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Money Management Skills Course Guidebook

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Topic
Business
& Economics
Money
Management Skills
Course Guidebook
Professor Michael Finke
Texas Tech University
Subtopic
Economics
PUBLISHED BY:
THE GREAT COURSES
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Phone: 1-800-832-2412
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Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2015
Printed in the United States of America
This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of
The Teaching Company.
Michael Finke, Ph.D.
Professor of Personal Financial Planning
Director of the Retirement Planning
and Living Consortium
Texas Tech University
P
rofessor Michael Finke is a Professor of
Personal Financial Planning and Director
of the Retirement Planning and Living
Consortium at Texas Tech University, where he
leads the doctoral program—considered the premier academic program in
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Professor Finke has authored a number of award-winning research articles
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Professor Finke also has received numerous awards as an instructor of a
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the national press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,
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of such risk may involve but are not limited to federal/state/municipal
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Professor Biography ............................................................................i
Course Scope .....................................................................................1
LECTURE GUIDES
LECTURE 1
Understanding Your Financial Brain ...................................................3
LECTURE 2
Managing Money with Life Cycle Theory..........................................10
LECTURE 3
Basic Investing—Keep It Simple ......................................................16
LECTURE 4
The Key Financial Instruments .........................................................23
LECTURE 5
How to Use Credit Optimally ............................................................30
LECTURE 6
Investing in Education ......................................................................37
LECTURE 7
The Economics of Home Ownership ................................................44
LECTURE 8
Managing Risk with Insurance..........................................................51
LECTURE 9
Essential Tax Principles ....................................................................59
LECTURE 10
Saving for Retirement .......................................................................66
iv
Table of Contents
LECTURE 11
Fundamentals of Estate Planning.....................................................73
LECTURE 12
Putting Your Financial Plan Together................................................80
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Bibliography ......................................................................................88
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Money Management Skills
Scope:
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surprisingly fascinating world of how we manage money throughout our
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us to make common mistakes, review the most important information about
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wrong investments, buy the wrong kinds of insurance, and fail to meet our
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also learn when and why it makes sense to borrow and save and what it
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Within this framework, you will be given the information you need to know
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different accounts to give you the highest possible return for the amount of
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Following a life cycle plan involves understanding our choices for borrowing
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and you will determine whether it makes sense to go into debt to pay for
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The science of risk management explains how we should choose insurance
products that protect against big risks while ignoring some popular products
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federal tax system, along with the various deductibles and exemptions we
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of planning an estate, including options to transferring assets outside of a
will and the legal documents everyone should complete to ensure that we
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will learn the steps involved in putting together a budget that balances future
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will demystify the investment advising business by reviewing the types of
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Understanding Your Financial Brain
Lecture 1
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Financial Decisions and the Brain
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saving for retirement—but not enough to actually do something
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The truth is that the prefrontal cortex we use in conscious decision
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much older part of the brain and takes up much more real estate
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we use most often in
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spending with credit cards or never actually putting money in our
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show that we have a tendency to be very impatient when making
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lights up when you engage in planning for the future, but the limbic
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of a concept known as narrow framing, or simply framing, that
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paycheck into a savings account and then transfer money to the
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a few days to transfer assets to a checking account before you can
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if you force your rational brain to intervene before your limbic
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Loss Aversion
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we dwell on losses? Our best guess is that loss aversion gave our
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many people underperform the market, buy the wrong insurance,
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know that stock prices tend to go through cycles and that the worst
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saw their stock investment climb more than double, to about
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Loss aversion is fascinating because we seem to give a lot more
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small losses are a normal part of taking risk, and we get rewarded
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providing annual statements, which are less likely to show a loss
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averse tendencies, you can achieve a long-term bonus by accepting
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aversion, the prefrontal cortex is also slow and gets tired easily
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tactic—for car salesmen, for example—is to overwhelm the
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make an offer on a house, choose a mortgage, or even agree to buy
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The tendency to focus too much on recent events affects our general
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economic expansion, people tend to be very optimistic about the
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This cyclical optimism and pessimism also impacts the expected
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can be an excellent time to rebalance your portfolio by selling bonds
and buying more stocks—the opposite of what our emotions would
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be a good opportunity to sell stocks and rebalance our portfolio
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choose investments that automatically rebalance and avoid the
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7
Lecture 1: Understanding Your Financial Brain
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is so powerful that it has completely transformed how we think
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resistance, and we often overestimate our future willingness to
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so powerful?
