What I Did This Weekend (Extra Credit)

This weekend I celebrated two of my best friends' birthday (they're twins), and we had an amazing weekend. We started it off by playing a round of golf on Friday morning at the beautiful Camarillo golf course. After that, we went back to the birthday boys' house in Calabasas to play tennis and swim. To begin that night, we went to Lucky Strike in LA Live to bowl a few rounds and have some drinks, which was a lot of fun. I bowled an 80 and a 155, so needless to say I need to work on my consistency. Next, we came back to USC to relax for a little so we could go out that night. We had a few more drinks at my apartment and then took an Uber to the Bungalow in Santa Monica. We hung out there for an hour or two and had a great time, and then took an Uber back to USC.

It was a very packed day and I'm still exhausted from it, but it was a ton of fun. Happy birthday to Max and Sam, even though they will never read this.

A World We Dare to Imagine - Part III

The Burk Family Foundation for Financial Freedom 

My organization is called The Burk Family Foundation for Financial Freedom, and we will help people of all ages become financially independent. 

I am extremely passionate about this line of work because I have noticed that young people aren't educated about finance as well as they should be. I can't speak for everyone else, but my high school taught me nothing about investing or saving. I've been able to take a couple of finance classes at USC, but neither of those truly prepared me to be a successful investor. The fact of the matter is that the sooner you start investing, the better your chances are of being successful. While you're in your 20's you can obviously afford more risk, and more risk is the only way to attain more rewards. The thing is, I believe a lot of people are afraid to fail in their 20's, and getting over that simple fear is the biggest hurdle in becoming financially free. Most people in their 20's don't even know what a Roth IRA is, and it's one of the easiest ways to guarantee becoming a millionaire. If you can manage to put aside $100 every month and put it into your Roth IRA, and do that for 40 years, your account will be worth around $1 million. I know 40 years seems like ages away, but if you start at age 20 and begin increasing your monthly deposits over time, the timeframe can be shortened. The point is, there are ways to guarantee financial freedom if you play the long game and stay disciplined. Unfortunately, this is not a part of everyday education. 

This organization is unique because there really aren't any others who do what we do. We will be targeting middle school, high school and college kids and teaching them how to save and invest their money, and I've never heard of an organization currently doing that. 

Anima Mundi Development Partners should support my organization because we are not only doing a service to the world by educating the youth about finance, but we will be also me making a lot of money along the way. Anyone who is involved will experience the pleasure of working towards a better future with incredible people. 

Thank you for your time.

A World We Dare to Imagine - Part I

"Today we are redefining the geography of community and accepting shared accountability for common human values. We have the chance to extend the notion that all men are created equal to every human being on the planet. This will require global structures and products we are only beginning to imagine.... Each of us in his or her own way can contribute something by thinking -- and acting -- like a true global citizen. We have only one world for all of us on earth, and the future really is ours to create, in a world we dare to imagine together." 


This quote really gets me thinking about how I might change the world in a positive way. It's hard to compare myself to anything remotely close to Jacqueline, but not everything needs to be on a large scale; the smallest steps can still make the world a better place. As of now, I see myself making the world a better place by helping people grow their wealth and attain financial freedom. While I don't have any plans to help any poverty-striken or underprivileged people, I know that at some point in my life I will give back to them. I just want to help people understand that the stock market is a game that can be won if played correctly, and in doing so you can be financially independent, which should be everyone's goal. 

Random 2- Stock Market

Today I'm going to write about the stock market. While watching CNBC this morning, I heard an interesting stat: the Dow Jones peaked on January 26, and has been trading below that level ever since. January 26 also happens to be my birthday, so that kind of makes me feel bad. People have lost a lot of money ever since my birthday. Although, I think it has more to do with the pending trade war between the U.S. and China than it does the day I was born. Also, historically, people trade less during the summer because a lot of people are on vacation. Once everyone returns and Q3 begins, I think the market will recover nicely.

Tesla, as you all know, is my favorite stock. There were some bad headlines over the weekend, as Elon Musk reportedly asked the company's suppliers to lower their prices so that Tesla could become profitable. This news did not sit well with investors, and Tesla is down almost 3% today. Again, just like I said in my Expert Article: this is a buying opportunity. Asking suppliers to lower their prices is very typical in the automotive industry and does not warrant any type of overreaction. However, Tesla is obviously the media's favorite company to write bad things about, and they hopped on the opportunity to publish something negative about the company. I will be purchasing a few more shares of Tesla on this news... wish me luck!

