retirement. I was interested in retirement because I would like to retire early, and I wanted to know how I could get started. I found out about 401ks, IRA accounts, Social Security, Annuities, and how much money one will need to retire. Retirement is something that so many people ignore, and become stressed about when they are in their forties and haven't put money into a retirement account. Getting a headstart on this early, and understanding one's options is incredibly important so that one can have a worry-free financial future. Another thing that returnees did was to pick a topic that interests them, and then do a research project about it. I decided to research bonds, as this is something I am considering buying, and I wanted to understand my different choices. Bonds can potentially be one of the safest investments that one can buy for their portfolio. Through this research, I learned about the different types of bonds, bond ratings, characteristics, and interest rate sensitivity. I feel like I have learned an incredible amount even after doing the second year of this course. I would recommend this course to anyone that wants to learn about finances whether one is a beginner or advanced. There are always more things to learn around finance so that one can become 'The Intelligent Investor.'

Final Reflection - Catherine

Over the course of these past two weeks, I have learned more about personal finance than I have in my entire life. I thought this course was highly beneficial because it gave me an overview of all the financial decisions I will have to make in the future and made me consider different financial approaches that could help me achieve financial independence as early as possible. The two books that we read, "Your money or your life" and "Why didn't they teach me this in school" both taught me great lessons that I will definitely reference later on in my life. I thought it was interesting to explore our relationship with money and how our money values were usually established at a young age can affect how and why we manage our money in the future. I started this course with minimal knowledge about investing or stocks so my initial stock decisions on Investopedia were mostly random or based on what other people were buying or selling. I then learned about technical analysis, specifically the moving averages/crossover strategy which allowed me to make educated and for the most part successful investing decisions on my own. It was also interesting to walk through all the expenses that I will have to make in my life and get an estimate of how much wealth I can accumulate and what age I might retire. Some of my biggest takeaways are that starting to put aside money for retirement as early as possible, investing, and saving a good part of your salary are key to achieving financial independence. I'm glad I had the opportunity to learn about personal finance as early as high school and can't wait to apply the financial principles throughout my life journey.

Friday 1/17/2020 - Sage

Today we spent the bulk of the morning creating our J-Term presentation for next week. The presentation is meant to sum up everything we learned/did in the past two weeks. This includes any topics we covered, such as the stock market, any movies we watched, any books we read, and any activities we took part in. After we finished up the slides for our presentation, we took a break for Julian to present on what you can expect if you plan to invest while living abroad. We learned that if you live in a foreign country, but are still a US citizen, you may get double taxed on certain investments, and the general advantages and disadvantages of emigration. After that, Francesco, Sierra, Clark, and Asher presented on the books they chose to read independently throughout the J-Term. Francesco read a collection of essays by Warren Buffett, Sierra read The Simple Path To Wealth, Asher read The Intelligent Investor, and Clark read Option Volatility and Pricing. To finish the day up, each of us wrote a reflection on the past two weeks and walked through our presentation a couple of times.  

personal finance reflection

Personal finance reflection
Sarah Laskin

As my first J term, I had no idea what to expect from the personal finance course. These two weeks in personal finance have taught me so much about everything from home ownership to investing in the market and socks.

Not only have I learned a lot from this course, but I had fun while learning. For example, instead of looking at numbers and graphs while learning about expense we set up a life simulation to track expenses and costs. This not only made the assignment individual, but it required research on our interests and what we would be spending money on in the future.

Now, I am much more educated on stocks and investing, too. By being able to invest in stocks with mock money real-time with Investopedia, I was able to track certain stocks and learn about the market hands-on. We also learned about investment strategies to use in the trading game.

We also read two books over the course of two weeks. Both books were about money and saving/strategies to grow your money. I knew some of the tips from both books, but the reassurance was good. Also, I still learned a lot from both, and since we get to keep them I can always have them for reference. I am sure I will be going back to them when I am older and have more money to manage. Each day we also had seminars on the books and discussed the books and if we agreed with their recommendations about money or not.

