Prompt #1: Asking Questions and Breaking Assumptions

The field of finance is one that is important for the structure of the economy and personal living, however, there is a hefty list of preconceptions that come with finance. 

Some of my preconceptions about the field is that I will spend long hours at a desk reading numbers, making decisions, and taking risks. I also think that the financial field is a lot about talking and communicating with your coworkers, clients, and others. Another preconception I have is that some people in the financial industry work in dirty, unethical ways. 

In the general field of business, I have preconceptions that I have heard from stereotypes for a long time. They say that businessmen are people persons, know how to talk their way into getting what they want. The business world is one where everyone is wearing blazers, suits and working in an aggressive sales environment. 

The textbook that I used to test some of my preconceptions is “Finance Theory and Practice” by Eddie McLaney. As I started out reading the textbook, the first preconception that I had written down that came up was decision making, one of the main focuses of the first chapter was risk. I expected this to be a part of finance, there is a lot of pressure on making decisions because a lot of money can be involved, but we can never know for certain what will happen. There are some risks that are bigger than others, and usually that is directly correlated with the returns, the higher the risk, the higher the potential returns, usually. 

I also talked about analyzing numbers as a preconception I had about finance. This introductory textbook proved that to be true, as there is ratio analysis, values, appraisals, payment periods, probabilities, sensitivity analysis, and rates of return that are all part of the important equations and number analysis that is part of being in the financial industry. Each one of these is a key aspect in finance, which confirms my preconception, that a lot of finance is numbers and analyzation. 

Some of the preconceptions that I could not find were the ones I had about business in general, this book was more based on general finance decision making, theories, and methods. I did write down my preconceptions about unethical practices in finance, and I found that there are laws and strict code that must be followed related to money. 

It was hard to find a quality authoritative introductory textbook online because many required a purchase, I was limited to finding PDF’s of textbooks, but luckily I was able to come across this one. After I created my list of preconceptions, I went to the table of contents and skipped around the textbook to find the answers I was looking for. 

After reading this, I think I have found that finance is a lot like what I expect it to be, but a lot of preconceptions that I have now won’t be answered until I actually get into the field and start working. I still wonder about the atmosphere of working in finance and the people I am going to meet, like which I said, I won’t know until I start working. I found a lot of this connects to my previous blog posts, as I have talked about investments, personal finance, and a lot of what I found today in this introductory textbook connects to the rest of my posts because they are all based off of finance. 

Grant Williams