Finance is the study of how investors allocate their assets over time under conditions of certainty and uncertainty. A key point in finance, which affects decisions, is the time value of money, which states that a unit of currency today is worth more than a unit of currency tomorrow. Finance measures the risks vs. profits and gives an indication of whether the investment is good or not. Finance can be broken into three different sub categories: public finance, corporate finance and personal finance.

Questions in personal finance revolve around

Personal financial decisions may involve paying for education, financing durable goods such as real estate and cars, buying insurance, e.g. health and property insurance, investing and saving for retirement.

Personal financial decisions may also involve paying for a loan, or debt obligations. The six key areas of personal financial planning, as suggested by the Financial Planning Standards Board, are:

Achieving these goals requires projecting what they will cost, and when you need to withdraw funds. A major risk to the household in achieving their accumulation goal is the rate of price increases over time, or inflation. Using net present value calculators, the financial planner will suggest a combination of asset earmarking and regular savings to be invested in a variety of investments. In order to overcome the rate of inflation, the investment portfolio has to get a higher rate of return, which typically will subject the portfolio to a number of risks. Managing these portfolio risks is most often accomplished using asset allocation, which seeks to diversify investment risk and opportunity. This asset allocation will prescribe a percentage allocation to be invested in stocks, bonds, cash and alternative investments. The allocation should also take into consideration the personal risk profile of every investor, since risk attitudes vary from person to person.

George Soros ( /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/;Hungarian: Soros György; Hungarian: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American business magnate,investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes. He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his US$1 billion in investment profits during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.

Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89), and provided Europe's largest higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Institute.

Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary to a well-to-do, nonobservant Jewish family. His mother Elizabeth (also known as Erzebet), whom Tivadar married in 1924, came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a lawyer and had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots. Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Soros took a job with the Jewish Council, which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

Glenn Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor (columnist and blogger) to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics. He has also contributed to other newspapers and political news magazines, including The New York Times,The Los Angeles Times,The Guardian,The American Conservative,The National Interest, and In These Times.

Greenwald has written four books, three of which have been New York Times bestsellers: How Would a Patriot Act? (2006); A Tragic Legacy (2007), and With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, released in October 2011. He also wrote Great American Hypocrites (2008).

In March 2009, he was selected, along with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, as the recipient of the first annual Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media, an award named after independent journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone and devoted to rewarding excellence in independent journalism. The selection panel cited Greenwald's "pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues."

James Emmett Barrett (April 8, 1922 – November 7, 2011) was a United States federal judge.

Born in Lusk, Wyoming, Barrett was in the United States Army from during World War II, from 1942 to 1945, and received an LL.B. from the University of Wyoming College of Law in 1949. He was in private practice in Lusk from 1949 to 1967, serving as a prosecuting attorney in Lusk from 1951 to 1962, and as a town attorney from 1954 to 1956. He was a Secretary-treasurer of Niobrara County Republican Central Committee from 1950 to 1966, and the attorney for the Niobrara Consolidated School District from 1952 to 1962. He became the Wyoming Attorney General from 1967 to 1971.

On March 25, 1971, Barrett was nominated by President Richard Nixon to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated by John J. Hickey. Barrett was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 21, 1971, and received his commission on April 23, 1971. He assumed senior status on April 8, 1987. He died on November 7, 2011.

Mark Gerard Hoban MP (born 31 March 1964) is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fareham, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

Hoban was born in Peterlee and was educated at Durham's St Leonard's Catholic Comprehensive School and the London School of Economics where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics in 1985.

He joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1985 as a financial analyst, becoming a chartered account manager in 1990, and was appointed as a senior manager in 1992 until his election to parliament.

Hoban joined the Conservative Party in 1980, and in 1989 was elected as the treasurer of the Southampton Itchen Conservative Association and served until he was elected as the Association's vice chairman for two years in 1991.

He was the campaign manager for the local sitting Conservative MP Christopher Chope at both the 1987 and 1992 General Elections.

He contested the Tyneside seat of South Shields at the 1997 general election, finishing in second place some 22,153 votes behind the sitting Labour MP David Clark.