Importance of Basic Financial Education at High Schools

 

·         High school education is not only educating them the book knowledge or let them learn about the academic curriculum. High school education the foundation for the next stepping for students, they should be taught along with finance education, teach them about the basics, so that they will have an idea of what it is, when it comes to understanding or take up a course in future, it will make them easier and not only it is like a lesson of understanding, learning, finance basics will help everyone in the day-to-day life we deal with. 

 

·         Making it as subject or inserting the concepts will be ease. Coming to finance education, it not only about dealing with money or how to make money or possible ways, it’s all about our expenditure, investment, returns, profit/losses, tackle with savings, spending on activities. 

 

·         A simple concepts or terms at the beginning make students to understand the situational circumstances and move on with it. Saving money should be a disciplined approach. Learning it in early childhood gives us best way to make expenditure or income.

 

·         This will be difficult at the beginning. But it will give us financial freedom when we desperately need it. Financial literacy is understanding the source of money and how that money can be planned and utilized for the present and future requirements. It gives understanding of various financial areas like personal finance management, money expenditure and investment.

 

·         Knowledge of appropriate decision making about personal finances such as insurance, real estate, education expenditure etc.,

 

·         It gives an opportunity to upgrade level of knowledge and information. Help in understand the basics and technicalities of financial literacy, financial planning and investments.

 

·         Effectively managing finances, also in calculating Compound interest, mutual funds, stocks, credit scores concepts. Make oneself think about or questioning themselves such as “Are we living a debt-free life”, “Are we investing well, and saving the tax”.

·         Enough savings for the emergency. Finance education is required to stop living from paycheck to paycheck, investing, become financially secure. To save money on our vacations: inspite of all of our best intentions.

 

·         To raise cash quickly: when financial emergencies occur in life, one must find themselves to go for easiest ways to raise cash. Money can often be raised in ways that have minimal long-term consequences.

 

·         Priorities reflected in spending: when most of money goes towards providing what’s important to you, you tend to live a more fulfilled life and feel more satisfied with the way you spend your money. It’s also easier to stick to your personal finance plan when its objectives are to get you what you really want out of life.

 

·         Protect yourself from a recession, Tax advantages for self-employed, All about credit card delinquency. It also teaches on how to stick to your budget. Teach about money with an allowance.

 

·         Investing when financial times are difficult: when times are tough and money’s tight, one of the first things you may neglect is investing. Investing is a way to build up for future.

·         Set and achieve fulfilling personal financial goals. Mandatory spending, discretionary spending, emergency fund, retirement fund.

·         To manage crisis: we encounter a lot of crises in life from economies to allocation of limited resources. Finance education helps us to manage such crisis by making sober decisions. We get to how to be independent of thought. We will get to know about different loan schemes available, how it works rather than knowing them. It’s good to have safe knowledge prior by learning finance in secondary education. 

As Seen On - TV Series: Chernobyl

 

Chernobyl is a historical drama that revolves around the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the events that followed.

The nuclear accident occurred in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It is considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history both in terms of cost and casualties. 

The unfortunate accident transpired during a safety test on the steam turbine of a nuclear reactor. The power output unexpectedly dropped to near-zero during a planned decrease of reactor power in preparation for the test,

Operators were unable to restore the power level specified under test program. This resulted in unstable conditions in the reactors. The eminence of the risk was not evident in the operating instructions. Thus, the operators proceeded with the test and after its completion, the operators triggered a reactor shutdown. 

The critical design flaws and negligence on the operator’s part, primed the reactors to explode. An enormous amount of energy was released as an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction begun. 

The core melted down and explosions ruptured the reactor core and destroyed the reactor building. The open-air reactor core fire released considerable airborne radioactive contamination for about 9 days that precipitated onto parts of the USSR and Western Europe.

As a result of rising ambient radiation levels off-site, a large number of people were evacuated from the area, and later it became the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covering an area of approximately 2,600 km².

The disaster resulted in the blemish of health effects in general population. As per the data published, the disaster stemmed into many childhood thyroid cancer deaths. 

Former USSR i.e. present day Russia, built a protective Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant sarcophagus by December 1986. This initiative was aimed to reduce the spread of contamination from wreckage and protected it from weathering.

The continued deterioration of the sarcophagus forced further enclosed in 2017 by the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement. It allowed the removal of sarcophagus and the reactor debris containing radioactive hazard. The nuclear clean-up is expected to be completed by 2065.

 

As Seen On - Don’t Look Up

 

We have taken the world for granted for as long as we have lived. The hindrance although, is that we are not looking to stop. ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a recent Netflix hit that illustrates a comet headed towards the earth, big enough to cause the extinction of all species.

