By Brent Pritchard

Lots of people, when asked about their ability to operate a vehicle, will likely tell you that they consider themselves to be an above-average driver. But that’s impossible based on the law of averages!

International driving may just be the great equalizer. For example, you wouldn’t want to miss a Do Not Enter sign:

Here’s an excerpt from my book Would Your Boomerang Return? What Birds, Hurdlers, and Boomerangs Can Teach Us About the Time Value of Money (2023):

For questions involving multiple streams of cash flows, you can think bigger than the information provided in the question. For example, if you are asked to determine the amount of a savings account balance at a certain point in the future, you can extend the future value of deposits and even the future value of withdrawals to that point in time. You’re keeping the different payment types in their own lane so that you can get to a point in time where you can add or subtract or compare money. When you wrap your head around this point, it opens things up and makes thinking about Time Value of Money questions more manageable. Remember that you possess the Flux Capacitor of Finance, (1 + i)^N, which allows time travel in the context of the Time Value of Money by way of “indifferent lines.”

And speaking of streams: 

(It’s not uncommon for runners to maintain an ever-changing mental list of “Top 5 Runs.” Today’s made the list!)  

Where are you in your journey of acquiring the skills necessary to apply the Mathematics of Finance? 

Brent Pritchard is an author and college finance lecturer with over two decades of industry experience and cofounder of Boxholm Press, LLC, a family-owned-and-operated publishing company providing educational content, products, and services. He pioneers an innovative and approachable new way of learning and teaching the Time Value of Money as well as thought leadership in other business topics. His most recent book is Would Your Boomerang Return? You can contact him on his website here.