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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Mini Money Mustaches => Topic started by: salty_monk on May 30, 2018, 04:40:00 PM

Title: Learn about Stocks & shares - Ghost account for kids?
Post by: salty_monk on May 30, 2018, 04:40:00 PM
I'm looking for a resource to teach my kid about stocks, shares, funds etc (Basically trying to explain to an 8yr old by example why I mainly use VTI instead of "buying bits of amazon"...)

At the moment I have him interested but I need an interesting way to teach it otherwise he'll get bored!

Anyone heard of a place you can sign up for a "play" account & put virtual stocks in and have them follow the market? Thinking of having him create an ETF based portfolio & then "play his hand" with the same amount of virtual money & see what he learns in the process. If I can teach him something about PL, BS etc along the way so much the better.

Thought all this might help lead him into here in a few years... see if he can beat me to FI!
Title: Re: Learn about Stocks & shares - Ghost account for kids?
Post by: protostache on May 31, 2018, 07:35:28 PM
Real money is going to be infinitely more interesting than fake money. Set up a UTMA at Schwab with a few hundred bucks and actually make some trades.
Title: Re: Learn about Stocks & shares - Ghost account for kids?
Post by: salty_monk on June 05, 2018, 10:10:15 PM
Thanks, maybe we'll give that a go... If he makes some cash we can transfer to a Vanguard I assume.

Dan
Title: Re: Learn about Stocks & shares - Ghost account for kids?
Post by: lazy-saver on June 07, 2018, 05:41:00 PM
I'd be a bit concerned that if you're lucky / unlucky it will teach the opposite lesson of what you want. It might still make it easier to have the conversation, but you should plan for that.
Title: Re: Learn about Stocks & shares - Ghost account for kids?
Post by: Trifle on June 08, 2018, 07:24:54 AM
I'll share what we did FWIW -- We set up an account for each kid at Schwab when they turned 10, and let them pick three individual stocks.  They had fun researching various companies, and ended up with things like Hasbro, Disney, Hershey and so on.  They were companies they could relate to.  Then we watched what happened with the stocks for a year or two.

Then, as step two when they were about 12, we had them start investing in the Schwab 1000 index fund.  Because they had the starting experience with a few individual stocks, they were able to understand what the 1000 index fund is -- that was a key learning point.  Now all their investing money goes into the index fund.  The Schwab accounts for kids are great because of their low start amount ($100 I think) and their low individual purchase amount ($1).  And their fees are low.