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.