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.