Say What Wednesdays
Where to start when you don’t know where to start; financial literacy in an age of information overload
Welcome to Say What Wednesday – Today’s episode is a special one! Plus there’s a bit of an announcement at the end.
This all started with a question I asked myself a few years ago. The question is: How can I increase the financial literary of Australians?
The Back Story
- Started reading books about investing at age 12, played the ASX School Share Market Game as well
- Started investing at 16 years old, just before finishing school
- Went to Uni and did Commerce and Economics degrees
- Started in financial planning after graduating and never looked back
- I had a lot of financial knowledge, but my clients didn’t (which is why they were coming for advice!)
- I had a ‘Eureka!’ moment – most of the initial meetings I was having with clients was spent simply educating them on a few of the same basic principles. Teaching people was 60% of the job.
- Previously I hadn’t thought too much about the fact that people didn’t have the same background or exposure to finance as me;
- I was pretty naive starting out – I assumed everyone would know at least the basics
- But learned that financial education is lacking – it’s not taught at school or anywhere else in life unless you specifically seek out the education yourself
Education / Literacy
- You learn physics and chemistry and how to dissect poetry – but most people never use it again
- The point, I thought, of an education is to equip you to earn an income later in life.
- From there, people go into trades or go to Uni, but never learn what to do with their money
- What are your options then?
- You either learn as you go – make some mistakes along the way
- Someone does it for you
- Or someone teaches you
There is plenty of information out there – But this comes with a few problems
- Scatter gun approach to information / Information overload – where do you start?
- No structured order to the internet in most cases
- You don’t know what you don’t know – hard to search online unless you know what you are looking for
- Most top-ranking searches are from the media / money making institutions – selling something, not providing education – a shiny quick fix
Creating a Solution
- In 2014 I decided to do something about this problem
- First step was to see where I could teach
- Contacted the course coordinator from a community education provider, we met and they liked the idea
- I locked myself away and started from scratch – I went back to the basics and thought about what information I would need if I was starting from day 1 all over again.
- The end result was a 6-week course that I taught each semester for 2 hours a week, Wednesdays 7pm to 9pm.
- Really enjoyed this, but it was limited in scope – plus people’s lives are busy and 7-9pm on a Wednesday night is a big commitment
- Lots of people wanted to take the course – but couldn’t make it
An evolution
- After 2 years of teaching I had another eureka moment – almost the same time as Jayden and I started The Rentvesting Podcast
- Why not put it online? You can do it your own time and there’s unlimited scope and online tools to use as well
- So, over the past few months been putting it together in an online package – not restricted by school terms and 2-hour time slots and condenses all the information into modules that flow in a sequential order
- The content ended up growing into 24 hours’ worth of lectures over 12 modules – I was running into same problem as before – information overload. Plus – there was so much information in there it was hard to get through.
- So, after some initial feedback I scaled it back to just the essentials
The Announcement
- Lectures recorded for the essential finance course – gone from 24 hours to 7 hours of lectures
- To be completed through an online portal – go at your own pace
- Tools for each module and quizzes – no point learning if you can’t apply it.
What the course covers – 8 Modules
- Financial independence and goals
- Basics – Income, taxes, balance sheets, budgeting
- Basic economics – Supply and Demand – Important for price of investments
- Investment theory – Risk returns and diversification
- Investment Basics – Different asset classes – How shares work, bonds, etc and asset allocation
- Structures – where you can hold investments – Family trusts, super
- Strategies – Focus on how to build wealth and reduce tax
- Risk management – Long term plans need contingency – Investment risks and personal risks
For those who are interested go to https://financeandfury.com.au/learn-finance/
- Or just get to our website financeandfury.com.au, select ‘Learn Finance’ from the main menu, then scroll down to the bottom of the page to register your interest
- We are already getting a list of people together to contact when the course goes live – this course is only being released to podcast listeners
- Further details soon
Thanks for listening!