Managing Money with Life Cycle Theory
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this lecture, you might have a completely different perspective about your
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marginal utility assumption says that we get a little less happiness
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of happiness you get from spending in all of your life cycle
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not living in luxury in one life cycle stage while living in poverty in
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spending, then that means that you also have to agree that spending
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Education is an investment. It costs you money, but more education means a
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look a lot different than the earnings path of someone who never
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earnings over their lifetime and divide it by their life expectancy,
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much less than their permanent income—for example, while they
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most sense is to save less early in life, and then to increase your
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Saving and Investments
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toward interest on the loan, but the rest of it goes toward paying
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that reduces our spending now in order to increase spending in the
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time and money in the present in order to increase our earnings in
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off: The wealthy retiree has all that money in the bank now because
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to being emotionally traumatic, life cycle theory says that a sharp
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best strategy is to plan our saving and spending based on the best
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how much we expect to earn over our life cycle, we can estimate
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decrease drastically if something bad happens, such as the death
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buying insurance if it can prevent a large drop in spending from an
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Suggested Reading
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still be recommended that a young family save?
2. Can we ever really know our permanent income, and what should we
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the future?
Basic Investing—Keep It Simple
Lecture 3
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shares of a money-market mutual fund—is what smart investing
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characteristics of investments so that you can decide which investments
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various investments and their basic features, you will be exposed to a way of
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investors need to be compensated for locking up their money,
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a stock or bond today, we expect that in the future it will be worth
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investors historically have received a higher rate of return on their
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they go to spend the money they invested, it could be a lot or a
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amount or the higher amount? This is the essence of a concept
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Suggested Reading
%RJOHThe Little Book of Common Sense Investing
Lecture 3: Basic Investing—Keep It Simple
*UDKDP=ZHLJDQG%XIIHWWThe Intelligent Investor
Questions to Consider
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The Key Financial Instruments
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fund manager, he or she has to pick the right stocks that are already
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that any fund manager can consistently pick the right stocks often
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fund, which spreads your money around the world, including the
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different, because most make interest payments every six months,
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Lecture 4: The Key Financial Instruments
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as a combination of taxable accounts and tax-sheltered accounts,
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The second thing to remember is that if you invest in a bond fund,
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long-term bond funds on average have a higher rate of return over
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most important reason to pay attention to this is because government
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portfolio, you may only need a single fund that invests in both
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and taxes do you need to consider?
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How to Use Credit Optimally
Lecture 5
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also be a temptation that prevents us from reaching our long-term
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consumer credit system works, but is also means being aware of our own
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trouble dealing with credit, along with how to get the most out of borrowing
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Lecture 5: How to Use Credit Optimally
Credit Cards
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charging you interest in the outstanding balance of your credit card
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interchange fee is about two percent of every charge you make, and
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a dollar per day on interchange fees, and that money shows up in
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These can include a cash percentage of each transaction paid back
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It’s certainly easy to swipe a credit card to buy goods, but you can get into
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habit of carrying a credit card balance, we often think that at some
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things that tempted us yesterday and fall into the same spending
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yourself to one or two credit cards, and ask your bank to reduce the
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One method for reducing unnecessary spending is to make each
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goods and are better able to imagine the other things they could
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much more likely to dig yourself out of the debt hole by working
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balances, paying in cash, sleeping on a big purchase, and avoiding
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the money and when you pay it back, and your checking account
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the growth in debit card use is its popularity among those with bad
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also provide a means for those with self-control problems to dig
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off a credit card balance in full every month, then a debit card gives
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amount of money that you borrow, and you chip away at it over
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as your stake in the car, or the percentage of the car that belongs to
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Lecture 5: How to Use Credit Optimally
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Occasionally, you can get a very low rate that is subsidized by the
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often get a lower interest rate by paying off the car in three years
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is often higher than the price they could have gotten from shopping
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about shopping around for the best price and the best loan terms can
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The second mistake people make is to focus only on the car
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some idea of the loan terms you can get from a bank, including the
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allows you to make a lower payment that only covers the expected
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few years and suffering most of the depreciation, and then handing
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Credit Score
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to get a competitive interest rate on a car loan or a credit card is
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in a good credit score can pay off by reducing loan and insurance
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three free credit reports is that there are three primary credit-reporting
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does borrowing make sense?