AMDP ROUGH DRAFT

AMDP Rough Draft

TO: Professor Clark Hansen, CEO of AMDP

FROM: Andrew Burk

DATE: July 1, 2018

SUBJECT: SolarCity

When you instructed me to identify and research a possible investment opportunity in a company that is committed to the triple bottom line, one company immediately came to mind: SolarCity. The company has been a subsidiary of Tesla Inc. since 2016, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased it for $2.6 billion. Before I dive into SolarCity’s specifics, I would like to reiterate the most important aspects we are looking for in a potential investment. 

Triple Bottom Line

The triple bottom line is an accounting framework that has three parts: social, environmental, and financial. The financial aspect has obviously been the most important in the eyes of many when it comes to business, but the last few decades have led to more and more companies focusing on the social and environmental impact of their business decisions. 

1.     Social– Everything to do with people, including fair treatment of employees and off-site labor, enacting favorable practices in business communities, etc. 

2.     Environmental– Implementation of sustainable practices and reduction of environmental impact; green initiatives, recycling programs, etc. 

3.     Financial–Addition of social and environmental responsibilities can benefit a company’s financial bottom line. A lot of this has to do with millennials being more environmentally conscious and more willing to spend money on sustainable goods.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

CSR is a company's sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates. Companies express this citizenship through their waste and pollution reduction processes, by contributing educational and social programs, and by earning adequate returns on the employed resources.

Social Enterprise

A social enterprise is an organization that is involved in the sale of goods and services to a market, but also has specific social goals that serve as its primary purpose. They are notvolunteer organizations in that they operate as an enterprise by selling in a market, and can be registered as for-profit or non-profit. Profits are then used to fund social programs.

Carbon Footprint

Carbon footprint, regarding businesses, refers to the amount of carbon dioxide (and other carbon compounds) emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels by that business. This can be measured by finding the total output of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the organization. It is extremely important to reduce carbon footprints because an increase in gas emissions is primarily responsible for the climate change that has led to global warming.

Born on Third Base #2

Towards the end of the book, Collins raises an interesting point about the morality behind charitable giving from the wealthy. He describes a wealthy auction event that he attended in Massachusetts, which led to him wondering about a troubling trend he was noticing - the use of charitable funds to compound the existing advantages of the wealthy. Collins believes that tax-deductible giving should not worsen existing inequalities, but reduce them. By reducing their state and federal tax bills with donations to their children's schools, these wealthy individuals are worsening the gap, which is an extremely overlooked issue in our country.

Collins lists a few ideas he has that could help reduce the inequality gap. First, he thinks that raising minimum wage/health care and having a guaranteed minimum income would help level the playing field. He also thinks we should have fairer tax policies so that competing companies are taxed at the same rates. One of the biggest solutions that Collins suggested was preventing the wealthy from having unfair political influence, which currently disenfranchises millions of voters. I definitely agree with this; bribery needs to be fully removed from our government in order for the inequality gap to shrink. Collins truly has a special mind and I found myself agreeing with the majority of his ideas.

Born on Third Base #1

I think that Chuck Collins did a great job of starting the book by describing his own situation; understanding the author's perspective makes reading the book a lot easier. I particularly enjoyed the part where he mentions a major life decision he made at age 26. Collins decided to donate the entirety of his $500k trust fund, which would be worth over $7 million today. To have that big of a heart and so little greed at such a young age is truly admirable and definitely made me more interested in reading the rest of the book.

I also found Collins' suggestion that we must re-learn how to think about wealth to be very interesting. In particular, the part about 'makers vs. takers' got me thinking about the roles of certain groups of people in society. There are the people who create jobs for other people, and there are people who live off of government handouts. Collins makes the case that racist, white minds naturally consider the 'takers' to be dark-skinned people, which creates a huge problem in our society, and I definitely agree. While I think that society is progressing in the right direction, I definitely think that the older white generation of 'makers' are still very racist. Those people still take up a large portion of the top 1% of wealth, which puts minorities at an innate disadvantage. Collins does a wonderful job of tackling these issue in the first portion of the book.