5711618: FU_Personal Finance – Develop and Manage Your Wealth

Description

This is an interactive and practical course on all kind of questions about managing personal and individual financial situations in daily life. A focus is offered on the specific needs of young people. Although the title seems to be very specific, this course invites students from all study areas to participate. Finance students will not be able to profit from advantages because of the very practical approach of this course.

We start with 2 interactive input days at the beginning of the semester (February 7 and 8). Over these 2 days, we provide students with an overview on personal finance in order to construct a general understanding of the topic.
This is followed by 4 evening meetings in April and May 2024, reserved for active contributions of students. We will form several groups. Each group will provide 3 mini-presentations. For 2 of the topics presented, groups also prepare mini-essays (between 2 and 4 pages). Some of the topics to be discussed will be:

• How to analyze your personal financial situation and possibilities? How to save money, what type of saving plans do exist and what are their advantages/disadvantages?
• What type of banking relationships do exist and what is appropriate for my needs?
• When should I start investing? How should I invest? What are the most important aspects to consider? Implications of costs and returns on my results? How to manage costs and results? How to select and invest in stocks, bonds, alternative investments, mutual funds and ETFs?
• How to use credit, debit and cash cards? How to choose the best card offer?
• What insurance contracts are a must to have? Which type of insurances are not that necessary in your personal situation?
• How to decide on several loan offers? How to finance my home (what is affordable, valuation aspects, fixed-rate versus floating-rate contracts)?
• How to finance a car and other consumer goods? Is leasing an alternative? When will real estate planning become an issue?

Learning Outcomes

Participants …

• develop their own personal financial plan.
• will know bank services and instruments to manage their own liquidity and their own money.
• will learn how to assess, secure, and manage their own credit.
• will be able to make appropriate personal financing decisions (personal loans, purchasing and financing your home), based on basic concepts in finance.
• will be able to decide on their personal wealth protection (the most important insurance contracts to have).
• will learn to develop their personal investing scheme (investing instruments, asset allocation decisions).
• will be able to make appropriate decisions for their retirement and estate planning.

Lectures Method

• individual preparation (pre-reading)
• input by lecturers with discussions, problem-based teaching
• in groups: preparation of presentations and essays on topics given

Literature

Siegel, R., & Yacht, C. (2009). Personal Finance. Open Textbook Library. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/31

Collins, J.L. (2016). The simple path to wealth – Your roadmap to financial independence and a rich free life. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform.

Sethi R. (2022): I will teach you to be rich. New York, Workman Publishing Company.