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which a borrower with a lower credit score is worse off than a borrower
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Investing in Education
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The Education Payoff
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more important than where you go to college in predicting future
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of these skills help not only in our work productivity but also in
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Planning and Saving for Education
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and fees deduction will allow you to reduce your income by up
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The Coverdell education savings account allows a smaller annual
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advantage of Coverdell accounts is for precollege education, and
the only tax advantage is sheltering from investment taxes over
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Federal Student Loans
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eligibility for grants such as Pell grants, but these are primarily for
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Rates of interest are slightly lower for undergraduate debt and
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amounts increase by a few thousand dollars for students in later
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lower amount and increase every two years for students whose
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Suggested Reading
7KH&ROOHJH%RDUGGetting Financial Aid 2015
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———, The Race between Education and Technology
Questions to Consider
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investment, what are the payoffs, and what is the risk?
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the parents and for the children?
The Economics of Home Ownership
Lecture 7
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Lecture 7: The Economics of Home Ownership
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expensive to keep and maintain, it costs a lot to sell them, and we make
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the basics of housing, including getting and understanding a mortgage,
shopping around for a house, paying property taxes, and why homeowners
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Buying a House
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places you in different locations every two or three years, then
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expensive houses tend to be bigger but also tend to have more
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rates, better schools, less noise, and other positive neighborhood
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The two most important factors you may underestimate are number
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in control of your environment—a concept known as locus of
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There is a general tendency to underestimate the additional costs
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Home Financing
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The practice of establishing and maintaining a credit history in
order to maximize your credit score becomes very important when
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you receive on a mortgage, and a higher interest rate will affect how
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needs to be under a certain percentage of your total income—for
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Lecture 7: The Economics of Home Ownership
When buying a house, you need enough money for a down payment, which
should be at least 20 percent of the price of the house.
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percent down payment on a home—repaid by setting up regular,
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The front-end ratio only considers your income and housing
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mortgage rate, mainly because they know the system and shop
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surprised at how much mortgage rates vary from the cheapest to the
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when you look up mortgage rates online, make sure you sort and
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Lecture 7: The Economics of Home Ownership
When and Why to Buy a House
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for a while keeps you more mobile and saves you thousands of
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tax is an expense that is, in a way, very much like a rental payment
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a home is much more expensive because you have much more to
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When you borrow money using a mortgage, you gradually pay
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Why might you still buy a house, despite all of the costs? There
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Research shows greater life satisfaction among owners as compared
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The second good reason is that the home is a powerful savings
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wants us to own, so they provide some incentives that renters
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sheet as the difference between the market value and the mortgage
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a lot of low-interest borrowing, but they can also drain one of the
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more debt than you can repay—and this leads a homeowner down
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Suggested Reading
%UD\6FKURHGHUDQG6WHZDUWNolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home
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Questions to Consider
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Managing Risk with Insurance
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Insurance
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experience a loss after a recent disaster than we were before the
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control your emotions after a loss, then you will be wealthier
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house, this will have a big impact on your happiness because your
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the insurance premium in order to avoid a big loss from an
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When to Buy Insurance
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create a risk retention limit, which is a dollar amount below which
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This limit should be based on your wealth and your ability to cover
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The average cost of most insurance is the difference between
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deductibles is to ensure that you have some incentive to avoid a
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which occurs when people behave a little more carelessly when
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skin in the game through a deductible, insurance companies can
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might be able to save a lot on your insurance premium by choosing
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Life Insurance
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a household—because the purpose is to replace their ability to
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Term life insurance, or life insurance that provides coverage for a
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It is important to have life insurance because it protects your family in the event
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Lecture 8: Managing Risk with Insurance
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Many employees have the option to buy group term life insurance
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Whole life insurance is meant to provide coverage for your whole
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early in life, your premiums for the same amount of coverage will
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whole life insurance get more expensive because your risk of dying
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type of whole life product—there are many different names for
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Disability Insurance
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that many people who think they might become disabled buy the
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the insurance buyer knows more about their true risk of loss than the
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to sign up for group disability, but if you have the option, then you
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over time have a deductible feature known as an elimination period,
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Lecture 8: Managing Risk with Insurance
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important insurance product that covers not only the value of
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means that it covers losses from any cause other than those
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in the house after an incident, living expenses are covered up to 20
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value of your old electronics and furniture, not what they cost when
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take a video of all the stuff in your house so that you have evidence
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Car Insurance
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When you buy umbrella insurance, your insurer will make you get
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limit when deciding whether to buy coverage and maximize your
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Lecture 8: Managing Risk with Insurance
they be attracted to insurance that is least valuable according to a life
cycle framework?
