Introduction to Personal Finance:

Beginning Your Financial Journey

Chapter 1
Beginning Your Financial Journey:
The Interior Finance
Point of View
Chapter Outline
LO 1 Describe how your financial knowledge,
experience, risk tolerance, and feelings of control
influence the way you view the financial world.
LO 2 Explain how your human and social capital relate to
your financial well-being.
LO 3 Discuss how financial risk tolerance relates to
financial goal achievement.
Chapter Outline
LO 4 Identify how time perspective influences goals and
decision making and create goals for your financial
journey.
LO 5 Describe strategies to overcome mental biases and
improve financial decision making and well-being.
 Financial Literacy
Discussion:
What does the term financial literacy mean to you?

Our textbook definition:

Financial literacy is how well you can understand and use
personal finance-related information.

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 Internal View of the Financial World
• Financial knowledge
• Financial risk tolerance
• Feelings of control

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 Concepts
Financial knowledge is the ability to understand personal
finance Information.

Financial risk tolerance is your willingness to engage in

financial endeavors that have uncertain outcomes.

Feelings of control reflects the amount of control you feel

you have when making financial decisions.

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 Life’s Journey is Costly

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 The Journey to Financial Well-Being
Key action items:
1. Keep good records
2. Spend less than you earn
3. Maintain appropriate insurance
4. Save money on a regular basis

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 Discussion
Think of one or two people that you would consider
financially successful: friends, family members, or those
who are famous.

Do you think that their financial success was obtained

through their own or their family’s work and effort, or
purely by chance, fate, or luck?

Why or why not?

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 Human Capital: An Essential Element of
Financial Well-Being
Human capital is your ability and willingness to work,
learn, earn, and make wise decisions about how to save
and invest money.
Social capital is how well you are able to form
connections with other people.

In this topic, we discuss how you can optimize your

human and social capital to help you increase your
financial well-being and achieve your financial goals.

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 Your Education and Earnings
Your earnings are an indicator of the value of your human
capital in the labor market and are closely related to your
level of formal education

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LO 2 Copyright ©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 12
 Investment Payback Period
Payback Period = Total Costs
Increase in Annual Income

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 Other Influences
In addition to formal education, other resources also
increase your human capital:

• Your health
• Your willingness to relocate for higher-paying job
markets
• Continuing professional education and skill
development

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 The Relationship Between Human
Capital and Financial Wealth

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 Social Capital
Unlike human capital, social capital is not found in
individuals themselves but rather in the space between
individuals, or the network of connections among people.

Informal networks are the interpersonal relationships

you form with your family and close friends.
Formal networks connect you with people in
professional, recreational, leisure, and social
communities.

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 Concepts in Action
Nedra is 33 years old. She completed her high school
equivalency diploma (GED) and is interested in going back
to college to obtain an associate’s degree, which will take
2 years.
Nedra currently earns $24,000 but will cut back to half-
time while in school. She’ll use student loans to fund
college costs, which she estimates to be $8,000 per year.
Finally, Nedra believes she can increase her income by
$8,000 per year after graduation.
Using the Investment Payback Period Table to make your
estimates, what is Nedra’s investment payback period?
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 Solution

$24,000
0
$16,000
$40,000
$ 8,000
5 Years

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 Financial Risk Tolerance and
Financial Goal Achievement
Risk-taking refers to doing something that involves the
possibility of a gain or a loss.
Risk is the uncertainty associated with any physical,
social, emotional, environmental, labor market, or
financial activity.

For those interested in accumulating wealth over their

life, being willing to take calculated financial risks will be
essential in reaching financial goals.

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 Financial Risk Tolerance
Financial risk tolerance refers to your willingness to
engage in a behavior that entails the possibility of a
financial loss.
If asked, “Are you willing to invest money in the stock
market?” your answer will indicate your financial risk
tolerance.
If you say, “Of course, I am willing to do that,” your risk
tolerance is greater than someone who says, “No way,
the stock market is too risky.”

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 Life is full of trade-offs.

In financial markets, the

only way to accumulate a
certain level of wealth is to
take informed financial
risks with your savings.

Financial Risk Tolerance and Wealth Accumulation

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 Discussion
Conduct an Internet search using the phrase “Rutgers
Risk Quiz.” Take the free risk tolerance questionnaire at
this site, making sure to answer all questions honestly
based on your current situation.

When you finish the questionnaire, you’ll receive a risk

score. How accurate is the score in your opinion?

