This morning I tried to wake up early to make the fruit salad and coconut whip cream for the cupcakes. However, when I got to the kitchen I found all the fruits were already cut up and boxed. I have the best mom ever. After reading about the coconut whip cream, I was really excited to see if it actually worked. When reading the instructions, I read a section that warned against coconut milk that had an emulsifier in it. Essentially, an emulsifier, like xantham gum, is a chemical added to processed liquids like salad dressings to keep the ingredients from separating. To make the whip cream, I wanted the coconut milk to separate, so an emulsifier would mean my whip cream would not work. I discovered that the coconut I had purchased did indeed contain an emulsifier, and, like the internet said, the recipe did not work. While this was a disappointment, I learned how to be innovative and I made a lemon icing which I drizzled on the cupcakes instead. Yes, it was an adventure.
I went into the office around 9:05 bringing my goodies with me. From the office, I knew I would be headed out of town for a track meet, so I didn't bring my computer with me, just my book. For the first 30-40 minutes, I stood on call in case Caroline or Paul needed any last minute projects completed. Then my opportunity came and Kathy helped us log onto a different computer so I could work on the spreadsheet of target companies. I added a column for the company website and then I used the Colorado Secretary of State's website to search for the legal names of the businesses that I couldn't find on the BrightScope website which provided 401K information. After I still couldn't find the businesses on BrightScope, it was time for me to leave. I departed the office and said goodbye to my new found coworkers. This was one of the most amazing experiences I have had because it opened my eyes in so many ways. I not only learned about finances, I also learned about working in an office, paperwork, professional emails, organization and proper office etiquette. I would not trade this internship experience for anything, even if it was a chance to do a more adventuresome internship. I know that what I learned will continue to aid me in the future as I pursue more information about finance and business. I am so thankful to my mentors and the Gervais office for hosting me and teaching me, even during one of their busiest times of the season.
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Today in the office I was just working independently again. The first thing I did was upload my mentor interviews to SoundCloud and then I embedded it into Weebly so the interviews can be viewed by anyone perusing my DP.
Then I started brainstorming a good way to thank the office and my mentors. I knew I wanted to do something special for, so I thought I would bake some goodies since one of my first days in the office, there was a box of pastries. Also, it is tax season so everyone is highly wound and feeling the pressure of the season. Even in the three weeks, I have felt the tension rise. When I first started, they would take leisurely breaks and chat with each other, but now they are all buried with work in their offices. Gail, the valuation analyst of the office, worked 7 days last week and her triumph for the week was getting to take Sunday off. So this morning I began brainstorming since I was caught up on projects. I wanted to make something I could eat as well, as a vegan, so I looked up vegan dessert recipes. I found a couple that looked really good, but they weren’t quite what I was looking for. Then all of a sudden, I stumbled upon the most delicious looking recipe; strawberry cupcakes with coconut whipped cream frosting. I looked at the recipes and ingredient list and realized I could totally do that. Then, I wanted to make something if people were concerned about eating pastries, so I decided I would also make a fruit salad. I sent my mom a list of ingredients I needed and tonight I have just been experimenting with baking. I am really excited about these cupcakes! The afternoon part of my day was spent filling out and nearing completion of the application for the QuestBridge scholarship program. The application is due next week and I am starting to get nervous about it, so I know I need to revise and review everything before I send it off. Halfway through the last week of internship!
It is saddening to know I only have two more days in the office, and Friday is really just to say good bye because I will be leaving at 12. This morning I knew I had a lot to do. First, I checked my email and sent a couple quick emails. Then I went to Caroline's office to work with her on the mock portfolios. With a new program called Portfolio 360, the process of making a mock portfolio was actually pretty simple. We created a client and then with the investor questionnaire, we designed a portfolio for them. This was basically entering in information we already had and double checking the numbers. Then, we went to the final page and it allowed us to select particular sections of the portfolio we wanted to print. Along with printing the funds in the portfolio, we also printed some background information that will be useful for exhibition and presenting my knowledge to the public. We made 3 mock portfolios with slightly different investor styles, which will give me plenty of diversity to exhibit. After completing this project, I resumed worked on the spreadsheet that targeted specific companies. I went through to every company that had a website and found their mission statement and beliefs. I just copied this information into the spreadsheet which will allow Caroline and Paul to look closer at these companies that they may want to market to. The rest of my afternoon was spend finishing this website and completing little tasks. First, I updated the Know Your Dough website. Then I spent time checking college board and researching colleges that I will be visiting over spring break. Today, my office was fairly quiet. Allison is out of town for this last week and Caroline doesn't come in on Tuesdays, so I didn't have any new project flow.
