Ryan Gaboury

Quantitative Reasoning 110

Professor Wall

29 November 2017

Borrowing and Saving Money Interview

The person I chose to interview was my beautiful mother, Kim. She had just turned 50 in October of this year and has been a 6th grade middle school teacher for a little over 22 years to this point. Obviously she was my mother so it was easy for me to understand her financial situation as she was describing it and the beneficial decisions she was subtly making over the course of my life as well as hers. Our conversation lasted around 25 minutes as it became apparent that not only would she answer each question in great detail but also try to instill her frugal yet conservative lifestyle on me. She made it very clear that she was and still is in the financial situation she is in because of who she is. I definitely saw this characteristic in her before I even needed to have a conversation since throughout my childhood, she would display how she was with her money in the simplest of forms whether it be in the grocery store or just at home ordering something from Amazon. It was always, “What is the price?, Can you get a discount or 15-20 percent off? Are there coupons? Is it on sale?” These small, but important questions she was just generally born with, putting my family in the green when it comes to future financials and always putting our best opportunities forward.

As our conversation began, she explained that her first loan had been around the age of 21. It was necessary for her to receive this grant of money since she needed a car to commute to college everyday since the 20 minute car ride  for my grandfather in the early morning was simply becoming too much. Earlier, a loan was taken out at the age of 18 for her college as she was attending Springfield College in Massachusetts, but she had already paid the lump sum of the bill before she even graduated from school so she didn’t technically count that as her first loan given that there was never any interest paid. She learned about saving her own personal money specifically from my grandfather who was also a teacher just at the high school level and was a mentor for her to follow in his footsteps. It was stated that not only him, but through others mistakes and mishaps did she learn how to control her money in the most beneficial way. She has always been an independent person so for her to put a great emphasis on understanding how to grow her money even at a young age was exceptional to me. As the conversation continued, she believed that her best financial decision was buying her first and second homes, one of course earlier in life and one while I was around the age of 8. She explained that buying a house was forever more beneficial to her situation since renting did no good for you. Even though it may be cheaper at the time to rent and have a semi-stable situation, you waste your money as it accounts to nothing, meaning there is no potential growth in the money you are spending to live since it is going to someone and something else. There are no financial decisions that she currently regrets since it was made clear that her investments in property where very smart and conscious decisions but almost every decision is backed with some sort of reason or need. She claims, “I have what I have today from being cautious and knowledgeable, but hopefully making good gambles I will soon be happy with.” This reveals her as a person as she isn’t afraid to back down to a challenge given her independence and is well prepared for any situation that may affect her financial stability.

Moreover, she started to explore her retirement programs that she is soon collect as early as age of 59. My mother was around the age of 30 when she began saving money towards her retirement. Because she was a teacher involved in the union, she was paying into a state pension program that she is very wary of at the moment, given all the controversy that surrounds pensions in Rhode Island. With this, she invested into a 401k as a backbone for her to maximize the growth of her capital. It was also almost forced upon by my grandfather to take out a 403B at the same time because he saw the potential in the system and market. To this day, these accounts continue to grow for my mother and her invest on two homes will at some point add to her retirement budget as she will be selling one with the possibility of the other also being sold. She is very comfortable with her situation since even with her money continuously growing, she still continues to watch what she spends and is never placed in a bad position. Due to the fact that she was involved in the stock market crash during 2007/2008, her investments ultimately tanked with the market. This didn’t exactly scare her since she wasn’t going to take out that money at the time and trusted that at some point, the market would regain its integrity and benefit her. It was also in our best interest to buy a second home at the time since the housing market was extremely gassed and she had enough capital along with the help of my dad to make that large investment. She saw the potential of value in the property for her retirement so she jumped in at the exact right time. Lastly as our conversation was coming to a close, her advice to me about saving money was to not keep a lot of money in a savings account since it has terrible interest rates, to take out CD’s with the best interest and to always shop around when it comes to borrowing money since interest rates can be paramount to your future financials. I believe that her values towards saving money has definitely helped and greatly affected how I spend my money as I grow into my adulthood years. Being conservative isn’t such a bad thing, but taking risks that will certainly pay off in the end are easy ways to understand how to save for your retirement. Money isn’t everything in this world, but it does help when you set yourself up for success for the future by making quality decisions.

 

Statement

          I believe that I had carried over the revision strategy over to this specific piece I had to complete for my math course this semester, Quantitative Reasoning. In this course, we were to understand specific business graphs, shipping routes, and fully comprehend the ability to look at stocks and/or interest rates and retirement plans in order to make quality decisions for the future. I think simply put, if it wasn’t for English 110 C, I would continue to struggle with multiple things within my writing that negatively affects the overall outcomes and messages in each paper. Specifically, I believe that I have gained the knowledge of connecting everything one way or another to stay completely on topic. Creating a thesis is not easy given that it is the main overall focus in a paper, yet finding topics that will further benefit yet also fit into your thesis was my biggest challenge. Today through various methods such as notecards or simply through separation, I am able to understand and develop a thesis with solid  back up statements that I can further develop and benefit. In my Quantitative assignment, I was forced to do a lot of summarizing though which in fact is my strong suit as I described an interview with my mother over her financials in the past, present, and future. Given that I had practiced summarizing through English 110 C, I was able incorporate my tools into this specific paper to get an overall understanding of what was being represented. Of course, there won’t be much detail or analysis given that it is a description of what actually was said, yet I was at some points able to go a little off topic and explain certain points that were made in order to include flow. Clearly, I have not chosen the incorrect paper to include Pinker’s essay, “Why Academics Stink at Writing” since he explains that, “Most academic writing, in contrast, is a blend of two styles. The first is practical style, in which the writer’s goal is to satisfy a reader’s need for a particular kind of information, and the form of the communication falls into a fixed template, such as the five- paragraph student essay or the standardized structure of a scientific article. The second is a style that Thomas and Turner call self-conscious, relativistic, ironic, or postmodern, in which “the writer’s chief, if unstated, concern is to escape being convicted of philosophical naïveté about his own enterprise.” I may have hit the first style on the head given that it is very practical and my overall purpose was to satisfy a readers need for information since my teacher had asked for a detailed interview including financials and retirement plans. But it is evident  that I am missing that clear other piece. A lack of analysis, a sense that I lack greater ideas or deeper meaning other than simply what is presented. In order to write a perfect academic essay, I need to use the tools I received from English 110 C including almost all the elements. Creating an architectural draft, putting that into action, peer review and your own review really, creating a thesis that isn’t too general and connects to every idea being stated, and allowing critics to better your paper. Clearly, Pinker wants people to be upfront and personal with their academic pieces such as the negatives of using quotations, hedges, etc.. I believe that if you simply engage fully into your writing and take full control over what is being said, there is no reason for you to not take full ownership of what you are putting across. Lastly, correct language such as avoiding abbreviations and meta concepts can help to create a piece that is to the liking of Pinker and everyone willing to read it.