I have a special treat for you guys and gals. From 2 to 10 pm today, I wrote an essay for my last Math in college; Math 120. One to two pages was the requirement, but I love writing so I ended up writing five pages. Read if you want to know what is on my mind or how my mind works. I reserve the right for privacy with this MLA paper....lol... See below.... Bjorn Mabulay Professor Sanchez Math 120-1001 14 July 2013 Math is fun Back in 2005, I decided to save up some money to purchase a home on my own. Without formal education, high paying jobs was difficult to obtain. Therefore, I worked two jobs for over five years, and at one point I had three just so I could put down a big down payment on a house. I remember vividly that I worked sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I did not drink or party with friends; I simply went to work and go home. From working tirelessly day and night, sometimes I could not perform my jobs well. As a part-time waiter, I always put on a big smile for my guest, but from being weary all the time, my steps staggered and zigzagged. I could not focus. In the restaurant I walked around half dead like a zombie. Finally, I was able to put away $57,000 into my savings account. One day, I received my bank statement in the mail and noticed that there was a discrepancy in my semimonthly deposits. My numbers from home did not match the bank’s numbers. So, I went to the bank and asked the teller if could have a printout or summary of my deposits from day one for free. He said that there is no such thing as free stuff these days and that it would cost me $10.50 for the transaction. It was ridiculous. Consequently, I went over to the middle of the bank where people usually speak to an agent to open up new accounts. With a high pitch voice, I stated “I need to speak to a manager, now.” I supposed raising my voice was unnecessary, but I had a lot of money invested in that bank with very little interest in return. I figured that I deserved a copy of my bank statement at no charge. As a result, considering all the factors of a crumbling economy coupled with causing a scene with thousands of dollars in my account, I walked away from the bank with a free copy of my bank statement. This class, however, consists of five modules: Logic, Sets and counting, Probability, Statistics, Finance, and Exponential and Logarithmic functions. In ascending order, I like working with finance, Statistics, and logic. However, for this paper I will talk about finance. Currently, money is scarce. Looking back with having so much money in the bank, I could have invested some of it in CD’s or various types annuities to make additional money. You have to spend money to make money. In fact, our daily lives revolve around dough. Managing your credit cards, savings, and spending habits is essential. It is going to take me a little longer to generate money because I have to finish graduate school. My ultimate goal, however, is to be millionaire. I am sick to death of eating top ramen, spam, and tuna in a can. I do not want to be in deficit any longer. I detest borrowing money as it involve outrageous interest charges. Planning ahead, it is wise for me to explore finance so I can better invest in the future. Finance is necessary. Buying a new car is relatively easy if you know your credit prior going to a car dealership. Salesmen are forceful when making a sale. At times they can be direct and unkind particularly when you have a bad credit. It is important to know your credit and know how much money you are planning to put down. The most important part in buying a vehicle takes place during the negotiation and signing the contract because that is where signing the terms and conditions occur. Here is where you and I bargain for a lower interest rate and get a free oil change in the end. A contract, by the way, is a lawful agreement entered between you and another party, in which both of you have an obligation to fulfill a promise. You promise to keep car insurance, make monthly payments, and etcetera. Once you have signed your life away, since a contract is legal, it is thus enforceable by law. Accordingly, in order to make your car purchase to run smoothly and save tons of money, knowing how calculate the offer(s) shown to you, it is best to distinguish between what is good or bad offers. Learning simple interest, future value, finding the number of days in a billing cycle, and/or add-on interest formulas is essential. If you have these ways and means in your arsenal, your time in the dealership will be hassle free; you can avoid anxiety, shun away from thinking that there is a conspiracy, and not wonder what they are all taking about inside close doors. You will look smart, sophisticated, and have confidence. Car salesmen who play the routine good salesman-bad salesman will seem funny to you. Salesmen are parallel to sharks in the ocean, they can smell or sense if your weak and will more likely to take advantage of you if your incompetent. You are buying that car; you should be the boss in terms of how much the interest will be for the life of the term. Car dealerships need us for their business. It is not uncommon for them not to give you a huge discount on a car because they are there to generate profit. As a customer, know your rights and buying power. Hence, you should be treated with reverence and excellent customer service. Most Americans like you and I owe large amounts of credit card debts. We utilize them to shop for clothes, food, gas, school supplies, and for unexpected emergencies. Even though we do not like to owe credit card debts, it is important to have a few on hand to be able to rent a car for our next vacation, to build credit, and for rainy days. However, I have always wondered how banks calculate my credit card interest’s fees each month. Before taking this class, all I do when I receive my statements is simply go online, read the amount due, and then pay. I did not understand how the whole thing works. For instance, currently I owe $2012.73 on my Chase credit card. For this account, the purchase APR is 20.24% with a cash APR of 23.24%. They are high interest rates, but unfortunately I cannot do a balance transfer at this time. For the record, allow me to assert that I do not have a bad credit as my credit scores are in the low seven hundreds reported from all three major credit bureaus, it’s just I owe so much. Once again, I am in a deficit; I am spending money that I do not have. My expenditures exceed my income or assets. Joyriding back to topic, last month my chase account charged me $31.11 on purchases and $2.06 on cash advance. Studying finance is beneficial, I am now able to figure out how I got the above charges. The exhibit below is an illustration. BJORN’S CHASE CREDIT CARD Account #: 123456789 Purchase APR: 20.24% Cash APR: 23.24% Balance as of 07/10/2013: $2,012.73 CHARGES LAST MONTH Fee Interest Charge $31.11 Fee Cash Interest charge $2.06 Recall that balances are calculated on everyday basis with 30 days billing cycle since June has 30 days. (See finding the number of days each month: “Through” versus “To” on page 331). After we obtain the fees, there will be a difference because you don’t have the same balance every day as the amount grows or fluctuates. Before I got my statement this month my balance on purchases was $1,918.78. To find out how we got $31.11, we multiply $1,918.78 by 20.24% (Interest), divided by 100, and then divided again by 12 (months in a year), which boils down to $32.3642267. To figure out how we got $2.06 on cash advances, we perform the same procedure. Starting balance of $93.95 times 23.24%, divided by 100, and again divided by 12, which equals to $1.819498333. If I am not being clear enough, what I am trying to demonstrate here with this example is the significance of the billing cycle. Though there are abundant elements or factors involved, it is easy to figure out if you know what you are doing. Learning finance is necessary, it helps us manage our outstanding accounts and better able to choose which credit card to apply for in the future. As a senior, there is nothing in college thus far that I found uninteresting. Taking college courses almost always excites me like a chubby kid with a chocolate. Whether be psychology, philosophy, science, or jurisprudence, I found them all fascinating. I must admit, however, that I had a little trouble with Math because I took it all online without any class interactions and it usually takes me an eternity to solve problems. Sometimes it felt like I had to cross an ocean of stars just to understand a single topic. In a sense, I was self-taught learning Math, with a bit of help from wonderful professors, of course. On the other hand, my mind still craves for knowledge with ample storage space just waiting to be filled. What is more, I finally understand the importance of college level Math. Students in liberal arts need statistics, logic, and finance to be able to make wise decisions in our daily lives. Math 120 certainly allows us to be clever and productive citizens in society. To conclude, I have learned a lot of amazing things from taking Math; however, they were right, Math is fun. Works Cited Johnson, , and Mowry . Mathematics: A Practical Odyssey. 7th ed. Raleigh: WebAssign-North Carolina State University, 2013. eBook. .
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 05:59:56 +0000
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