Survey: What Is Your Financial Literacy?

In a survey conducted by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, 40 percent of U.S. adults gave themselves a grade of C, D, or F on their knowledge of personal finance (Jump$tart Coalition, 2014). With that in mind, it is important to have a solid understanding of your own level of financial literacy before diving further into financial decision making.

Think about the important financial decisions you have had to make, such as buying a home or an automobile or pursuing a degree in higher education. What are the financial considerations that came along with such a decision? Where there any mistakes you made that you learned from? Also, consider how your personal budget for gas, insurance, and car maintenance provides insight about your strengths and limitations in financial literacy. Identifying your own strengths and limitations in financial literacywhat comes easily versus what you have left to learnshould help you prepare for this course, the program, and a career as a finance professional.

To prepare for this Discussion, take the survey below What Is Your Financial Literacy?

Survey: What Is Your Financial Literacy?

For each question below, select your comfort level with regard to your financial literacy for the following concepts:	Not Very Comfortable	Somewhat Comfortable	Very Comfortable
How comfortable are you with describing accounting and finance concepts?
How comfortable are you with working with math and algebraic formulas and concepts?
How comfortable are you with explaining the difference between opportunity costs, marginal costs, and relevant costs?
How comfortable are you with classifying financial statement accounts to the correct financial statements?
How comfortable are you with explaining the four basic financial statements?
How comfortable are you with explaining how costs are presented in financial statements?
How comfortable are you with discussing marginal benefit and marginal cost?
How comfortable are you with comparing and contrasting gross margin and contribution margin?
How comfortable are you with identifying the variables needed to compute breakeven sales?
How comfortable are you with explaining linear profit modeling?
How comfortable are you with discussing what is meant by cost-volume-profit analysis?
How comfortable are you with determining risk-adjusted rates of return for decision making?
How comfortable are you with differentiating relevant cost from sunk costs?
How comfortable are you with differentiating between budgets, forecasts, and key performance indicators?
How comfortable are you with explaining the difference between capital budgeting and operational budgeting?
How comfortable are you with explaining the results of balanced scorecards?
How comfortable are you with discussing roles finance professionals can play in advancing positive social change?
How comfortable are you with describing the difference between present value and net present value?
How comfortable are you with computing project payback?
How comfortable are you with converting a forecasted income statement to a forecasted cash flow statement?

Post by Day 3 your response to the following:

Describe your experience in finance and accounting, including professional and personal budgeting. Share what you consider to be important when making a significant financial decision, such as buying/leasing a car, expanding a small business, or deciding to buy a home or income property.

Share two areas of strength and two areas you feel you need improvement on from the survey What Is Your Financial Literacy?