Clark's Spot

Do you know where your money is?

I spent the past week starting training at a financial services company. Most of the 30-plus people going through training will be performing some version of customer service, and comprise a cross section of the area. The training began with an overview of the industry, and one of the interesting parts of the training was watching the questions that were asked of the trainers.

I remember being taught how to figure interest while in high school math. Reflecting on my memories, I remember the senior seminar teacher was much more concerned with teaching us how to write checks and balance and checkbook. Beyond teaching us where to sign our names, write the date, and how to make out a check, the focus on personal finance lessons in my school was an emphatic dictum to read everything in a mortgage agreement carefully. That may not have been much of a waste – high school students may not be ready to really learn personal finance.

It’s scary to realize how many people struggled to figure out how to compute interest. I was surprised that there were both younger people and older people who didn’t seem to understand the concept. It made me wonder what people actually know about personal finance. I turned to the Internet and spent a few minutes searching Google and Bing to see what turned up. I was looking for a study that showed how much people know about personal finance. Maybe I was using the wrong keywords, but the closest that I came were the studies that show that people aren’t saving enough money for retirement. (I wanted personal finance studies – you won’t have enough money to spend at an age that you may never reach stories. I believe it’s important to save for retirement, I just think it’s difficult to understand what standard of living I’ll expect, what my living situation will be, and what will happen with tax rates, inflation rates, etc.

More interesting was the people who offered their personal finances to the world on their blogs. It’s an interesting idea, but one I don’t expect to do. Perhaps I’ll keep reading their blogs for an idea of what people in the world know about the money they spend and save.

Image is Creative Commons licensed content from Flick’s borman818.

I’ve finished my graduate degree, and I’ve started a new challenge. I’m sure I’ll continue to learn more about my new position in the coming weeks and months – 6 weeks of training start next week. I’ve been able to help out so far by watching some editing and asking a few questions about style, grammar, and jargon. It’s a great way to learn.

In the meantime, Franchise and I have welcomed a new member to the family – an HP laptop. My files have been migrated and I’m doggedly pursuing one of my New Year’s resolutions – being more organized – by getting rid of duplicates and unnecessary files. Once that’s wrapped up, you’ll see me on here a lot more.