Real life, not learned in school

     The article posted last week titled “Combating Inflation with Compound interest” describes how inflation impacts the value of the money in our savings accounts and how compound interest can help reduce that. The article explains that investing your money in an account with compound interest would double the amount money made over time because you are taking advantage of the interest you earn along the way and on money you deposited.       Taking advantage of compound interest is a great way to increase the value of your money over time. It allows you to account for changes in inflation rates and potentially double your initial investment. According to the book “How Money Works: Stop being a sucker” by Tom Mathews, Steve Siebold, and Andy Horner a typical savings account is likely to have an interest rate under 1%. The same book provides a mathematical formula to help calculate how much time it would take to double the money you have invested based...

 Inflation is a term often mentioned in finance because it impacts how we spend and save our money. According to an article written by Poonkulali Thangavelu, in 2005, a movie ticket cost $6.41; by 2019 the cost was $9.16 and by 2022, the average price was $16.29 (Thangavelu, 2023). Thangavelu provides an example of how inflation impacts a luxury expense, but it can also impact the cost of your groceries and other necessities. An article written by Western & Southern Finance group describes inflation as when the price of goods and services increase due to supply and demand, but when that supply or demand goes down, the prices still rise (Western & Southern Finance Group, 2023). Inflation is happening constantly and directly impacting our spending power. How inflation is impacting your savings Later, the same article explains how inflation can impact money you have in your savings account. As noted above, inflation is ultimately the reduction of the value of your dollar due t...

  Most people can attest that being taught about money was not considered a huge priority. Despite this, financial literacy is a skill everyone should have a strong understanding of because knowledge of money and how it works impacts every facet of our lives. What is financial literacy? Why is it important for everybody? The book titled “How Money Works-Stop Being a Sucker” by Tom Mathews, Steve Siebold, and Andy Horner provides a definition for financial literacy that is as follows: the understanding of how to earn, spend, save, manage and invest money” (Mathews et al., 2023 p. 6).  On the following page, the book explains that financial illiteracy impacts three-fourths of the world and that governments and corporations use this ignorance to their advantage (Mathews et al., 2023, p.7). Later, the authors break down that statistic, explaining that this would mean that with seven point five billion people in the world, five billion of them would be considered financially illi...

I am truly a fan of the Matrix.  I have seen all the movies and all the sequels.  My love of the film began , just like everyone elses.  I loved the action , the cinematography, the fight scenes.  I have seen all the movies multiple times. One day something different happened after seeing the movie multiple times,  I asked myself that question.  Is this really a reflection of real life or a wonderful work of fiction? The Matrix , for those who have not seen it, is the story of Neo and his friends adventures, moving back in forth into dual worlds.  There are many lessons learned in these movies and Neo battles those who want to keep Neo from reaching his ultimate goal.  The battles are fierce because those opposing parties vigorously want to keep him from discovering life biggest secret.. that only a select few are entitled to know what is truly real. As I age, I gain more knowledge and become increasingly surprised on how the world is not what it ...

 All of us have heard the same song all throughout school "Show up on time, Do what you are told. Go to school. Work hard go to college, graduate and get a good job." Seems like a great, plan, in theory.  Maybe what our educational system is teaching us is a tad dated. I  personally, as a formal IT professional know that there really is no such thing as the stay at one place, work thirty years and then retire , is a dated philosophy. Now companies are changing. In order to move forward we all need to work smarter and not harder.  Downsizing seems the quickest way to cut costs. Makes it very hard to stay relevant when the employee is a liability instead of an asset on the corporate spreadsheet. I heard someone say the other day that for 99 Percent of us , our educational system has taught us how to become an employee. Words like overhead, depreciation , compound interest, carryover were not emphasized in our earlier education. I am someone that bought into notion of g...