Financial literacy is a topic dear to my heart. I believe it is a core cultural value. One of: family, education, work, and money management. In particular, one should understand and apply cash flow, balance sheets, interest, amortization, investing, and ROI.
It is important to start early, in your teens. Get schooling that makes sense, avoiding heavy student loan debt, getting a relevant degree or certification. Don’t have kids too early, as this hurts school, work, and learning money. Learn to spend less than you earn, investing some surplus.
Invest a certain amount every month, averaging into low cost index funds that go up over time. Like the S&P00, which produces 9% historical CAGR. If you have the time, discipline, and desire, sure, invest in individual stocks and bonds. Maybe you want to learn value investing, like Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett. I recommend event a forced read, if you want to go down this route.
I truly believe life would profoundly change for the better if people were financially savvy. A lack of money causes so much strife in the world. That’s when people join armies, not for demagogues, and sometimes unfairly storm the gates. You don’t need to love or have too much money, but the lack of it is unhealthy and dangerous.
My views are due to my upbringing. I visited ancestral farm and fishing villages in the old country. My relatives said the fields don’t till and reap themselves. The fish don’t jump onto your dinner plate. It takes more inputs of labor to produce fewer, but well earned, outputs of leisure.
My Dad was uneducated, but a hard worker and saver. He stressed a Bible passage asserting that he who won’t work won’t eat. And that you just work smart, not just hard. I believe and practice this. I teach my kids the same.
Do your best and help others here. Be charitable if you have surplus. Aspire to this if you don’t, not being hatefully envious. This Earth and life demand work, so lets do it together…for family, community, nation, and planet. For all people.
I am good in managing money but failed in some big investments.
And I sometimes can’t control the buying on certain things….:))
My father told us to only buy things we need, sometime we follow, most of time we don’t.
This a human story. So many tales, parables, and fables. Remember the one about the ant and the grasshopper?
🙂
For some reason, controlling spending and saving came naturally to me. I’m not cheap, but I always had a healthy fear of poverty. My parents were truly poor in their childhood, starving in some years.
Between trips to the old country and growing up in poorer immigrant neighborhoods, their lessons stuck. As did their ruthless work ethic. As always, I’m no saint and have my flaws…but I am an enduring workers, saver, provider, and investor.
I’m looking forward yo enjoying it one day. Hopefully I don’t die prematurely. But that’s ok if it happens. I got to live…and wish the best to succeeding children, friends, family, and the world.
Whatever happens…I will always do some work. A purposeful life to me is the best life.
Spending comes naturally to me, saving I do so but I mostly do a long term of saving that I can’t take anytime I want. I meant to do it so I won’t always tempted to take it even when the urgency comes. There must be a way for emergency that’s why we need to allocate no matter how small for the unexpected matters.
That long term saving is my future living as I do know that we will only spend when we get older….:)
Your way seems perfect to me.
as my father says, the first million is the hardest one.^^
its very importent to start it as early as possible. due to the interest on interest.
and one has more time for research in the beginning.
Bro,
Please help recommend. :))
I would suggest to not take those with interest..:))
it depends much from the character of a person. there is also a psychological part.
André Kostolany was somehow a guru in germany. he was popular when i started with stocks and bonds.
https://takingcareofmyownbusiness.com/2016/03/05/how-i-learned-about-the-stock-markets-going-way-back-in-time/
More depend on one’s financial condition.
If one has enough why paying interest by taking credit.
That link is good.
when one is young one dont have much responsibilities. ie family, children and so on. but one has money. so one can invest.
ie a friend of mine was for 12 years soldier in a submarine. he had simple no opportunity to spend his money. so after these 12 years his pockets were full.
