I am a curious, fairly astute individual. I am 27 years old, college educated and earn pretty decent money. Yet I don’t really understand money at all. Well, at least I didn’t. I’m taking the current financial crisis as an opportunity to understand money as a concept. A nod to my good friend Fil Fortes, as most of the info in this post was passed to me by him. I’ve said it before, but the best two hours you can spend on understanding what is going on is by listening to two This American Life episodes:
A Giant Pool of Money
Another Frightening Show About The Economy
In that order. Really. Just do it. You will start feeling less lost when people talk about the economy, and you’ll feel better about really understanding the capitalistic world we live in. Besides, it’s told as a story, with real people and real interviews… and anyone can understand it. I would offer my copies, but it’s only a few bucks, and NPR is a great organization that you should support. And if you pay for them, you’ll probably actually listen to them.
If you want to dig deeper (not mandatory at all), I recommend the NPR Planet Money Podcast and Blog. It’s free and I’m obsessed with listening to every episode to keep up to date on what’s happening. While you’re at it, the 5 minute 7am and 7pm EST summaries on today’s news by NPR are pretty great too.
Anyhow, my other tools to understanding money are on a more personal finance basis. I’ve never been too spend thrifty, so saving money has never been a problem, but I definitely feel like I could do better on my investments, and could understand my options better.
Currently, I’m reading “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” by Burton G. Malkiel. My other tool is Mint.com, which if you are not using, you should. It’s essentially like Microsoft Money, or Quicken, except easier to use and understand, and it’s all online. It really is fantastic.
So anyhow, I’m well on my way to understanding money. I invite you to come along for the ride and stop being scared of money and investing and the financial crisis. Unlike the hard math problems you never understood in math class, this stuff is pretty simple, it’s just full of jargon.
So that’s what I’m doing to understand the world we’re now living in. Are you trying as well? Let me know what tools/articles/books you are using.
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