Talk to others in class about the accuracy of their risk

scores.
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 Financial Goals and Time Perspective
Setting SMART Financial Goals
Specific: Document the when, what, where, and how aspects
of the goal
Measurable: Attach a quantifiable standard for achieving the
goal
Attainable: Be realistic about whether you can achieve the
goal
Relevant: Develop those financial goals that are crucial to
improving your financial situation
Timely: Create a goal you can meet in a reasonable amount of
time
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 SMART Goals

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 Long-Term vs. Short-Term Goals
Long-term goals represent a big-picture idea of where
you want to be financially.
Short-term goals and daily tasks represent the
immediate actions needed to reach long-term goals.

Sometimes these tasks are called financial objectives

• things that need to happen along the way toward
reaching a financial goal

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 Goal Time Horizon
Match your financial goals with a realistic goal time horizon,
the time between creating a goal and achieving the goal.

Let’s say that you want to buy a car

• You have $1,000 saved, but you need an additional $3,000
• If you give yourself 2 years to save the money, then your
goal time horizon is 2 years

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 Psychological Time Perspective
Past-oriented: based on memories, whether good or bad
Present-oriented: based on
a hedonistic perspective (doing things for pleasure,
the experience, and excitement of the action)
OR
a fatalistic perspective (unable to visualize a
meaningful future)
Future-oriented: based on a calculation of the
consequences of actions in terms of a future payoff

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 The Marshmallow Experiment
Imagine a young child sitting alone in a room. A plate sits
empty on a table.
The door opens and a lady walks into the room. She is
holding a marshmallow.
As she places the marshmallow on the plate, she tells the
child, “Here is a marshmallow. You may eat this now, but
if you can wait until I get back and not eat the
marshmallow until then, I will bring you another one and
you can have both.”
The lady then leaves the room. What do you think might
happen?
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 Maintaining Commitment to Your Goals
Commitment and motivation to follow through on plans
is essential to accomplishing goals.

There are two ways to increase the importance of a goal:

1. External factors:
Financial bonuses if you reach your goal
Sharing your goal with others (in person or via social media)
2. Internal factors:
Self-improvement
Visualizing attainment of your goal

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 Self-Efficacy
Psychologists refer to self-efficacy as how well you
believe you can do something.

Tips to help you believe that you can achieve your goals:
• Break complex goals into objectives and tasks
• Focus on things that you can control
• Recognize small achievements along the way

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 Discussion
“I want to retire with $1,000,000 in the bank” represents
what element(s) of a SMART goal?

a. Specific
b. Attainable.
c. Realistic.
d. All of the above

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 Psychology and Financial Well-Being
Planning for the future is essential to achieving short-,
intermediate-, and long-term financial goals.
Procrastination is placing more value on the present at
the expense of the future.
Hyperbolic discounting occurs when the value of future
benefits is perceived to be lower than that of an
alternative available right now.

Can you think of any procrastination examples?

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 Procrastination

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 Example in the Personal Finance World

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 Heuristics
Our minds use heuristics to make decisions more quickly
and easily than if we were to labor over every choice.

Heuristics are
• Based on past experiences
• Automatic and rarely used with forethought
• Can help you make quick decisions, however, they
sometimes lead to problematic choices and outcomes

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 Status Quo Bias
Status quo bias is a personal preference for keeping
things the same.

• Overemphasizes the good aspects of a current situation

• Underestimates the benefits that come from making a
change
• Creates fear of making a wrong decision regarding a new
situation

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 Loss Aversion
Most people dislike losing, especially money. In other
words, people tend to be loss-averse.

People generally focus much of their attention on

avoiding losses because the joy of a gain is smothered by
the pain of a loss.

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 Optimism Bias
Some people think that they will rarely, if ever,
experience painful losses during their lifetime. These
people suffer from an optimism bias.

While being optimistic is good, it may blind you to reality

• Being overly optimistic can lead some people to
discount the risks associated with a decision

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 Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias leads to overconfidence in future
decisions.

Let’s say your friend buys stock in a company without any

research.
If the stock price rises, your friend may attribute
success to skill rather than luck and therefore be
overconfident in picking stocks.

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Using Heuristics: a Decision-Making Tool

1. Identify the problem or issue

2. Gather appropriate facts and data about the situation
3. Analyze the data you have collected
4. List the viable alternatives and select the best one
5. Implement the decision
6. Monitor outcomes

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LO 5 Copyright ©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 42
 Discussion
Match the following terms with the definition

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Copyright
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Copyright ©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 44