So what does he do with his money, lending it to get interest?
he gave it to the bank for about 2% interest rate.^^ germans are very risk averse due to a hyperinflation in the 1920th. germans have it in their vains one says. stocks are from the devil^^. but when he quited his work as soldier he married and bought a house. and then the hype with tech stocks started and we both started to trade with stocks. nearly everyone in germany started to trade with stocks. when we came home from work we first started to watch the stock news on tv. and we had everywhere stock talks. at work, at parties and so on. it was like a mania. and then came the crash and most germans were healed again. my uncle was then visiting us and we watched it live on tv. he said “we will have to see it this way. there drove just a mercedes away but it will be back on xmas” ^^ i had readed this kostolany and was luckely not invested. we had also a rule “sell in may and stay away. but remember, be back in september”^^.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/millions-billions-trillions-germany-in-the-era-of-hyperinflation-a-641758.html
2% interest a year, that is so low? But better than nothing.
Haha…he was good to buy the house first and do the rest to invest on the stock.
Do you still do the stock trading now? I’ve never tried it.
that was so low. actually its close to 0% and most likely it will become negative in the future. it literaly makes no sense to give it to tha bank. but germans are so.^^
today i have also stock but not the time anymore to research. so i dont trade much. some i have already since more than 10 years. the point is, you could buy a fund or ETF from your bank. but this is also just a basket of different stocks. so i started. but then i bought for a small amount also stocks (for the thrill^^) and saw that i performed better than the bank. so i invested myself in companies. it was very time consumpting. but i was young and it became a hobby.^^
i gifted my mother once 1 stock from a wine company. this was the entry ticket for the stockholder meeting of this company. so now has she one time the year a reason to leave the house for this meeting. a good diner and 2 bottles of wine. and this all since many years for only 20 EUR.^^
I think Germany is making a mistake it will dearly rue with negative interest rates. Japan has failed with it, not stoking desired inflation. In fact, in many ways it tightens the money supply, as only the most trustworthy get credit, destroying liquidity.
It also simply ruins the value of money and saving. It goes against everything natural intuition. Worst of all, it signals extreme pessimism.
All in all, it seems the USA and China will be centers of global economy. However, bad things will happen if the EU and Japan continue to falter. It can be disastrous in Europe for sure, given mass migration and trying to sustain jobs and living standards.
I honesty can’t think of a worse thing to do than negative interest rates in this context.
That the time consuming on trading stock is what made me have less interest especially when I have full time work to do. I am so happy to know this story about you gave your Mom stock that she can now join the yearly meeting, that must be fun for her…:))
she likes it. she is doing it together with a friend from her who is also stock holder. even with 1 stock one feels like a company owner and i ask her every time what did u have for dinner there. one can see from the diner wether the company had a good year or a bad one.^^
I believe she likes it especially when she has companion there.
People at her age would need to get along with friends and different people than the people she meets at home so she doesn’t feel lonely. Sometimes, even at home with their husband or children, they’d miss different people to be with for once in awhile. That’s true, we can see from the dinner if the company does well…=D
my mother is more extroverted while my father is more introverted. for my father a tv is enough^^
the first dinner was with lobster i remember, but they had also sometimes pea soup (thats more something for soldiers at the frontline)^^.
Haha…. that is a wonderful combination for a couple, they learn from each other.
TV is enough…=D
pea soup for share holders dinner? …=DD
Then we must remember it is a 1 stok holder of $20….haha.
You are so funny, Bro.
😂😂😂
Does it include Bitcoin mining as well.? It’s becoming so hard to get referrals these days. I didn’t foreseen that earlier.
No Bitcon for me.
Hi Ravana, it’s good that you are here as I included you on my tagging.
Good to see you too. I thought about looking for comment section of other sites after Disqus close down the private channels. I am still not understanding this new platform. How it is created and what new things are here now. I need to learn that.
Some friends here created the site like this.
There are some free site like Tumblr, Blogger or even WordPress has the free site.
This site is on WordPress but I take the safe one with subscription.
I got help by a friend setting this up. All the concepts are my concepts he helped me with the set up.
It needs a long learn to understand all how it works.
