Escalante 1

Reflection

Money makes the world go round, from funding huge projects like the Apollo Mission

back in 1969 to just buying a cheeseburger for lunch. A constantly changing and ever evolving

system, money is a truly interesting tool in that it only has as much power as its owner, allowing

the financially intelligent to flourish and the financially reckless to fall.

Moving past the whimsy of it all, money really is the root of most endeavors, and

knowing how to use that to your advantage is pivotal to one’s success. That’s what was

reaffirmed to me after this module. Of course, the biggest takeaway of this module came from

the “group” project so we’ll talk about that at the end.

The exercises and skill quizzes really show how complicated a thing like interest can be,

containing the most complex formulas we’ve had in this class since we started back in January. It

stresses how important interest is and how damning it can be to not account for it, because even

lower rates like 3% or 4% can really build up if you let it do so, as is the very nature of

exponential formulas. It also stresses the importance of savings accounts and Certificate Deposits

(CD’s) because even when being fiscally responsible and saving money, you can still be making

huge mistakes if you don’t save it the right way especially because of interest. When people hear

the word interest, they immediately think of money loss as the first thing that popped to their

mind is usually something along the line of a loan or credit card. But that’s the thing about

interest: It’s a double-edged sword. You have the same capacity to earn interest, that being

through savings/CD. That also means it’s up to you to make sure your money is accruing the best

possible interest it can get, which means research into banks, credit unions, and other means of

saving.
 Escalante 2

The group project itself stresses the importance of home buying, as it literally has us do

the math between someone who gets a loan and someone who rents. The biggest difference

between the two is that at the end of the day, the home buyer had assets from her investment,

while the renter had nothing. That again goes back to the concept of saving. Betty spent more

initially but at the end of it, she had more money in the long run because of interest! That’s the

money game, and it goes a long way to prove the old adage of “You have to spend money to

make money.”