Many of you may have seen our special Financial Quarterback Episode (with special guest, my daughter Delaney) about helping your kids and grandkids get started investing. We look at investing as a great way to reinforce the ideas of goal setting, saving, and budgeting. And it can help your kids or grandkids on the long-term path to financial independence.
We always start our investing with a family meeting. The first thing we do is look at companies we like who make things we’re familiar with and use. For example, we use Apple phones, watch Netflix at home, and my kids wear clothing from Lululemon and Nike.
I have three kids, so each of them was able to pick four stocks. Instead of fighting over the stocks, we decided to take a pooled approach to the money. I didn’t want one child to substantially gain or lose more than the others, so we decided to have them all share in the total gains.
We get together several times a year, which keeps us focused on what we chose and how well it’s doing.
It also gives us the ability to talk about the stocks and see if there are any we want to sell to lock in any gains. I would also recommend opening an UGMA or UTMA account in the kids’ name(s) to possibly get some more favorable tax treatment when you buy or sell securities.
Remind them not to panic if a stock goes down.Over time, they usually come back if they are good companies. It’s also important that these portfolios are well diversified, as you don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket.
The sooner your kids start investing, the greater the impact compounding will have, so it’s important to understand the benefits of investing early.