 

However, its highlight is the human complacency and indifference met in response to this threat. The star-studded movie is an attempt to stir people to change considering our horrid present, slave to the Covid virus and our future, most likely headed towards impending environmental doom. Advocating SDG 13: Climate Action the film seeks to portray the continued ignorance even after recognition. 

 

We don’t have a planet B, is not just quote flooding Instagram feeds. It’s our reality. And all politics has been able to achieve is to rob us of our ability to turn things around. The movie shows a struggling scientific community unable to convince the world and more precisely leaders to take the right decision.

 

The tragedy is that this is not fiction. We witnessed it at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus was called a hoax and the scientific community was literally mocked by non - adherence. We spend our educational lives obsessing over science and its prominence, but when it comes to actual life setting, we find reasons to accost it. The consistency in the American president on and off screen is daunting." I am taking it very seriously; I’m taking it to heart” said the one on screen. “We have it totally under control. It’s going to be just fine”, were the exact words of American president Donald Trump. 

 

Clouded and bombarded with excessive and useless information, unfortunately today we are all over social media ranting about a bad celebrity break up but pay absolutely no heed to things that can have real impact. These constitute the natural principles like global warming that govern our living and are all set to wipe human civilization from the face the earth, if not urgently addressed. Instrumental human action has been in hibernation for decades and is refusing to wake up to the natural alarms blaring in our faces.

 

The comet is an allegory for the anthropogenic climate crisis that is hundred percent happening. Just because their impact today is at a smaller scale, it is invisible to human consideration. The timeline given for the comets strike, 6 months and 14 days is a fine embodiment of the real time clock that is applicable to us. It's true that that we have considerably longer, around 2-3 decades to turn things around, until runaway climate change activates, and the domino effect is in place. It is also true that we have an unfathomable task at hand.

 

The movie uses a keen blade of satire to say that if the last hope of humanity is a small group of people who do the theoretically impossible to find another planet and still end up dead, then what are we doing …

International Mercenary Funds?

 

Established following World War II to help with post-war recovery, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) serves as a lender to modern governments and an overseer of international financial markets. It has no shortage of both supporters and critics.

In its infancy, the IMF was only responsible for supervising pegged exchange rates, but grew in scope and influence in subsequent decades, particularly after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s. Now the IMF provides loans to help member nations fix perceived balance of payments problems and fight off crises.

The most notorious example was the bailout of the Greek government in 2011. As of 2020, the IMF has 189 member nations. Each member nation publicly accepts and supports the goal of global economic stability and, in theory, a subjugation of some sovereign authority to support that goal. The IMF is funded mainly through what are called "quota contributions" from its members.

Each IMF member nation is assigned an annual quota amount, based on the size of its economy when it joins the IMF. The IMF also has substantial gold holdings that it can sell and is authorized to borrow up to an amount approximately equal to its annual quota contributions. 

IMF supporters claim it is a necessary lender of last resort for areas in crisis and it can impose necessary or difficult reforms on backward economies. Critics counter the IMF supersedes national autonomy, exacerbates economic problems more often than not, and serves as a tool for the wealthiest nations only.

Economists also frequently criticize the IMF for creating a moral hazard on national scales. Critics of the World Bank and IMF have argued that policies implemented by countries, intended to control inflation and generate foreign exchange to help pay off the IMF debts, often result in increased unemployment, poverty and economic polarization thereby impeding sustainable development.

Other theories suggest that countries may sign onto IMF agreements because of the austerity conditions associated with IMF programs. Political leaders could then use the IMF as a scapegoat for unpopular policies, such as the restructuring of public finances. Although entering into an IMF agreement may have serious long-term economic costs, developing nations may find it too difficult to pass up short-term support during a financial crisis. 

 

Tell Me Your Dreams

 

Bestselling author Janet Evanovich, once wrote that, ‘romances are birthday cakes and life is often peanut butter and jelly. Everyone should have lots of delicious romance lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.’

I remember in my primary school days; I wrote a love letter to my biggest crush at the time. She had the smarts every guy would die for. Easy going and well-spoken. Her skin glowed under sun; she smelled really good. Trust, almost every boy in school drooled over her. she had nice delicious food every time we went out for recess break. I put the love letter in her bag without her knowledge. The following day all the girls in my class were smiling at me. The giggles couldn’t stop; my crush didn’t even dare look in my direction.

At lunch that day, a large crowd of females from my class and other classes, with a few other guys who didn’t have anything better to do than gossip with girls, were gathered in the middle of the school ground. In between the crowd, my crush in a very loud sharp voice was reading my letter to everyone that was gathered there.

