The economy plays a significant role in everyday life in just about every aspect imaginable. Although the economy covers a vast area of daily life, most importantly it covers that of my family and me as an individual. Several ways that the economy impacts my family is through some of the following aspects: interest rates, employment, income (saving and borrowing), inflation, and the stock market.
The economic impact of each various area can differ family to the family. However, interest rates are something that affects my family quite a bit. Interest is in almost all borrowing, from our home loan to our car loan, and even credit card spending to college tuition. The borrowing of money results in some form of interest that must be paid back on top of the money borrowed which takes more money out of my parent's paycheck over the course of time. The house we purchased may be only valued at half a million dollars, but over time we could pay upwards of three-quarters to a million dollars for it after the loan is paid off. In the same mindset, the cars we own for each person in our family are under a five-year loan, which results in thousands of extra dollars we must pay on each loan in order to pay them off. The same goes for college loans and credit cards, it's yet again just another source of extra money we must pay for in the long run in order to afford the things we deem necessities to live comfortably. Thus far, it seems as if the only interest that affects my family is the interest we owe, however, this is not the case. There is also some definite interest that we earn from money that is saved aside in savings accounts and checking accounts that are both interests bearing accounts. Although we are not making thousands of dollars a year from this interest like we are paying out into other things, it can serve as a little bit of a kick back.
