Finance addresses the ways in which individuals, business entities and other organizations allocate and use monetary resources over time.

The term finance may thus incorporate any of the following:

• The study of money and other assets
• The management of those assets
• As a verb, "to finance" is to provide funds for business.

Examples of some basic financial concepts

The activity of finance is the application of a set of techniques that individuals and organizations use to manage their financial affairs, particularly the differences between income and expenditure.

An individual or organization whose income exceeds their expenditure can lend or invest the excess. On the other hand, an individual or organization whose income is less than their expenditure can borrow, decrease their expenses, or increase their income. The lender can find a matching borrower, or can resort to a financial intermediary, such as a bank or the bond market. The lender receives interest, the borrower pays interest, and the financial intermediary pockets the difference.

A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders of different sizes to coordinate their activity.

Finance of individuals, business, and states: Finance is used by Individuals (personal finance), by governments, (public finance), by businesses (corporate finance, etc.) as well as by a wide variety of organizations including schools and non-profit organizations. In general, the goals of each of the above activities are achieved through the use of appropriate financial instruments, with consideration to their institutional setting.

Personal Finance

Questions in personal finance revolve around

• How much money will be needed by an individual (or a family) at various points in the future?
• How is that need to be funded?

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

Business finance

In the case of a company, managerial finance or corporate finance is the task of providing the funds for the corporations' activities. It generally involves balancing risk and profitability. Long term funds would be provided by equity and long-term credit, often in form of bonds. These decisions lead to the company's capital structure. Short term funding or working capital is mostly provided by banks as line of credit.

On the bond market, borrowers package their debt in the form of bonds. The borrower receives the money it borrows by selling the bond, which includes a promise to repay the value of the bond with interest. The purchaser of a bond can resell the bond, so the actual recipient of interest payments can change over time. Bonds allow lenders to recoup the value of their loan by simply selling the bond.

Another business decision concerning finance is investment, or fund management. An investment is an acquisition of an asset in the hopes that it will maintain or increase its value. In investment management - in choosing a portfolio - one has to decide what, how much and when to invest. In doing so, one needs to

• Identify relevant objectives and constraints: institution or individual - goals - time horizon - risk aversion - tax considerations
• Identify the appropriate strategy: active vs passive - hedging strategy
• Measure the portfolio performance

Financial management is duplicate with the financial function of the accounting profession.

External links

• For an in-depth finance glossary, see Glyn A. Holton's riskglossary (http://www.riskglossary.com)
• For a Hypertextual Finance Glossary, see Prof. Campbell R. Harvey (http://www.duke.edu/~charvey/Classes/wpg/glossary.htm)
• For material covering three areas in finance - corporate finance, valuation and investment management, see Prof. Aswath Damodaran (http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/)
• For an interactive corporate finance environment, see Prof. Rock Mathis (http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/bp/app/cfldemo/index.html)
• For articles on current corporate finance and investment issues, visit Oaktree Research (http://www.oaktree-research.com), a financial education portal
• The introductory finance web site at the University of Arizona, studyfinance.com (http://www.studyfinance.com/)
• For illustrative (simpler) worked examples covering several of these topics see teachmefinance (http://www.teachmefinance.com)
• For introductory articles covering mathematical finance see quantnotes (http://www.quantnotes.com/fundamentals/)
• An extensive resource for mathematical and quantitative finance at moneyscience.org (http://www.moneyscience.org)