Essential Tax Principles
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it makes up about half of all federal revenue and is used to calculate state
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Federal Taxes
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the taxes the federal government receives through the income tax
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you have a hobby or online side business that produces income, you
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calculating the amount of income we use to estimate federal income
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starting to phase out deductions and exemptions for high-income
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money you earn above the most basic living expenses, so it will
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standard deduction of about 6,000 dollars for a single person and
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Lecture 9: Essential Tax Principles
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taxes have a tendency to creep upward over time at a faster rate
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Saving for Retirement
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about why we want to retire, what a good retirement age is, and what we
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how much money you will need in retirement and how to invest to reach
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Retirement
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saving too little or investing badly, or we can make it better by
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words, how much of your preretirement income do you want to
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saving for retirement until later in life.
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may also be spending money on your children today that hopefully
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Lecture 10: Saving for Retirement
How Much Money Will You Need?
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of funds that most people draw on in retirement: investments
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rule, which is based on research that estimates a safe withdrawal
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studies, a retiree can withdraw about four percent of his or her
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Questions to Consider
1. What impact do government tax incentives for retirement planning have
on life cycle savings and spending?
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Fundamentals of Estate Planning
Lecture 11
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few important facts that you need to know in order to make sure that
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relatives get your money—and who those relatives are can be
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Personal representatives, or executors, are generally paid about one
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over your assets by appointing yourself the trustee—that is, the
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Lecture 11: Fundamentals of Estate Planning
76
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Many have criticized the use of living trusts because they can
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the surviving spouse or heirs have extensive investment experience,
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state has a form that lets you transfer responsibility for your care to
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guardianship of your children in case you pass away before they
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Estate Taxes
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dies and does not fully utilize his or her applicable credit amount,
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for someone directly to the institutions providing those services
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Lecture 11: Fundamentals of Estate Planning
Advanced Medical Directive Documents
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accounts while you are sick, applying for insurance, and making
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Suggested Reading
Clifford, Estate Planning Basics
Dalton, Estate Planning for Financial Planners
Questions to Consider
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arguments for and against the estate tax, and explain how the existence
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Putting Your Financial Plan Together
Lecture 12
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Lecture 12: Putting Your Financial Plan Together
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bank that pays a decent interest rate and create named savings
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at their current net market value, sorted into three categories:
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needs, investment assets whose primary purpose is to fund future
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between short-term liabilities that can be paid off within the next
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much would the loss of an asset affect your overall wealth?
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when you might be tempted to take more risk, you simply follow
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many decisions that result in losses from bad investing, expensive
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the broker makes recommendations that meet a suitability standard,
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they are often packaged with investment advice, which most people
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advisors are more likely to prefer passive investments, for example,
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Suggested Reading
*DUPDQDQG)RUJXHPersonal Finance
/\WWRQ*UDEOHDQG.ORFNThe Process of Financial Planning
Questions to Consider
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3. What would the medical profession look like if doctors were paid by
medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies?
Bibliography
$PHULFDQ %DU $VVRFLDWLRQ Family Legal Guide &KDSWHU &RQVXPHU
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(YDOXDWLRQ´Journal of Economic PerspectivesQR ±
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of the Economics of Finance(GLWHGE\*&RQVWDQWLQLGLV0+DUULVDQG5
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6WDWHV´1%(5:RUNLQJ3DSHU %RJOH-&The Little Book of Common Sense Investing+RERNHQ:LOH\
%UD\ ,$ 6FKURHGHU DQG 0 6WHZDUW Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying
Your First Home%HUNHOH\1ROR
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DQG6DYLQJ´Journal of Economic PerspectivesQR ±
Bibliography
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&OLIIRUG'Estate Planning Basics%HUNHOH\1ROR
&RFKUDQH - ³1HZ )DFWV LQ )LQDQFH´ Economic Perspectives QR ±
&XWOHU'0DQG5=HFNKDXVHU³([WHQGLQJWKH7KHRU\WR0HHWWKH3UDFWLFH
RI ,QVXUDQFH´ Brookings-Wharton Papers on Financial Services $YDLODEOH DW KWWSVFKRODUKDUYDUGHGX¿OHVFXWOHU¿OHVFXWOHUB]HFNKDXVHUB
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