Stocks for Kids: Teaching Children Financial Fundamentals
One of the best ways that parents and grandparents can bond with their children and grandkids is in playing the investment game together – the older generation, giving the new generation a little financial initiation. A shared adventure among uncharted financial waters could be incredibly excitings and rewarding. Plus, you probably don’t have to go through a broker or worry about commissions for the small levels of activity you have in mind buying stocks for kids.
As a first step, you could go out to a website like ING’s ShareBuilder, that lets you buy their stocks for kids in very small quantities, at practically no commission for each trade. If you are helping a child invest $100, and this doesn’t divide evenly with a stock that is, say, $15 apiece, sites such as this let you buy fractions of a share for the remaining. And if you go to a website like MyStockDirect, you can even directly buy from the company, and cut out the middleman.
It’s an opportunity every family should explore, and is the subject of a new post – “Stocks for Kids” – at East West Editorial. Give it a quick read soon and see how it might fit into your plans to teach financial saving and discipline while having fun at the same time. After all what kid wouldn’t like investing in Krispy Kreme or Disney?
