I have a couple of questions that I'm interested in hearing opinions on. I have my thoughts on what I want to/should do, but curious if any others have opinions/experiences that may help in my decision making/guidance.

1. Currently I have savings account for all my kids. Two opened their own brokerage account 3-4 years ago because they showed the initiative and were interested in it. Instead of leaving the other kids' money in just a savings account, would it be best to open brokerage account and move those funds into an S&P 500 type ETF? Then, if they ever want to pick stocks themselves, sell a portion of the S&P ETF to have the cash to buy the stocks they choose. And with the kids that currently already have a brokerage account, transfer the excess in their savings into an S&P ETF as well?

2. How much discretion should I allow my kids with their decisions on buying/selling? One had 1-2 shares of 5 or so stocks, 1 being Academy. They came to me and wanted to nearly double their account balance by transferring money from their savings account to buy more Academy at $45. The reason was that they had been watching it and, "it has gone back and forth from $45-$55 and it will go back to $55." I had my hesitations about letting them do that and told them past performance is not indicative of future performance. But I also figured if it tanked, learning at a young age with a relatively small amount might be a good lesson to learn. They sold earlier this week just under $55 because they "didn't trust it anymore." This time it worked out, but I'm not sure if it is best to let them have full decision-making authority in this manner going forward. The gain on the sale (only held for a couple weeks) was over 10% of their current account balance and nearly 20% of the balance prior to adding to their account.

I would also welcome easy to understand suggestions on guiding kids that are not in college about the best ways to research companies to choose.

My $0.02:

1. Yes, take it out of savings. An index fund has low cost and if you are going to just let it sit for a long time, will definitely go up.

2. I wouldn't let them use real money. Give them fake "money" - say $10,000. Have them invest and each year or six months or whatever, declare a winner and give them a prize they want - video game console, etc... You could even give them two accounts each and go through different investment strategies, etc... You can set up a simple spreadsheet in Excel. It has stock functions that update automatically and will calculate gains, losses, etc.

Or even better to mimic work/life, they can "deposit" some of their paycheck each 2 weeks into whatever. Conditions them for the real world and they will see dollar cost averaging. They can also see how much their money grows over time. Set up rewards etc... to generate interest.

I did a UTMA account for my daughter and put it into a Blue Chip ETF. Any money she gets for birthdays or whatever we transfer over to it, plus I "pay" her into it with her allowance. I show the stats to her monthly on how much it's gone up and she's really liking that (almost $500 profit in 2 years). It can be counted as an asset for college loans I saw, but we are hoping to fully fund that with the 529 plan.

She also has a little savings account for if she wants to buy something we don't want to pay for. She hasn't done that in a while though, she's more interested in the UTMA.

I opened a UTMA that I run, kids don't even know about it. I also opened a Fidelity Youth account for them, which I like. It comes with some guardrails such as no foreign or penny stocks. They have full control but I can see what they are doing. I put $10/week into that account. They had made some bad choices but overall they seem interested in investing in what they know a bit about and have done well overall.

I just created a powerpoint presentation on beginner investing and gave a Zoom training call for my three cousins

female age 19

female age 18

Male age 15

Kids are elementary age. Both have a brokerage and 529 at Fidelity and invested 100% in the basic low cost (0.01%) Fidelity 500 Index fund for the brokerages. We put the first $ into them when they were born. Not sure when, but at some point when we introduce them to investing, I think it will be a great story to show them how there "own" $ has already doubled/tripled to show the earning power of time in the market.

Looking ahead to college and if you feel like you are eligible for financial aid, assets under your student count more "against" you than your own assets. Just a variable to the equation to consider.

I can't keep up with my fantasy team, much less paper accounts on top of the real ones for all my kids.

My oldest heard a hot tip from someone at school and wants to put the rest of their free cash in WWR.

khkman22 said:

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I can't keep up with my fantasy team, much less paper accounts on top of the real ones for all my kids.

My oldest heard a hot tip from someone at school and wants to put the rest of their free cash in WWR.

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Is he old enough for a Lambo?

With excel it's pretty easy to set up a stock function and it updates automatically.