Make your kids investors

One of the best gifts you can give your kids is helping them become savvy about money. Here are some ideas:

• Talk about money regularly. Let your kids see how you make financial decisions and work toward financial goals — and even how you pay bills. Discuss your successes and challenges. Help them learn what things such as housing, utilities and gasoline cost.

• An online search for “Money as You Grow” will turn up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau site full of activities, teaching tips and resources for kids of various ages. Younger kids can also learn from the “Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaires Club” cartoon series, which is on Youtube and elsewhere.

• Get kids interested in investing in stocks via a mock portfolio. Whether on paper or via an online portfolio tracker (available at sites such as Finance.yahoo.com), assemble a bunch of publicly traded companies your kids know and admire, including their ticker symbols and stock prices as of the day you add them. (Candidates might include Amazon, Apple, Coca-cola, Costco, Disney, General Motors, Hasbro, Mattel, Mcdonald’s, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike and Walmart.) Pretend they’ve bought shares, then start following the companies in the news and checking their quarterly reports, seeing how the share prices fluctuate and shrink or grow over time. Show them how much their investments would have earned; stress that long-term results are what really matter, and that even great companies can slump over a few months or even a year.

• Let your kids invest. When you think they’re ready, you might help them start actually investing via a custodial account opened at a major brokerage. Or be less formal and buy a few shares at their direction in your own account. Kids can fund Roth IRAS, too, if they have earned income (even from babysitting).

• Finally, have them check out 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, $17).