FSA proudly presents our new personal finance series Millennial Money. We understand that not everyone has the luxury of taking a finance subject during their time at university, nor can they afford financial advisors at a young age. Therefore, we have created this series to hopefully demystify some of the concepts around finance and money so that you can make better decisions in your day to day lives. We hope that this will be accessible and helpful to all types of students, whether you have studied finance previously or not.
Throughout this series we plan to discuss important topics such as HECS, superannuation and home loans, before moving on to more investment focused topics such as exchanges, cryptocurrency, and markets (don’t worry if you’re not sure what these terms mean!).
While we hope that this series will become a valuable source of information, we would also like to acknowledge that there are plenty of great personal finance blogs and videos out there. Admittedly, it can be hard to distinguish between good and misleading advice, so we have gone and done the work for you and recommend some of the following sources as a good starting place for the interested among you:
If you like blogs and articles:
A Wealth of Common Sense - daily blogs on ongoing market trends while focusing on personal finance
Nerd Wallet - provides analysis to all personal finance products
The College Investor - US-based site for personal finance but still provides tips applicable for Australia
Yahoo Finance - Largest site for an overview on the current market
If you like videos:
How Money Works - provides short and digestible documentaries on financial space
Whiteboard Crypto - accommodates beginners with simple videos to understand the crypto space
Graham Stephen - Personal Finance Guru who also gives an explanation on current market trends
If you like books:
The Barefoot Investor - creates a personal finance guide focused for Australians
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Broke Millennial
Where we feel that specific articles, videos, or books are relevant to a topic being discussed, we will also mention this for anyone who is interested in doing further reading.
We do also here want to mention something about personal financial advisors. While they can be quite expensive and therefore hard to access, there is no denying that they have a level of expertise which the writers of this series do not. They can deal with nuanced financial issues and situations that can not be captured in an article. The issues we discuss here are always general in nature, and do not consider an individual’s specific circumstances.
We assure readers that our articles, unlike some other series which are out there, has no agenda other than to improve the financial education of young students like ourselves. We are not trying to sell any financial products, nor are we encouraging anyone to buy into any specific investment. Something we want to get across in this series is the relationship between risk and return, which we believe is under-emphasised in most investment schemes. We will continue to illuminate this point throughout the series and encourage students to do further research on their own to gain a broader understanding of the topics we present. We also want to get across the important of actively questioning any information you come across, and this includes considering the motivations of the people who are providing that information. Next week, we will be going over a topic that is front of mind for many students – HECS Debt.
The Finance Student's Association is not a financial adviser, the views expressed within this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Finance Student's Association. All images and references in this article are for fair and educational purposes only. The content in this article is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied on as such.