Before she left, Allison assigned me a couple things, like finishing the tallies on the pretests for DHS and calling banks, financial institutions and accounting and investing firms to ask them for contact information so Allison can begin to amass supporters of Know Your Dough. Though I had assignments, I took today for myself. I researched Colorado College and learned more about their unique block schedule as well as diving deeper into some of the majors that they offer. One major I think I might like to pursue would be Chemistry or Biochemistry. Additionally, I will most likely try to major in business or economics so I have that valuable background. After researching Colorado College, I explored some other college options through the search tool, collegeprowler.com. I know no matter where I go, I will have to apply for scholarships and financial aid, but one way I might easy the pocket would be to attend a junior college for two years and then transfer. This is a concept I should spend time researching and understanding better. Along with researching Colorado College, I filled out the QuestBridge application I have been working on. This is a scholarship program that can help students in low-income houses get the necessary resources to pick the college that is right for them and possible attend summer programs at high-end schools. This activity carried me through the rest of the day and I think it was a necessary change of scenery. Tomorrow I will be working with Caroline on the mock portfolio and I am really excited to learn the steps that go into making a portfolio. Oh how I adore Mondays.
This morning I headed into the office and checked my email before finishing the spreadsheets I was editing on Friday. For these spreadsheets, I was changing the percentages designated for each asset class. Upon completion, I spoke with Caroline and finished the mentor interview. Now, I have both mentor interviews and I need to upload it to my DP. I will be working on transferring the audio files from my iPod to my computer on Wednesday when I can get help from a friend. During the mentor interview, Caroline touched on a couple big pieces of advice.
After the informational interview, I got an assignment from Caroline. She gave me a list of companies that Kennebec Wealth Management would like to profile as targets for clientele. These companies are large employers in La Plata County and might be interested in starting a 401K plan with Kennebec Wealth Management. This kept my busy for the afternoon part of my day. Additionally, my individual project, a mock investment portfolio, was started today. I received the paperwork from Caroline and completed the questionnaire. With the questionnaire, I will be able to make a model portfolio. On Wednesday I am really excited because Caroline and I will be working together on real clients as well as my mock portfolio and learning how to make a model portfolio. Today was like my Friday, since tomorrow I will be driving to Pueblo for a track meet. Caroline is not in the office on Thursdays, and Allison didn't come in either since we had discussed my task list for her earlier this week after the DBA meeting.
I headed into the office and started working on tallying scores. I keep mentioning this, but I have not fully explained what I am actually tallying. Allison and Paul, along with financial volunteers, offered a class to high school seniors about finances. The curriculum of the class was through Junior Achievement, a partner program of Know Your Dough. To gauge students basic understanding and then to measure their feedback of the program, the administrators of the class gave out a pretest and a feedback questionnaire. For marketing, I have been going through and tallying the amount of kids that answered number one correctly. Today, I really buckled down and I finished tallying all of the results for the feedback questionnaires from Durango High School. If I counted correctly, I believe there were about 145 sheets. While this may sound like a simple task, once I had found a system that worked well, it actually ended up taking me the majority of my day. First, I made a table in Word and tallied the results from the hard copies using 1's. Then, I copied the total tallies into Excel. I split the stack into four piles and did the tables by the stacks, so I didn't have so many tallies to count. After lunch, I completed my Excel tables and now I only have the pretest results from DHS, which will take dedication, focus, perseverance and tons of time. If I don't end up finishing it, I will probably take the sheets home to complete in the evening. Then, I worked on the spreadsheets that I had completed yesterday. After being reviewed by Paul, he showed me that I had made one mistake and so I set about fixing that mistake on the other four spreadsheets for fund changes. Thankfully, it was a small, easily fixable mistake and I know how to correct my errors. This morning I was excited to get to work because I would be working on more spreadsheets with Caroline. For the majority of my morning, I worked on developing interview questions for my mentor interview wth Caroline and I also began the task of tallying scores for Allison. After my lack of success yesterday, I knew that I needed to focus and start with paper and pen scoring, then transfer to a computer. I managed to complete the scoring for the post tests, which gauged students growth. However, this was the smallest stack of papers because only one class did the post test, making my job much easier. The other classes completed the pretest and the feedback sheet which gauged how useful the information in the class was for them. These are both stacks of about 280 sheets. An estimation based on my guess of how many seniors attend DHS.