The first week everybody was given topics to present on to the class, and this pushed me to research a lot into my topic and condense it into a presentation for my peers. I learned a lot about my classmates' topics through their presentations as well, and it was much more entertaining for me than a lecture or reading a textbook about that topic.

Personal Finance - Thursday

Thursday

Thursday was quite an eventful day. We started Thursday with a mini project that dealt with trying to make a profit off of a fourplex in an assigned city. The assigned cities were Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Portland. Persi, Andreas, and Alex were working on San Francisco, Asher, Luke, and I worked on finding a fourplex in Houston, Sierra and Clark worked on finding one in Pittsburg, Sarah, Sage, and Francesco were working on Philadelphia, and finally, Sutton, Julian, and Catherine were on the job to find a fourplex in Portland. Our goal was to find a fourplex that could get 3 units to cover mortgage, insurance, and taxes. It took all of us a while, but, in the end, we all found a fourplex that we could afford and make some equity on it from the college students renting in it. Afterwards, we all had to report on what our fourplexes’ were located, the down payment, monthly payment, the rents charged for the fourplex, and the average rent in the area. When we presented our fourplexes, they weren’t in the greatest shape because they were in some major cities and we had to get them for a low price. We then had some free time and played our game of Investopedia. After that we then set up and started to watch a movie called “The Ultimate Gift”. It was about a Grandfather who had just recently passed and left his will to his family and friends. The people in the family seem rather snooty. They complained about what they got from the will and what they didn’t. One of the kids was not treated kindly by his grandfather and, to make it up to him, he ‘lead him on trail’ of a series of gifts after he got one after the other leading up to the ultimate gift. The ultimate gift was for him to realize the importance of life. Afterwards, we ended up continuing our game of investopedia and relaxed for the rest of the day. 

Personal Finance - Tuesday

      We started this Tuesday off with presentations from the returning students on topics of their interest. I presented first on wills, trusts, and behavioral finance; I spoke on the importance of all of these and how they relate to our personal finance lives. Francesco followed with his presentation on fraud. He began by connecting to The Big Short, which we watched yesterday, through talking on the legality of some of the actions of the banks and big corporations mentioned in the movie. Francesco went on to talk about different forms of fraud, how it can happen at any time, and how to not fall for scams. Next up was Asher who gave an in-depth presentation on bonds, the different types, ratings, and uses. Understanding bonds is extremely important especially as it relates to the stock market and portfolio diversification and Asher explained all of it very well. Last but not least, Clark presented on options trading. He explained what options are, the related terminology, and why people trade options. Options are by far one of the most complex and difficult topics to learn, however, I think Clark did a great job introducing them to the class. All of the presentations went well and the class certainly learned a lot! After a quick break, we dove into a seminar on our books and asked numerous questions on both technical/ factual topics and philosophical topics, for instance, does "money buy happiness"? We talked about having values, thinking about money in terms of life energy, and the power of money. Our seminars are a great way to answer factual questions and pose open questions to discuss. Following lunch, Mr. Ying, an entrepreneur who started out as a doctor, came and talked through his experience, how he found his passion, and how he got to where he is now. He gave all of us insightful knowledge and some high-quality advice. Mr. Ying was able to relate his story to us and he showed us where hard work and curiosity can take you. The class was extremely fortunate to be able to hear from Mr. Ying and we learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful person. Near the end of the day, new students played the Game of Life. They had to roll dice to get a scenario and depending on that scenario they adjusted their income, expenses and net worth of their game accordingly. The goal of this game is to show that anything could happen to you during your life and you should be financially prepared. While dice were being thrown, returning students read their books of choice trying their best to soak up as much financial knowledge as possible. Today was eventful and filled with many learning opportunities as we are investing our time and effort into our financial future!

