The Business of Finance: Money Meanings, by Flavie

The Business of Finance: Money Meanings by Flavie

 Today, Tuesday March 31rst, was a calm and short day, but we met interesting people and learned things about the American economy.

So, the main topic today was money. Everybody has another relationship to money, there is no wrong or right way. I honestly like money. I don’t live for it, or I’m not stingy. I’m more the opposite of it. I love buying things, and I don’t think that money should be a fence for anybody who has a dream. I love money because you feel free to buy yourself what you want but I also hate it because nowadays it’s something which has too much importance in our society, for some people money is a dream or a barrier and it shouldn’t be.

We first went to Argo Tea (http://www.argotea.com/about), a tea brand which also serves food and several drinks. It’s a nice place, cozy and decorated with natural colors. I really like those cafes where you can stay, work, read or just meet friends. Today we met a guest speaker, Dave Ruths, who works in finance. Even if he was very nice and precise I had a hard time understanding what he was saying, probably because I’m not used to financial and accounting words in English; that’s something I definitively want to work on to be more able to understand the economy here in the USA.

David Ruths works in the financial industry and as investment advisor representative. He talked to us about the taxes in the United States, about financial controls and also about the differences between the French and the American economies; which was my favorite part of his talk because it’s certainly what I understand the most and it was more concrete. In America people have less help from the government and that’s why they don’t save their money the same way as European do. He also told us about banks supporting many associations and that volunteering is very important to American, especially when you want to get a job.

What most of the people don’t know before creating a business is that you won’t win at the beginning: you will lose. That’s why a lot of people start a business and only think in term of benefits and not of loss and that’s why their business doesn’t last.

 

 

After lunch we walked a few blocks, admiring the famous Chicago architecture, to the museum of Money which is in the federal reserve bank of Chicago (https://www.chicagofed.org/education/money-museum/virtual-money-museum).

The money museum was interesting too, even if may be not very detailed about finance and banks. It was more about the money, fake or not, how it has evolved during the last decades…

But definitively saw huge amounts of money (I’ve never seen so much money it was very impressive!) and there were funny activities!

We learned about the history of dollar and the museum is really modern.