After a while, you’re going to uncover 11 personal finance terms that they never teach you at school.
The question is,
why don’t they teach these finance terms?
Also, did your parents talk to you about finance at an early age?
The truth is,
money topic has always been sensitive in my family.
And I heard the only conversation about it when there wasn’t enough or dozens of money myths.
Whether you are a teenager watching this video or a financial expert, you may agree with me on two things.
Firstly, knowing fundamental personal finance terms and concepts is the first action towards financial literacy.
And secondly, financial literacy affects your financial health, which is a crucial part of 7 Wealth Stages.
That means, applying these basic personal finance terms in your life will help you move toward your financial goals.
And later on, exploring even more sophisticated personal finance key terms will help you build and control your wealth.
So no more excuses…
Introduction to 11 Personal Finance Terms To Know
Generally, let me test you with two basic questions.
- What does your financial literacy vocabulary look like?
- Could you clearly define what’s an emergency fund or diversification?
It might sound for some of you like a foreign language, but these terms are important to learn.
In the first place, the best place to get started is a book called How Money Works.
But for now, I’m going to talk about 11 essential personal finance terms you must know to dominate your financial literacy.
With this in mind, ready to get started?
1. Income
I know Doers, it might sound outrageous to start with income.
But listen:
Sounds this familiar to you?
But income isn’t just trading your valuable time for money.
It may come from many sources such as:
- Investments,
- selling goods,
- services,
- or even royalty and licensing revenue income.
Meanwhile, I recommend studying all sources of income in-depth at your young age and build as many as possible one by one.
2. Current Or Checking Account
When you get income, you don’t want to stuff it under a mattress, do you?
For that reason, you need to open a checking account which is simply a deposit account in your local bank.
On the other hand, the disadvantage is, it doesn’t earn usually any interest.
Also, you can open a checking account online but for better financial practice, I’d recommend going directly to the bank and understand the language they use.
And who knows, you might love that and end up working later as a banker or real estate investor buying the entire building and rent it to the bank.
3. Savings Account
Besides your checking account, the second step is usually to open a savings account.
It’s coming with better benefits which are the interest rates.
After all, it means, when you deposit money into a savings account, you earn a small amount of interest on your balance.
But this interest is very low and you should compare savings account across your country where you live as it varies significantly.
So I recommend accumulating an emergency fund in your savings account, which I will discuss later in this article.
4. Simple Interest
In terms of saving, you can encounter interest in your savings account or time deposits account.
In terms of lending, you might be paying interest on a loan principle while borrowing money from lenders such as banks.
But let’s talk about simple interest in your savings account.
In other words, it means that your bank is paying you for settling your money in the bank.
On the other hand, you can also earn interest when you lend money to someone else such as a private company, government, or individuals.
5. Compound Interest
To emphasize,
Because it simply means you earn “interest on interest” on your initial balance.
The best part?
It grows and grows year after year as long as you keep the money in your account.
6. Pay Yourself First
Look,
I can’t emphasize more how important is to establish a PYF habit or pay yourself first.
Simply said,
PYF is a strategy in which you prioritize to make payment first to yourself.
Such as building an emergency fund, budgeting, investment before all your expenses.
And I want to mention here very important takeaway:
Does it make sense?
7. Emergency Fund
Speaking of an emergency fund, this is a specific amount of money you need to put aside to sleep well.
I heard terms such as SWAN account which means Sleep Well At Night.
And when you think about it intensely, you realize that…
Because anytime unexpected occasions happen in our lives and to have an emergency fund is true peace of mind.
8. Budget
When you were young, you were planning the budget to buy some candies or ice hockey team cards of your favorite hockey club.
Am I right?
But no one has taught you at school to budget efficiently once you get into the rat race and start earning income.
They didn’t teach you budgeting for your monthly necessary expenses such as:
- Rent or mortgage,
- food,
- utilities,
- and transportation.
And especially they didn’t teach you that…
Speaking of financial commitment it might be a very urgent budget such as forthcoming expected medical expenses or paying taxes.
And speaking of financial goals, it might be budgeting your down payment for your first or other investment property.
The big lesson here:
I hope this makes a lot more sense for you why is important to accumulate assets first.
Because it leads me to the ninth out of eleven personal finance terms…
9. Investment
Here is the truth:
To point out, what do I mean by nest egg?
At this point, it’s about to accumulate a certain amount of money to live off of your savings and investments.
And after you reach this amount, you won’t need to work anymore.
I know it sounds simple, but this is a deep topic to speak about.
So how do you achieve to build such a nest egg?
The answer is – investing.
But one thing must be remembered…
Make sure to scrutinize these 7 critical steps before you invest.
And after that, you can choose from diverse types of investments such as:
- Short-term,
- long-term,
- liquid,
- illiquid, and so on.
However, to speed up the process, the best is an investment that provides monthly cash flow which can then replace your trading time for money.
10. Asset
Undoubtedly,
Put it simply,
these assets allow you to convert into cash.
But how fast it depends if the asset is liquid or illiquid.
To give you quick basic examples of assets to invest in:
- Liquid assets such as individual stocks.
- Next, applying a dollar-cost averaging strategy with low-cost index fund S&P 500 or other ETF index funds.
- For the long term assets such as real estate.
- Or illiquid assets may be investing in the private market such as startups.
- Furthermore, it could be commodities such as gold or silver and a piece of art.
- Another type of asset can be intellectual properties which are patents, copyrights, or any form of creativity.
You see, there are many options to choose from.
And finally…
11. Diversification
When I read a book by Tony Robbins called MONEY: Master The Game, in my mind has been always the paragraph which I’m going to quote:
"There are only three tools for reducing your risk and increasing your potential for financial success: 1. Security selection 2. Market timing 3. Asset allocation Overwhelmingly the most important of the three is asset allocation”
And this is a core principle of investing.
So I recommend learning from the best people such as Ray Dalio which runs the largest hedge fund in the world.
After all, you will understand how ultra-rich wealthy people invest their money.
With this purpose in mind, learn from the master and reduce overall risks.
Time To Take Massive Action
To conclude this blog post,
I discussed the basic information within 11 personal finance terms.
Because understanding financial vocabulary is an essential part of financial literacy and developing practical money skills.
And sometimes I’m shocked when I talk to people and they don’t know what asset allocation is.
My question is,
- What have you learned today?
- Has this video provided value for you?
- Are you going to invest your time in learning?
Because you know the purpose of this channel…
I want you to become a Doer.
Put in a comment below the word “Diversification” to confirm you are a loyal Doer.
I’m looking forward to your comments and I’ll see you in the next video or on our website.