Then, I checked in with Caroline. Yesterday, the documents I was using to complete the spreadsheets for the businesses had a note on it from Paul, stating his confusion with the new fund forms. I had created the new fund forms, so yesterday I simply put in the current holding information and left the new holding column blank until I knew I was doing it correctly. When I spoke with Caroline, she showed me the correct way to do it and I saw that there were a minimum of three mistakes per page. I felt so sad because I thought I knew what I was doing, but I had really just created more work for Caroline and Paul. While watching her fix the spreadsheet, I realized that I had made the changes she spoke of. I brought in the spreadsheet I was working on the day before and noticed that the mistake was simple in communication, as Paul didn't know to print the spreadsheet from the place where I had saved it on the flash drive and he had printed an onld version of the spreadsheet. Once this was cleared and out of the way, I was feeling confident and I began to work on the other four businesses new holdings column. I finished these spreadsheets during my afternoon and sent them along to Caroline for review. In the meantime, I made a couple small changes to the website, such as adding logos to the sponsor page and proofing some of the writing sections. Towards the end of the day, Caroline helped me make a spreadsheet she needed to use and that was a simply process, but I learned a couple new Excel skills. To make the information of the Excel sheet fit to one page without changing column width, you can change the whole page layout. First, go to the Page Layout tab and select the area you want to fit on the page. Then, click on Print Area and select Set Print Area. From there, it shows you the lines of the page breaks that will be made if you print the document as it. After showing the lines, go to the View tab and select Page Break View. Then you can move the page breaks so that all of your information fits on one page. I thought this was a useful skill for future work in Excel. Additionally, Caroline and I were both taught how to use a new formula in Excel by Brian, an employee of Gervais and Associates. We wanted the equation to be drawing from two cells but we didn't want one of the cells to change. First, we entered =(the first cell1*the second cell2). This gives us a formula that can be copied for multiple cells with values. However, to get the first cell to stay the same, we had to enter =($the first cell$1*the second cell2). By inserting the dollar sign before the letter of the column and before the number of the row, the first value will always be drawing from the same cell. The most exciting part of the afternoon was the power outage. Towards the end of the day, the power in the entire building went out and we learned that all of town town was also experience a blackout. All of the work that Caroline and I needed to do was on the computer, so we made the simple, aforementioned spreadsheet in Excel and then decided to call it a day about 15 minutes early. She went home to get work done on her personal business of tax returns and I took the early trolley to DHS so I had a couple minutes to relax before track practice. My interview with Caroline was scheduled for this afternoon, but we did not have sufficient time at the end of the day so we postponed it until Monday because she is out of the office on Thursdays and I am out of town on Friday. On Monday, we will have enough time to complete an in depth interview. When I have both the interview from Caroline and Allison, I will upload them to my digital portfolio and with Paul's permission, I will also post my interview with him. Tomorrow I will continue tallying scores and I will call a couple businesses for Allison to gather information to contact them about supporting Know Your Dough, either through sponsoring the program or volunteering to help as a teacher of the classes. This morning, I headed into the office with a big to do list. The first thing that I needed to do was start tallying scores for DHS. This process, however, was much more difficult than I had anticipated because there are so many more students than at AHS. I first started by tallying using 1's in Excel, but quickly lost track of which test I was on and if I had marked each box. After a while, I felt so far off and my mind was numb, so I moved onto my project from Caroline. I managed to get the basic template filled out for two of the businesses.
For lunch, I accompanied Allison to a Durango Business Association meeting. This was similar to the meeting at Carvers last week. Here, I met a large group of small business owners that meet to network and give each other referrals for business. Allison was presenting at this lunch as a personal financial coach, separate from her non-profit, Know Your Dough. I was really lucky to get to go to this meeting because it opened my eyes to the steps businesses take to network and get themselves known in the community. Also, during Allison's presentation and I heard the advice she gave during the mentor interview, I realized that there are just a couple simple steps to being aware of your finances and making smart choices. These include; keeping record of your investments and what you spend your money on, cutting back on unnecessary spending and of course, paying yourself first. Paying yourself first simply means, putting away money into a savings account at the beginning of the month so you don't spend it all in the month and forget to save anything at the end of the month. This fundamental concept sparked my interest in starting a new savings account. After lunch, I went through a couple basic steps and taught Allison how to function Weebly so she can update the website at her leisure. So far, I think that it is looking very good and we can continue to tweak small details, but the largest part of it is completed. To view the website, follow this link: Know Your Dough. The rest of my afternoon was spent completing the Excel sheets for the other two businesses and getting the information necessary to input the new holdings tomorrow. Look at that, it is Monday already! I was really excited for this morning because Libby came for a site visit. She stopped by around 8:30 am, shortly after Allison arrived. I got to give her tour of the office and introduce her to all of the workers, even the ones that I don't see very often because they are in the back section of the office. Then, Allison, Libby and I talked for a while to review how the internship was going so far. I believe that I have been learning a lot and getting a lot done one projects, which is really exciting.
