Thought 54: Finances and Exhibition 💵

How do I support my career life choices?

Welcome to the second and final blog post for PGP 10. For this half of the course, we focused on how we can support the career life choices we made earlier.

The first thing we did was a simulation game called The Uber Game. The Uber Game is a short game were you play as an Uber driver and make choices to make enough money to pay your mortgage. I actually really liked this game and I played through it 3 times, each with different goals. First, I tried to make as much money as possible, with no prior research. I ended up doing ok, I didn’t get enough money to pay my rent, but I got close. One of the most interesting choices the game presents you with is when your son needs help with his homework, but you need to keep working to make money. I decided to keep working, but I only made an extra $19. I betrayed my son for $19. The second time I did the game, I tried to make the opposite of the choices I made last time. I did less good this time, only making $700 (you need $1000 to win.) The third time I played was just for fun. I tried to see how much money I could lose, and I think I won in that case. I ended up being $600 poorer than when I started. I guess me and my 2 sons are going to be evicted.

The next task was to start tracking our expenses. We learned the differences between fixed and variable expenses and tracking our expenses month to month. I came to the scary conclusion that I am spending too much and not earning enough. This was a very helpful assignment. We also started planning for future expenses, like tuition, rent, groceries, and cell phone bills. This was a pretty depressing task and I have really got to get my money up.

After spending, we learned about earning. We researched gross and net income, taxes, and other deductions. We already talked about this in my math class, so I was already familiar with all of these.

We then started learning about Financial Literacy. We took a quiz to see if we were financially literate, and it said I’m on the right track. We also watched 2 pieces of content to learn about financial literacy. First was a TEDx talk about Financial Literacy and Social Media, and the second was the film Moneyball. Mr Harris was taking suggestions for movies we could watch about the topic, and I suggested The Big Short, because I hadn’t seen Moneyball and its more focused on finance, but it was fine because I ended up thinking that Moneyball is an amazing movie.

While we were working on these assignments, we also had a long term sub-project: A Stock Market Simulation. We started this by just learning about the stock market and terms used. Then we got the simulation app, which is a buggy mess, and then Mr Harris issued a challenge: The person who made the most money would win a $25 gift card of their choosing and the most ethical investor would win $10. I quickly got to work and devised a strategy for my investments. I was determined to win, and I was going for it. At first, I ended up doing really well, and at one point, I was up over $600. Unfortunately, I flew too close to the sun. I looked up “NYSE top performers” and I saw a Brazilian bank called Crescera Capital Acquisition Corp, and I invested in it. Exactly 1 minute after I bought it, it dropped 25% and I didn’t get back in the green for 2 weeks. At my lowest point, I was down ~$250. Currently, I am doing much better, about $500 positive. I know I’m not going to win, but I’m still glad I am going to end up better off then when I started.

We also did a few other non-finance related things, like personality tests and goal-setting.

We put all of our finance learning at the annual PLP Spring Exhibition. For our Maker class, we are making a podcast series, so we combined our podcasts with our business card skills to make business cards for our podcasts and designed the main PLP room to be like an office. We wore business attire, and I made some motivational posters to hang around. This was a notable exhibition for us, because it was the first time we were able to sit down during the exhibition. Overall, this was one of the best exhibitions we had, and I liked the more low-key, chill energy.