Okay, that’s fine theme at this new revamped site of yours. I got a WordPress site too but I have forgot all about it. Maybe, I will look into my files to extract the password. If it’s subscription or on paid basis, then it’s another matter.
Hope you have a good run here, and best of wishes.
You don’t need to rush to make your site. Otherwise, come here and have fun with people you know here, I’ll be glad to see that. For this site I take Bluehost, the hosting company under WordPress as I want to be safe on the net. You too, take care, Ravana. Talk to you soon.
I believe the easy money has been made on crypto currency. It is all based on speculation, nothing more. Only having value in so far as other currency can be exchanged in it.
I believe in using throw away money for such things. Assuming you see it early. Like I said, the easy money has been made. I don’t trust it.
I think you have crude knowledge or half baked imagination about Bitcoin or crypto currencies. Already there are 2-3 thousand crypto currencies just like Bitcoin in circulation. They have different characteristic and values. You can chose the one among the so many if you’re so wary of speculation aspect.
And remember almost every financial transactions is based on speculation, take for instance share market, commodity exchange, currency exchange and off course every business dealings as well. No need to just brush crypto currencies out as you are somewhat unfamiliar.
I know cryptocurrencies at an algorithms level and work with blockchain technologies. Again, they have no intrinsic value, just speculation. This is in contrast to, for example, the USA dollar, which is backed by the so called faith and credit of the US government…meaning you have an $18T economy behind it, validating your faith.
Same with a stock. It is backed by the goods and services produced commanding profit and revenue. It can be speculation if these are nebulous and driven by pure sentiment. But is an investment if a healthy company is bought at <= fair value, just like a house. There are also sovereign cryptocurrencies being planned. Backed by national faith and credit. Which I don't believe independent cryptocurrencies will ever have. I just don't see this as investing, but rather the aforementioned speculation. Look even tulips once made people huge money. Speculative mania happens in every generation. I believe cryptocurrencies will be in ours. So does Warren Buffett. I'm staying away, especially now that there are thousands. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/warren-buffett-bitcoin-isnt-an-investment.html
i can’t somehow imagine that a crypto currency will be allowed from nations to become to big. national laws will stop this. none would like to let a currency become uncontrolled.
There are various proposals. They can be controlled, but is still a virtual blockchain currency. Check this out:
https://www.coindesk.com/think-tank-pushes-for-creation-of-a-national-cryptocurrency-in-switzerland
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I think the tagging are not all working.
I’ll try to edit it from the site.
Yes, for some reason, only your tag seemed to work.
Mine worked. mean you must have done it the right away.
It must have been another Disqus glitch 🙂
I’ll read the post and come back later in my evening to join the chat.
You may tag friends, please do if you like.
Thanks Murn. I impusively decided to create this thread. I hope it is useful.
Actually that is like reading a thick book that we can find all the points in just one page.
It’s very useful and precious literacy.
Thank you for making the time to write it for us.
I’ve distilled this from lifelong lessons, academic and practical, from people I met and those I’ve read. I wish somebody taught me all this in high school, as I learned it in totality in my 20s. My family taught me to study, work, and save…but they weren’t aware of capital markets, being uneducated.
I advocate that the USA teaches all this in high school. All 4 years. Just consider how young students take huge college loans. For degrees of marginal value. Well, this is where an understanding of interest, amortization, and ROI help.
Even on a national level, our USA is in crisis over social security. Some people have come to expect it to be a retirement program. Which it isn’t. Again, this comes down to financial literacy.
That makes it more precious as it come from your years of lesson and experiences That should be taught in High school now or maybe it has been taught at university in faculty of Economy. I took English Literature, it makes me have not enough academic knowledge about financial literacy except from work and years of running small business.
What picture would you like to put on your post?
Some kind of $ symbol?
🙂
Done…:))
There is still chaos with the Disqus discussion appearance.
If you’d like to check it, please go to the ‘home’ on the site.
To have your post to appear on Disqus Home, it has to have comments.
Approved and published.
Thank you for the great post.