Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 180

Today I ended grade 8 personal finance. My teacher showed my what he had to go through just to make each video. And then congratulated me. I then took a survey of what I thought of the course.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 179

Today I did a end of course evaluation. To be honest, not much has changed in my actually life because the score is the same but I have learned a lot.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 178

Today I looked at even more course highlights. Today I looked mostly at the finance of cars and collage.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 177

Today I looked at some more course highlights. I reviewed interest and bank accounts.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 176

Today I looked at some of this course’s highlights. In other words basically I did a review for the whole course. Good habits are saving, keeping up with the news (real news not celebrity gossip) and studying. Bad habits include borrowing, window shopping, using shopping as a pastime and following the crowd. Spend money based on how you earn it. And never forget this earn more than you spend.

Grade 8 Science Lesson 171

Today I learned how systems engineers solve problems. When your shoes are untied you tie them. That is an example of a simple problem. However when your business is getting way to many calls. You could try solving it by treating it like a simple problem. So you train them to take more calls, but that takes people off, you could pay people for overtime but that makes more problems. You see when you try solving a complicated problem by treating it like a simple problem you can end up in an endless loop of new problems that happen. That happens because every time you try to solve the current problem you create a new problem.

To help end this Dr. Shoji Shiba defined 7 step problem solving. The first step is definition. What is the problem? If there are multiple problems pick the worst one. Don’t move on until you have identified the problem. Step two is data collection. Collect data about the problem. Step three is cause analysis. Look at the data and determine why you got this problem. Step four is solution planning and implementation. This step will take more time than the others. As you have to take the problem and find a way to solve it. Step five is evaluation of effect. Basically ask “Did it work?”. Step six is standardization. Now that we’ve worked so hard finding a solution let’s try to use it wherever we can. Step seven is an evaluation of the process. Basically ask yourself or your group “How did we do at solving this problem?”, “What should we do again if we face another problem?”.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 175

Today I did a review.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 174

Today my teacher gave me even more stuff to read.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 173

Today my teacher gave me some reading suggestions and some places to go for further instruction. Several highlights include some tips from Why Didn’t They Teach me this in School? 99 Personal Money Management Principles to live by, by Cary Seigel. Get rich slowly, don’t put your money at great risk to fall for the “get rich quick” scheme. Develop a written budget and evaluate it every month. Save or invest 50% of every salary increase. Which is a great painless way to save because half of your income goes directly to the bank account. Don’t underestimate the cost of ownership. Don’t forget about all the repairs you need to do if you own a house. Purchase last year’s model on high ticket items. For example if you want to buy a fairly new car buy last year’s model, just because it’s last year doesn’t mean it’s that old. Don’t get a credit card until after you leave collage, then only get one. Don’t invest in family or friends. Honestly if your friend isn’t friends with you anymore because you didn’t loan him money, he was never a good friend. Drive your car till it drops. No I don’t mean take your car on a reckless joyride. I mean drive your car till it doesn’t work anymore not until people say the car is too old even though it still drives. My teacher gave me some other reading suggestions.

Grade 8 Personal Finance Lesson 172

Today I learned about retirement savings. Most people in the US don’t have enough money tucked away. Things you shouldn’t do consist of retiring early. Retiring early means less time to save for retirement and more time to rely on those savings. Taking money out of the bank early is a big regret. That dollar compounded over the years will be worth significantly worth more. Depending on Social Security is a big regret as originally saving for retirement was a three legged stool. You have your pension your savings, then social security. Now people are saving significantly less and relying on social security more. Basically when you rely on social security you are relying on the next generation being more prosperous than your generation. And what goes up must come down.