Everyone gathered there died of laughter; it was a circus show. I could only watch from a distance; my heart was pounding so fast with embarrassment. I ran back to class to get my backpack and before I left, I located my crushes’ juice bottle. It still had her orange juice in it, and no one was in class at the time. I peed in it, shook it and placed it back where I found it and dodged out of school before it was time. I mean, what would an embarrassed young boy full of guilt and shame do, if not seek out revenge at its earliest opportunity.  

v   

During my early high school, my classmate introduced me to her home girl she grew up with. It wasn’t a face-to-face introduction; it was a joint conference call among the three of us. I could only hear her voice and wonder if I sound as soft and sweet on phone as she did. I once flirted with the idea of a pen pal when I was much younger. I held that thought for a while and forgot about it and it later manifested itself into a phone pal. Here I was texting and phoning a girl I had never met before; her name was Alice (alias name). We exchanged ideas between each other, she was my inside ‘man’ about girls’ emotional feelings and courtship. We became so close and friendly, it was only right that we met in person, after nearly five months of phone conversations.

Our friendship was open, there was no titles to it. I began to have negative thoughts about myself to say, what if she didn’t find me attractive in person. She just might stop talking to me and I would lose the friendship altogether. Mind you, this was a time period when smart phones were not so common, and so we couldn’t exchange proper detailed pics. I grew fond of her voice and our conversations, the thought of losing her didn’t sit well with me.

We arranged for a meeting one Friday after school, little did I know that she told her friends about the meet and that she had kept them up to date about all our conversations over the past months. Alice and her friends were so eager to meet me up (I didn’t know about her friends), I might have raised their expectations about me too high unknowingly. I sat at a Debonairs pizza outlet with our order ticket in my pocket. A few minutes later, I saw a group of girls all excited, laughing and smiling. All four were still in their St. Mary’s school uniforms.

To my surprise they kept moving closer and closer in my direction until they stood right in front of my table. At that time, my palms were already sweaty, my heart raced at an unimagined rate, I could have been in the Guinness Book of Records for most heart beats in a minute. I mean these girls’ body fragrance was like fresh roses, it was so intimidating.

I kept my cool, stood up and hugged them all like a real gentleman should. None of them introduced themselves by names (I wasn’t too pushy about it), but they did ask for my name to know for sure it was I before they took their seats. I made fun of myself whenever I could, cracked jokes whenever the opening presented itself. It kept them laughing and smiling, after a while three of the four said their goodbyes and left.

It was just me and this one girl left at the table. That was when she introduced herself for the first time in person to me. She looked at me straight in my eyes and smiled, in a very soft sweet voice she said to me, ‘Hi, my name is Alice, nice to finally meet you.’ She had the most welcoming smile I had ever seen, light in complexion, real dark long well combed hair, an oval face with big round cute eyes. Her fingers were short with well-groomed nails.

As cliché as it might sound, she was perfect in her own way. You could almost feel her confidence oozing out of her, it was only then I realized how shy I was sitting in front of her. She took note and made fun of me about it. ‘Not so confident in person huh?’ With such beauty sitting in front of me, I told myself I stood no chance. She seemed comfortable to be around me, we knew so much about each other, it wasn’t hard to find the rapport in person.

One Saturday weekend, Alice came to my home. We were in my bedroom all day eating and laughing at the silly things we did together. I looked at her for a while and then decided to tell her story I would make up at the spot. I decided to use my creative imagination, it left her in awe. Because of the story I told her on that particular day, it changed how I looked at the myself and the possibilities for myself. It was a mirror reflection of my own persistence of how far I had come in life even at a young age, despite of the many roadblocks I had as a young boy.

Alice is married now, with children of her own. We went to the same university; we remained friends throughout. But I guess we not as close as we used to be. I mean she is a married woman now. And as for myself? Well, that is a story for another day.

 

 

Harsh Truths About Women that Men Learn Too Late

Take accountability for the part you play in a relationship as a man and make sure your woman owns up to her own accountability of the relationship too.

You will be used for, what you lead with. As you interact with a woman, she will assess your strengths and weaknesses and determine what you have to offer along the way. It is important to be fully aware and cognizant that of the fact that if you base a strong emphasis on showcasing your wealth and status, you will be seen as a source of material benefits with little or nothing more to offer, because you have set the stage for that. It is similar to a woman who dresses very provocatively, does things for attention and presents herself as easy. She sets the stage for men to view her as nothing more than what she is showing.

On the other hand, if you lead with a no non-sense authoritative demeanor or also someone who displays your true self, showing genuine intentions and authenticity, she will be more likely to be appreciative and value you, for who you are. The key is to be mindful what you present and how you present it. Understand that your actions and behavior will shape how you are perceived.

