Tres conceptos financieros clave que todos deberíamos saber (English)

28/04/2015 - Annamaria Lusardi, profesora en el George Washington University School of Business, nos habla en este artículo de los 3 conceptos básicos que un profesor de educación financiera debe transmitir a sus alumnos; el interés, la inflación y el riesgo.

 

  A. Lusardi “La Educación Financiera es tan importante como leer o escribir” 

More than ever before, we must make financial decisions that are important and consequential. How much should we contribute to retirement accounts and how should we invest our retirement savings? Should we enroll in a health-insurance plan with a low or high deductible? What do we need for our children’s education? Household finances have become sufficiently complex that simple intuition or the advice of family and friends is not enough to guarantee good choices.

There are courses in corporate finance and specialized curricula for managing firms’ finances, but what is available when we serve as our own chief financial officer?

Fortunately, personal finance is a subject finally making its way into schools, from high schools to colleges to graduate programs. Online courses are also springing up, and some employers have started to offer financial education programs to their employees.

Household finances have become sufficiently complex that simple intuition or the advice of family and friends is not enough to guarantee good choices.

What should the content of such courses be? As member of the Board of Directors of the Council for Economic Education, I served as an adviser on the National Standards for Financial Literacy. From these standards, we can identify some of the crucial concepts that everybody needs to make informed financial decisions. I am going to focus on three, the Big Three as I tell my students.

Some employers have started to offer financial education programs to their employees.

One fundamental principle of personal finance is the power of interest compounding. This knowledge is key for saving, borrowing and investing decisions. It enables us to understand, for example, why it is important to start to save early. And we need to do calculations to see results. If I borrow at 20% on my credit card, how long does it take before my initial debt doubles? If expenses and fees reduce my rate of return by one percentage point, how is my wealth affected over a 30-year horizon?

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  El papel de la Educación Financiera en los países en desarrollo 

Leer artículo completo: The wall street journal 

 

“Annamaria Lusardi standing” by Julie Ann Woodford Photography