Rising Finance Professionals Should Know How the Date of Easter is Determined.
Happy Easter! I think I can still say that. (Makes me think about how far into January I’ve wished someone happy new year.)
Photo by Brent Pritchard.
Not every holiday is celebrated on the same date every year. You probably knew that already. Enter Easter. This year Easter was celebrated on March 31. It’s not like Christmas, which always falls on December 25.
But would you believe me if I told you that there’s something all aspiring and current finance professionals can learn from Easter? 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):
Sometimes we can overcomplicate things. Life is really pretty simple when you stop and think about it. I remember another one of Clayton John’s lessons like it was yesterday. In classic Clayton John fashion, one day he asked a group of us a rhetorical question: “How is the date of Easter determined?” What he taught us that day was that you have to care enough to know how things work and not be afraid of the hard work it might take to figure it out. There’s no “kind of” or “maybe.” It’s yes or no. You get it or you don’t.
Because of this lesson, I can think of a handful of people who still to this day could tell you how the date of Easter is determined. You don’t forget a lesson like that. For those who want to know it’s the first Sunday, after the first full Moon, on or after the Vernal (Spring) Equinox. Kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
Since I gave you the answer, do me a favor and don’t lose the important lesson here. The lesson is one of caring enough to do the work.
Before Clayton John made the trek to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, financial calculator in hand, responding to the job posting he saw in the Wall Street Journal and would later get, he was a high school math teacher in Albert City, Iowa.
I love this story for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, it showcases an important sequence that many people outright ignore. First comes the math, then comes the finance.
How many building block Time Value of Money equations are there? (I can guarantee that Clayton John knows.)
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.