Episode 14 : Kids Buying Stocks and Investing

Can kids start investing in stocks? Absolutely! The world has changed and kids at a younger age can start investing some of that allowance and birthday cash to start growing their money earlier in life. Learning this financial term as kids can have a huge impact on the financial future of any generation. Tune in to hear how the Cash Kid invests and how to be an informed investor. The Cash Kid Podcast is underway! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Alright, today Cash Kids, we are diving into one of my favorite topics: Investing and stocks.

What does investing mean?

What’s a way a kid can invest and purchase stocks?

Keep listening. We’ll answer those questions and more coming up. Let’s learn how to grow your money using these essential financial tools. Stay tuned the Cash Kid podcast is underway!

Intro tease:

So you’ve got some cash. Maybe from an allowance, or that money your grandma gave you for your 7th birthday. Here you go, sweetie. Thanks, Grandma.

Whatever it is, what are you going to do with it? Spend it, hide it away… or maybe invest it? Let’s start learning how to make that money grow.

Time to learn how to be a cash kid.

Since launching this podcast almost a year ago now, I get asked a lot about investing, what stocks I like, and where do I invest. My mom says there are some odd conversations that happen in our house at times regarding stocks. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

[Mom: What do you mean? I’ll be cooking dinner only to turn around and you and your 9-year-old brother are discussing the gains and losses of a company over the last six months and whether not now is the time to buy. I’m sorry, it may be the new norm in our house… but that’s not the norm in other homes. I mean, how do I write that down in a baby book. Kids discussed Apple stock today. Looks like Johnnie is finally ready to buy that first stock. I mean, come on, it’s a little surreal at times in our house.]

Well, I’m working to make it more the norm Mom. If you haven’t figured it out by now episode 28, I like stocks and any way to make money grow without doing much.

So, let’s start with the basics. What does the term investing even mean? 

Investing is when you spend money with the expectation of achieving a profit. Lots of our parents like to watch these HGTV home renovation shows. What are these folks mostly working towards when they “invest” in buying one of these fixer upper homes? They are looking for that investment (or money spent into buying the home) to fix it up and then make a profit. 

In the stock market, when you invest, you are putting money into a company or companies with the expectation you’ll receive a profit in return down the road. I like the way wikipedia describes an investment as a commitment of money to receive more money later.

So, one thing to remember as kids, investing is not a short term game. You are putting money in an account to let it sit and grow overtime. My focus on the Cash Kid Podcast is to help get this concept across to my peers that “time” is exactly what’s on our side.

Now, how do I invest? I get asked this a lot. I use an app called Greenlight. 

Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families, that’s managed by parents. It gives parents tools to manage and monitor their kids spending. You can transfer money straight from a checking account to the kids account on Greenlight. You can pay an allowance this way, assign chores, set savings goals, donate to charity… and my personal favorite… buy stocks.

Within the app I can research stocks and ETFs, and mutual funds. I can view charts, buy and sell stocks see how much the stocks are gaining or losing money. The accessibility on this app is amazing.

Also some shares can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and some kids just don’t have that kind of money. So on Greenlight, you can buy partial shares so you always can invest even when you don’t have the money to buy a full stock.

I do all my buying and selling within the app. 

Since then, I’ve had sometime already to watch the stock prices go up and down and gotten more patient with what I buy and sell. I’m reading books more and doing more research to save up for stocks I want to be able afford stocks I feel will give me a profit from my investment. 

My parents for Christmas this past year gifted me a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. I get up some mornings just to read about different stocks and businesses to see what’s happening. Part of being an investor is being informed of what’s going on in the world. Mrs. Wanda McAbee, the Executive Director of the Alabama Council on Economic Education, addressed this in a previous episode in regards to playing the stock market game. Here’s a refresh of what she had to say:

Wanda McAbee: “But stock market game is the perfect example of finding a way to help students see the real world connections. So on your portfolio, when you're playing stock market game, and a stock goes up or down, sometimes, you know, you've done research about that stock. But a lot of times, it doesn't matter how much research you've done, what's going on in world events will cause it to go up or down, whether there's a famine, or whether there's a pandemic, or whether there's a war, or whether there's a presidential election. And so we see those real world connections. So it's very important that students gain the knowledge and are equipped with the skills to look at situations to make decisions, to see those real world connections, because that is what's going to impact them in their future as adults and present being productive members of society.”

So to invest, you need to take a little time to be informed. You can look at the company's financial reports and see how much money they are making. You can also read news articles to see what people are saying about the company.

We’re kids still, so I’m not saying spend hours a day. I spend a few minutes a day browsing the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s articles. It’s helped me for sure.

Investing into stocks is an amazing way to help grow your money. I mean look at companies like Amazon. They went up and split in like 30 years. If you invested 30 years ago you would have made a lot of money.

Investing in stocks is a good way to make more money. When you buy a stock, you buy a small piece of a company. If the company does well, the value of your stock goes up and you can sell it for more money than you bought it for. But if the company does badly, the value of your stock goes down and you might lose money.

Remember, investing is not a guarantee that you will make money. There is always a risk that you will lose money, but you should just hold on to it because if it's a good company it might go back up. And if you're not sure what to do, it's a good idea to talk to a grown-up who knows about investing or even just your parents.

I’ve got some future guests in mind who I feel can help us know and understand about buying stocks and investing in future episodes. Right now, we’re trying to lay the ground work for understanding super financial literacy terms to be prepared and take action (some of you already are, which is great!)

Cash Kids, we have more terms, discussions, and skills to learn. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Follow us @cashkidpodcast on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest and wherever you are listening, leave a review! We need your help reaching a larger audience and building the financial skills of the next generation.

If you have a question, please, reach out to me at cashkidspodcast@gmail.com and I’ll answer it in a future episode. You can also reach out via our website at cashkidpodcast.com. 

Cash Kid, out!