Personal Finance - Monday

         Today in the morning we were very privileged to have Mr. Warren of Merrill Lynch come in and talk to us about the business cycle and debt. He showed us a variety of charts from Bloomberg and explained what their purposes were and how they could be used as indicators for an upcoming recession or boom in the economy. For me personally, it was eye opening to conceptualize how each of the different charts related to one another. For instance, he explained how capital expansion relates to investor confidence which relates to consumer confidence which relates to the stock market which relates to interest rates and how basically everything is connected. He also talked about ways the government tries to get involved with boosting the economy, specifically he covered lowering taxes and lowering interest rates (two things that are already relatively low right now). This transitioned the discussion into concerns of the national debt. Warren explained to us that the debt might actually be larger than the government wants us to believe, and that neither political party seems to be bothered by the harsh reality. He said that the issue of national debt is often overlooked by politicians and media and both parties are guilty of promoting policies that contribute to it. On a brighter note, he explained that he is incredibly impressed with our generation and that change needs to stem from things that the youth decide to do in the coming years. After Warren's presentation, we were able to listen to some presentations given by students on important topics like retirement, capitol allocation, and entrepreneurship. In the afternoon, we were able to watch "The Big Short" which effectively explained the housing bubble that lead to the recession in 2008. This was the third time seeing the movie, however it was just as interesting watching it for the third time as it was the first. This time I felt like I fully grasped the concept of why the bubble happened to the point where I could explain it entirely to someone. It talked about Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), Sub-Prime Mortgages, and Credit Default Swaps, all things that made the crash happen. Overall the movie was informative, but also had a compelling storyline included in each of the subplots that were simultaneously going on. Overall, I was incredibly engaged with everything we did today and I am excited to see what we do tomorrow.

Personal Finance - Friday

The final day of our first week started with some collaborative open work time in which the group worked on our templates for our life simulation game. We got to create a chart of all of the money that we think will be spent (Food, Clothes, Utilities, Housing, Debt, etc.) and then put everything we will earn (Salary, Savings Accounts, Stock Market, Gifts, IRA, etc.) and we would be able to see our net worth at the end of that year. Everything that isn’t spent goes into savings. Another factor in this process was where we want to go to college, and finding out starting salaries in the field we are interested in. Next week we will use a simple process to determine some possible outcomes of our lives. After this, we had three students present on topics of their choice. The first was about the stock market and we learned about getting and investment strategy and sticking with it. The next presentation was about smart real estate investment. I took away a lot from this presentation because I learned that everyone gets to make their own real estate investments and there is never going to be one correct way to go about this process. The final presentation was about alternative markets for example commodities and the pros and cons of investing in them. The group briefly discussed the two books we are currently reading, in specific the chapters about debt and self-fulfillment. We are learning about how to manage debt, and strategies on how to get out of it, while also learning about finding what is “enough” for you so you never have to go into debt at all. This week we got to choose a couple of podcasts to listen to and blogs to read, and then we talked about them with the group. Some of the ones we discussed in class were about stock market strategies, homeownership, and several other general topics. After all of these discussions, most of us had questions, and these sparked into two main conversations. The first was about commodities and ended with the entire class having a common understanding of commodity investment, and the second conversation was about an advanced strategy to pay off mortgages at a faster rate called the Home Equity Line of Credit Strategy or “HELOC”. To end the day we had a little time to use our stock strategies on Investopedia, the stock simulator game that we have been using since the beginning of this course. I think the entire group would agree that we learned an immense amount of important life information in just four days and that we are all excited for another week of this course.

