math – Don't Eat Cat Food in Your Old Age

Brave enough to fail

I can’t do math (specifically algebra). Have I told you that lately? As sure as I am that I have blue eyes, I know I can’t do math. So I was understandably stressed while preparing to take the first exam for the Canadian Securities Course. Even one of the easier formulas like this:

blog-ytm

Made my brain look like that:

$brain-on-math$

But I can do words and study and memory. I decided to tackle the formulas a different way. Instead of the mathematical shorthand seen above, I broke it down into words I could study and memorize:

Yield to maturity equals interest income plus or minus price change, divided by, face value plus price divided by two.

Once I wrote it out enough times I could add a little shorthand of my own:

YTM = interest income +/- price change, divided by, FV + price divided by 2.

I was getting somewhere.

But still – if there were too many math questions I was in for a hard time. Seven months and it came down to this. I needed at least 60% to pass and while many people were cheering me on, I never take anything for granted and my concern was real (there is nothing false about my modesty). I was just going to have to suck it up and ride the fall. I went into the exam prepared to be brave enough to fail.

The time came, the proctor handed me the exam booklet and I took a look. There, of the 100 questions, only 10 even had numbers in them. I only used one formula I had memorized and there was one calculation I could do IN MY HEAD.

Results were swift – three days later I emitted an “Eep!” when I checked online and found I had passed. I didn’t ace it but I didn’t squeak by either. I did something that scared me, did it successfully and lived to tell the tale. If there’s hope for me, there’s hope for just about anyone.

Halfway there.

Life, math and chapters in between

There I was, making slow but steady progress, then wham! Life happened, as it does. My last post was about the Breakfast Club Retro Dance, which I’m happy to say was a success. More than 100 people came out and we raised $3300, so in two years the event has raised $7100 for the Ottawa School Breakfast Program. That’s a whole lot of tummys we’re filling, many futures we’re helping.

alison-cheque

Delivering the cheque to Alison Sheepway at the Ottawa Network for Education

Back to the Canadian Securities Course. For people who are working full time while studying it does usually take an entire year to complete. Over the summer I got bogged down by Chapter 7 – Fixed-Income Securities: Pricing and Trading. Or more specifically, by the mathematical formulas in the chapter. I took the math tutorial and thought I had it figured out, then took the online quiz, which explained everything differently, and just got confused. Math panic swelled up in my gut.

Then Adult Me kicked in. (I didn’t even know my brain had an Adult Me function.) I realized that if I were to use this information in daily practice, I could always pull out the book again to refer back to the formulas. This was wonderful, especially since I still have math nightmares. (Seriously. It’s a day before the final exam, I’ve spent the entire year doing nothing but English and history, and if I don’t get my math credit I don’t graduate. Shudder.)

So I moved on, knowing that I wasn’t going to do well on one particular part and that was ok. I sped through Chapter 8 – Equity Securities: Common and Preferred Shares and Chapter 9 – Equity Securities: Equity Transactions, both in one weekend. I took a little more time with Chapter 10 – Derivatives and Chapter 11 – Financing and Listing Securities.

Now I’m on Chapter 12 – Corporations and their Financial Statements. Apparently all the terms I learned in Grade 13 Accounting have changed. (The bastards! How dare they!) Once I’m done, I’ll study Chapters 1-12 and sign up for the first exam.

Yikes.

Learning about money stuff – Canadian Securities Course

When the global economy collapsed in 2009 (and the world’s biggest capitalist society needed government bailouts – wow!) we all discovered we really didn’t know much about how or why. We recognized that our financial literacy is lacking. As a current Facebook meme says, I’m sure glad I learned about parallelograms in school instead of taxes…

Money is a funny thing. I like learning about it and talking about it. It comes from growing up without it. Over the years I’ve collected a little library of books on the topic, I subscribe to a magazine about it (MoneySense), I even have a monthly meeting with a group of women to discuss it. But even with all this, I know there’s still so much I don’t know.

Sure I know how to budget and save and invest – to a certain extent. I know there’s a whole other world out there and, despite having some math fears (seriously, I have recurring nightmares about high school math class), I took a big step.

I signed up for the Canadian Securities Course (CSC), the foundation you need to work in the financial industry here. The plan is to take the course over its suggested 135 to 200 hours of study, and to write about what I’m learning along the way. I’m hoping it’ll help me find new clients to write and edit for in the financial industry. At the very least I’ll learn more about how to make the most of my money so that one day, I won’t have to work so hard for it.

Will I be spending my summer Sunday afternoons on my balcony in studying bliss? Or will I have to replace my new financial calculator multiple times from throwing it in frustration?

Let’s find out. Let’s improve our financial literacy and do some book learnin’ about this money stuff. Most importantly, let’s find out how to avoid eating cat food in our old age.