by Edwin Ivanauskas | Tags: Personal Finance, Investing

I'd like to explain why I chose to write about personal finance. When I tell someone that I went to school for Economics or that I write about personal finance, I can clearly see them stressing to appear interested when in fact they are bored out of their minds about the subjects.

Why personal finance sucks

• You have to be responsible
• You have to save money instead of spend it
• You have to think about the future
• You have to confront what you're doing wrong
• You have to do taxes

 

When you work an 8 hour (or more in some cases) day, you don't want to spend your free time doing horribly tedious tasks like figuring out your savings, building a budget, etc. You would rather spend what free time you have enjoying yourself (or in the U.S., shopping). This goes doubly so for someone who hates their job. You can easily spend 10 hours a day preparing for your job and then doing it, combine the 7 to 8 hours of sleep and you barely have any time to enjoy your life.

People who write about personal finance take that even a step further. Not only do they generally do their 8 hours a day, but they also put in more time thinking about personal finance in a far more in depth way. Additionally, they write about topics they hope others will find interesting and learn from. Are these people crazy? What makes them subject themselves to that kind of lifestyle?

Well, I can't answer that for anyone else but I can answer it for myself. If you read my about page you may have already noticed I have two degrees, one in marketing and another in economics. Economic topics tend to fall on the same level of tedium as personal finance ones, but at least personal finance is seen has having a direct effect on people's lives. If they learn to build a budget, at least they will be better with their money. But learning the effects a weak currency has on an economy, not quite as useful.

So how have I forced myself through two boring degrees and now into the world of writing about personal finance? Well to know that, you have to know a little about me. I didn't get two degrees in hopes of making a huge amount of money. I love economics and wanted to study it more, so I did. But I have no desire to get a graduate degree in economics or work in an undergraduate job position. For my career I chose a marketing degree as I find business to be fairly all-encompassing and challenging.

I have always been interested in a variety of subjects and learning more about different topics is one of the pleasures in my life. I'm constantly reading, whether it's the hot new bestseller or a stuffy academic article published in The Economic Journal. I read everything from old works by Smith, Ricardo, Marx or Nietzsche to relatively more modern thinkers such as Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, Krugman, and Mankiw

So of all the topics available why did I pick personal finance? It doesn't seem to fit in with marketing or economics so why pick it? Well, I think personal finance is the topic that most affects everyday people yet also has roots in a variety of other subjects. For example, there are a pile of economic topics that relate directly to personal finance including supply, demand, currencies, and technological development. Personal finance also benefits from other fields including psychology, philosophy, art, you name it.

Writing about personal finance allows me to study a variety of fields and relate them back to a core topic that everyone including myself needs to know and understand to live well. The topic also allows me to have a conduit for my personal readings and studies. Rather than just read something and leave it at that, Finantage drives me to relate those topics back to real world issues and provide value to people who read this site.

After going through this a few times before posting, I realize I sound like an elitist ass. Let me make it clear, I am nowhere near perfect and don't know anywhere near everything. I don't make the perfect financial decisions, even though I sometimes know what I'm doing wrong. I often have to spend some time researching topics before being able to bring a coherent argument to the table.

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