Nice guys usually do finish last. When a woman is done with her proverbial “bad boy phase” and the desire to be a wife and mother starts weighing heavy on her. She’ll want to come back and settle down with a good man to start her life with. A nice guy is usually the last man she settles down with.

If you are a man who is described as sweet, sensitive, soft or shy; the vast majority of girls won’t be attracted to you. For men being labeled with these characteristics are not desirable traits in  the eyes of the majority of women.

Societal norms and expectations portray these traits as weaker or less attractive in men, because nice guys have the stigma of being boring and predictable. They are a major turnoff for the majority of women because they want to be with someone who demands respect, doesn’t tolerate anything less than what he deserves and leads without intimidation.

Men who are overly focused on pleasing everyone else and constantly seeking approval, are also lacking in authenticity. Unfortunately, as long as passive labels are associated with nice guys persona; nice guys will always finish last.

Most women lack empathy for men. Most women find it extremely hard to be empathetic with the plight of men. This is partly due to differences in socialization cultural norm. Men are constantly being told to “man up” because emotions are weak and real men don’t cry. And it has also created an emotional desensitization in the eyes of women for men. This has caused women to dislike men they view as emotional.

Most women like emotionally unavailable men. We as humans tend to want what we feel that we can’t have. We want what’s just ‘out-of-reach’ for us. Most of the time, you will find that women even themselves don’t know why they are attracted to men like these.

People tend to place a higher value on things that are rare or in short supply. When something is difficult to obtain or seems unobtainable, the desire for it increases.

The challenge of pursuing something that is difficult to obtain is usually part of the appeal. The thrill of the chase and the excitement of possibly getting the one that is unavailable, can make the desired outcome even more desirable.  

People are attracted to things that are off-limits or prohibited, it is part of our curiosity as humans. The idea of obtaining something that is restricted or prohibited, can be intriguing. And therefore, increase the intrigue of it, which increases the desire for it.

The pursue of something that is difficult to obtain, can be a way of boosting someone’s self-esteem. The sense of accomplishment of finally obtaining something that you desire, causes your self-confidence to sky-rocket. It can such an ego boost.

A woman will constantly test you. She will test you for many different reasons. She will assess compatibility – women will test to determine if you are a good match for a potential partner. She will evaluate trustworthiness – women will test men to see if they can trust them. She will measure confidence – women will test men to see if they are confident and self-assured. She will gauge interest – women will test men to see if they are truly interested in them. She will determine boundaries – women will test men to see what they are able to get away with and what men are not willing to tolerate in a relationship.

The main thing all women want is security. No matter the type of woman that you are dealing with, women innately want to feel secure with a man in every single facet of life; monetarily, emotionally, physically etc. Yes, the world has changed and women are more independent, free-willed and self-sufficient now more than ever, but a woman’s instinctive desire to feel protected by a man hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s a hardwired instinct that even the most independent woman will bow to. Every single attribute a woman desires in a man whether it be; masculinity, honesty, confidence, emotional intelligence, stability etc., will always result in one desire that she wants fulfilled, and that’s the need for security.

Making a woman feel secure is the key to her heart. This is why a woman will stay and even remain faithful with a man she doesn’t love or doesn’t even really like because he has been so successful at making that woman feel secure in whatever regard that might be, that when she weighs the pros and cons of the man, the benefit of security that he provides to her – will win every single time.

A woman’s physical desirability is everything to her. Girls grow up and are thrown into a world that values them for their beauty and sexuality. They’re unconsciously taught that being beautiful is their first and foremost important obligation. This causes an inflated sense of self and places an extreme importance on the need of being wanted and desired. And then women start leading with their sexual alter ego. This also creates a vulnerable weak spot for women when they feel their physical appearance is lacking.

Attention is the main driving factor for most women. When a woman receives a substantial amount of attention, she feels it equates to self-worth and self-validation if she doesn’t have a strong sense of security within herself. A woman’s ego is much more fragile a man’s. A woman puts the most effort into how she looks, everything else comes second. Women will fish for attention in both covert and overt ways.

This is why you have some women who will just blatantly expose themselves, the you will have others that will post, ‘oh I’m just working out’ pic. Meanwhile she is showing her whole body in the clips on social media. Bottomline, attention is a woman’s biggest currency.

She usually won’t be able to match her sex drive. A woman has an innate resistance to want to have sex very frequently as compared to a man. Because natural selection has conditioned her mind to equate sex with pregnancy. You will hard-pressed to find a woman who can actually match her sex drive.