Idea for Teenage Investing & Books to Read

[Beach_Stache]

Hi All,
I have a 13 year old who loves to read (although not finance books I'm sure).  I have 2 other sons (11 & 9) who I also want to make sure they understand money and start investing early.  My thought to incentivize the oldest to invest is give him a list of 3-5 books, tell him if he reads (and understands) them that I'll give him X$ to start his own investments.  Then maybe when he starts working a real job I'll match dollar for dollar in a Roth IRA or something like that.  So, 2 questions:
1. Would you change my plan on $ to give and if so how?
2. What books do I add to the list?  Was thinking "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", "A random walk down wallstreet", "The Richest man in babylon", "The millionaire next door".

My son loves to read, but I don't want to bore him to death, but I enjoyed all of these books (and don't read a ton of books).  Please let me know what you think and any alternative plans to getting my oldest (and the next 2) interested in finance.

[reeshau]

I gave my brothers The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape one year, thinking to inspire them.  My youngest brother, who is not a big reader, blew through it while we were still visiting.  Thinking he would be very engaged, his feedback was: "yeah, but what are we supposed to *do*?"  He was looking for something much more practical, than big-thoughts-and-dreams.

I went back to the drawing board, and came back the following year with Your Money Ratios, by Charles Farrell.  It's basically a CFP in a book.  Given the format, it is centered around an assumption of an average-earnings household retiring at SS full retirement age.  But it covers a plethora of topics, including education, insurance, and kids.  Everyone I have recommended it or given it to has come back with a different Aha! point.  It is also showing its age a bit, as it was published in 2009.  But if you are particularly looking to show the impact of compounding and student loans, it's the direct route.  It is also short, at 119 pages, and arranged so that it can be skipped around to topics of interest.

[scantee]

I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi seems like a good option for a teen. The title has the kind of flashiness that might appeal to young people but the lessons of the book go beyond just personal finance into identifying values.

Your Money or Your Life is of course another classic. I would get the revised version as a lot of the investing advice from the original is pretty bad.

I would also send him the MMM post “The Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement.” Even if he doesn’t want to retire early, that post is a great distillation of the trade off between investing versus spending.