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.