Personal Finance- Tuesday

Luke Kirchner
J-Term- Personal Finance

Tuesday 

     On Tuesday, the first day, we mainly focused on getting everything started. During the course of this J-Term, we will be following an Investopedia stock game, finance books (Your Money or Your Life and Why Didn't They Teach me this in School) and 'The Game of Life". The Game Of Life follows our expenses and income as we predict our money spending habits into the future. The Investopdia game is more straight forward, as it is trading stocks in order to turn a profit. We started with $100,000 and began to research stocks that we wanted to invest in. It turns out investing in 15,000 shares of one stock in not the smartest of ideas. I was lucky enough to sell in time before I lost too much, but now my strategy is different. We learned different strategies on how to invest and many of us have an account value over what we started with. Great success! We also had a quick seminar on 12 smart life lessons that were taught in "Why Didn't They Teach Me This In School?". This book was helpful because it is not full of boring and useless things and is straight forward. A few students gave their topic presentations: Andreas, Persi and myself. Andreas gave a presentation on debt and how to stay out of it. In the case we did get in debt, he gave us strategies to overcome the situation. Persi talked about banks and their different types. By telling us about different types of banks, she shared recommendations on what banks we would use for certain savings accounts. My presentation was pretty awesome. I talked about Credit Cards and what they are and how they can be dangerous. I am sure that the class learned a ton about credit cards from the presentation. 

The future is looking bright for this J-term! 

Personal Finance - Wednesday

Today in Personal Finance, we began with an insightful seminar on Your Money or Your Life and Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School. We engaged in deep subjects such as whether we believed that money would rule the world until the end of time and flaws with the mindset society create about money. After this, we continued filling out data in The Game of Life while frequently checking our standings in the Investopedia Stock Simulator. After lunch, some students presented on their topics. First up was Julian discussing something extremely interesting....mortgages. We learned critical negotiation strategies, the importance of paying mortgage on time, and the principal and interest components of mortgage. Next came Sarah Laskin discussing another fascinating topic - Federal Taxes! Woo-hoo! She talked about how, even though Federal Taxes are a pain, they are essential to the development and growth of society. The class learned about types of taxing; regressive, progressive, and proportional as well as how to calculate income tax. Before our brains were about to explode with newly gained knowledge, we took a break to play CashFlow. I had no idea what was going on but I believe the object of the game was to have their income exceed their expenses. After half an hour, we moved on to play a much better game, Kahoot! We played this until the end of the day and learned more about the basics of personal finance. Near the end of the day, we drifted away to "what Disney movie is this song from"  (not to brag, but I was killed that round). While learning about personal finance and understanding strategies to becoming financially independent can be draining and confusing, we will value the lessons learned in this course throughout the rest of our lives.

This student is doing awesome!

Students are having a BLAST on Investopedia!

This student is learning important lessons through this simulation. 

Personal Finance - Thursday

Asher Forman
Dr. Ott
Personal Finance
9 January 2020

Personal Finance - Thursday

     Today we talked about fundamental and technical analysis around stocks. Although, what is technical and fundamental analysis? Well, this type of analysis is used to look at stocks if one is deciding on buying one. With fundamental analysis, one is looking at the company as a whole, the financial statements, and basically doing valuation of the stock. With the financial statements, one is trying to look at book value per share, working capital, earnings per share, dividends, operating income, and net income. This is to make sure that the company is hopefully making a profit every year. Not just that, but also showing if one is going to have dividends or not as living off dividends could be an investing strategy. The next thing one is looking at is the company as a whole, which includes all of the news that is occurring around this company at the time. Are there big deals coming up, are people being fired, and what events might affect the price of the stock? Now for technical analysis, one is actually looking at the numbers of the stock itself. One is essentially finding a strategy with making predictions on the stock they want to buy. After the morning, we did a seminar on the spending lesson in Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School. In the spending lesson, we talked about spending one's money right without wasting it. Always ask for bargains, check your bills, and don't spend on the latest trends. Keeping these simple tips in your mind will help save a lot of money. We then watched Trading Places, which was about two guys that entirely switched their lives. This was because two old wealthy men made a bet that they could make a man living on the streets become an investor and investor become a man living on the streets. These two guys realized what was going on and decided to take all the money from these old wealthy men. Overall, today was a really interesting day and I am excited to learn about what is to come later in the week.