Interview Project Thoughts

This interview project was honestly very interesting to me. For starters, I asked my grandma to open her email to answer some questions for me…and it took me ten minutes over the phone to explain to her how to do just that. Getting her to open the attachment in the email was another 5 minutes, and having her email me back her responses was a decent 15-20. Awesome.

Generational differences always interest me, but I never thought about them from an economic standpoint. When I think about money, I understand inflation and I understand generally if a price is going to go up or down, it’s going to go up. But I never really think about where price levels began one day, years ago, when the wheel was invented, when my Grandma was cool…

From all the interrogations I did, a theme arose. Regardless of how much something may cost, and whether its price has risen or remained the same in an economy, people always have to make tradeoffs. The price of an average car now would have been something traded off 30 years ago. Prices change and people make tradeoffs while simultaneously fighting against inflation. Inflation changes the value of money, and tradeoffs change based on the value of a dollar.

Because of inflation and the difference in price levels from 40 years ago, to 20 years ago, to today, people are money crazy. EVERYTHING is expensive and everyone wants to have as much money as possible to afford the nicer things in life. Tradeoffs will always be made but they will be made on a per person basis based off of what goods people believe aren’t a necessity. Is it more important to have a BMW or to dress well? Depends on the person’s standpoint and values (since they are subjective).

Since the stock market doesn’t really affect me, I focused more on how it affects my grandma and dad. Both of them argued, in different terms, that the stock market affects their savings and retirement plans. Today, MANY people are planning their retirements early on so that they have a financially stable future, but yet most Americans don’t even know all that much about economy and the market. How can one save their money accurately and invest in the best ways if they aren’t informed enough on the industry they would do this in? I’m guilty of being uninformed, but I believe more people NEED to be informed.

Because a lot of people are uninformed, they make uninformed decisions…not just about saving. My grandma made numerous “neutral” decisions in the chart listed in the post above probably…most likely…because she was uninformed about the topic she was asked about. The only questions she was neutral about were questions that required facts and not opinions. People need to get in the know, so they know what to do! Economics is important!