Finance is a field that studies the dynamics of investment. So why should that matter to you? If investment is supposed to garner future profits and results, then truly finance in its simplest terms is a way to build more time for yourself.
If you are working for $10 an hour, one hour of your life is stored in that piece of paper. You have a few choices you can make with that $10. You can hold it until the weekend to head to the bars to buy one drink plus tip, you can save it in your bank account for future use, or you can invest it.
Each one of those options depends on personal goals and personality. Do you want to spend, save, or create? Most have a goal in life, whether that is to have a family, retire early, build a business and be your own boss, or just simply be a millionaire.
These goals require wealth creation (storing time). For the family example, on average it costs $243,660 to raise a kid from ages birth to 18 before university. Even working for $30 an hour, that’s 8,122 hours of your life that you could have spent otherwise. If you understand even the basics of finance and investment you can create more wealth, therefore more time that you can spend with your family.
If you decide that you want to start your own business in five years after you’ve finished your degree. You could start to invest that initial money now, enabling you to spend more time on your priorities in the future and spend less time worrying about how to finance your start-up. If you have plans to retire early and travel the world, investing today can result in a larger future value, possibly letting you retire at 50 instead of at 65. The possibilities are endless when you understand how to create more time for yourself!
One stigma that is attached with investing and the finance world is that we only do what we do for our greed of money. But in fact for the most part, we educate and practice this skill to give us more time to spend with the important people in our lives, do the things we love, or create what we believe in.
– Ryley Hughes, Investment Club of NAIT
