Get Your Kids Investing

Get your kids interested in money and investing while they’re still young, and you may set them up for a life of financial security and possibly even early retirement! After all, children have much more of a critical ingredient for wealth building than the rest of us: time. Here are some ways to get them started:

1. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s “Money As You Grow” site at consumerfinance.gov

(click on “Consumer Tools”) offers activities for kids of all ages. Youngsters can also learn from the Secret Millionaires Club at smckids.com

— it offers videos and games and features advice from Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

2. Maintain a mock portfolio. Have your kids look around their home, school and town, and they’ll spot companies such as Apple, Boeing, Disney, Facebook, General Motors, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Starbucks and Walmart. Have them list companies that interest them most, with ticker symbols, current stock prices and today’s date. Pretend they’ve bought a few shares of each, then have them look up and record the latest prices every week or so, calculating their gains or losses. Such short-term stock price movements aren’t terribly meaningful, but they can help a child understand how the market works. (You can set up an online portfolio at sites such as finance.

yahoo.com/portfolios or elsewhere, which can make tracking their holdings even easier.)

3. Follow companies of interest together, watching them expand internationally, add stores, announce new products or services, compete with rivals, and report quarterly sales and earnings. Explore their websites and annual reports. Watch how news affects stock prices.

4. Eventually, help your kid(s) actually invest. You can open a custodial brokerage account, or you might informally “sell” some of your own shares to your child. Once your child turns 18, she can open her own brokerage account.

Teens (and clever preteens) can learn more in our book, “The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of,” by David and Tom Gardner with Selena Maranjian (Touchstone, $16).