After meeting with Libby and Allison, I went to Caroline's office to get a project assignment for the afternoon. Similar to my project on Friday, I will be filling out spreadsheets and collecting data on four more businesses. Luckily, I will be able to copy the spreadsheet from my assignment on Friday and use it as a template for the new spreadsheets I will need to make. During my assignment of the project, Caroline just talked with me about all sorts of things, ranging from investments to life lessons. One thing that we talked about being aware of was bitcoins. These have recently been introduced and are a form of online money. You can invest in bitcoins and then trade them online for all sorts of things, including merchandise. However, unlike United States currency which is backed by gold, bitcoins are not backed by anything and they are unable to be regulated, like legitimate paper currency. This means that an investment with bitcoins is highly unstable and could lead to fraud. Due to lack of regulation, bitcoins can be used to deal in the black market, allowing drugs and other illegal merchandise to be sold on the internet. After reading about the Tokyo bitcoin exchange that has $500 million dollars unaccounted for, I am seriously doubting the benefit of bitcoins. Before talking to Caroline, I thought that bitcoins might be a smart investment, but it turns out, they are a highly risky investment. Afterwards, I went and read a couple articles about bitcoins in the news. Be sure to look at the dates and how those correlate to the sudden negative publicity. Bitcoin convention brings out hope for digital currency’s future Another bitcoin bites the dust Tokyo bitcoin exchange files for bankruptcy A Bitcoin caution One investment scam that we spoke about along with bitcoins is the pyramid scheme. This is a scam that doesn't work according to theory and the people at the top of the pyramid get rich while the bottom of the pyramid gets nothing. Essentially, the head of the scheme recruits 2 people and says "if you each get two people to invest, then we can start building a pyramid." Each person that buys in must find 2 other people to also buy in. Then, they person at the top claims that the people buying in will profit as well. However, it doesn't work like that and the people at the bottom never get paid because the lead player takes all the money and the pyramid collapses. Pyramid Scheme Additionally, while talking to Caroline she had some very in depth and meaningful advice about life in general. From our other conversations, I feel like her biggest piece of advice is to be aware of the different shades of grey in this world. Contrary to what might be easiest, there is no really clear black and white, and this causes confusion and questionable judgement calls. I thoroughly enjoy speaking with Caroline, even though the conversation often drifts off topic. The rest of my afternoon was spent working on tallying scores for Allison to get that job completed. This is a tedious task where I am scoring test sheets, but I have to keep track of the amount of people that answered #1 wrong and the amount that answered #1 right and so on until I complete all of the tests for the senior class of Durango High School. After a long week in a completely new environment, it finally is Friday. I am proud to say I have made it in the office life and I think it might actually be growing on me. The quietness of the office is actually pretty comforting. This morning, after checking my email and making a couple small tweaks to the website, I was asked to make a spreadsheet for Caroline and Paul. I made a couple spread sheets for each type of investor (aggressive, moderately aggressive, etc.) for a specific business. These revealed areas in the investment portfolio that needed to be changed or maintained. Paul and Caroline use a system where they rank mutual funds by how they are doing in the market and then suggest that clients change their "basket" of funds if a particular fund is not yielding as much as they would like. One great example of how dedicated Caroline and Paul are to this elimination process is how deliberate they are with their selections. For example, while looking at the list of funds that were doing well, it appeared that one fund was achieving high yield but Paul and Caroline had not elected to add that fund to the portfolio. When I asked why, Caroline explained to me that the funds that were doing well were all in the same field, computer engineering, lets say. So to prevent all of the assets being put in one area, they diversified the portfolio by buying the mutual fund that was in natural resources.
For each investment style, I copied a template of a spreadsheet and entered the current funds. Then, using the designated sheet, I wrote a section for the new funds that were being added to the fund. When each sheet was finished, it showed the current funds, a column to specify a change or no change and then the new fund list after the changes have been made. After that, there was a whole front page to detail the funds being added and removed. This allows for the client to see where the changes were made and what the new fund list is. This afternoon, I held my mentor interview with Allison and she gave me a lot of information about her personal business as a financial consultant. Also, I was able to learn more about starting your own business and what that might look like if I decide to pursue a personal business in my future. I will upload the mentor interviews when I complete my interview with Caroline. The rest of my afternoon was spent working on tweaking small parts of the website that needed to be changed or edited before Allison presented the website to the board on Monday. |