My 13 year old wants to invest

Submitted by softballmom2014 t3_zxuhe6 in personalfinance

My 13 year old son wants to start investing. What are the first steps? Should we open an account somewhere? What would the best investment be? It’s not a lot a few hundred dollars to start but I’m trying to encourage his interest.

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nkyguy1988 t1_j22d5b7 wrote

Fidelity has a teen account. Check that out. Use this opportunity to teach fund investing. I personally would not let them make any single stock picks at all. It's a good practice to learn and a fairly small amount of money invested early can turn to millions if done early enough.

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bowoodchintz t1_j22wv4w wrote

I don’t know, there is a lot to learned from failure and mistakes as well. Picking a single stock and having it do poorly might be a great learning experience.

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Money_Maketh_Man t1_j22h0f3 wrote

I too recommend going with fidelity they should have a little signup bonus atm.

look into the 4 fee free index funds fidelity have

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EVERGREEN13 t1_j22q7tx wrote

Do a simulation portfolio first of $100,000. Your son picks 10 companies to study, invest, and follow the portfolio performance. When making a simulation purchase, use the actual market price at the time of the decision to buy or sell. What he will learn is that frequent buying and selling will generate a loss. Long term investing should be the lesson learned. Best Wishes!

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Mustergas t1_j22ctn6 wrote

I’m not saying they shouldn’t invest but I’d have a very serious conversation with them about the risks of investing. Id also check all their social media and browser history to make sure they aren’t yoloing all their money into crypto or whatever pump and dump wallstreetbets is pumping.

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micoasaurus t1_j22eq0p wrote

What I wish my parents did was taught me how to read a financial statement and try to discern information from that.

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BTCbob t1_j238seg wrote

I played with virtual stock exchanges as a 13 year old and did not learn much. I would have preferred having view access on some $100 put into an investment fund. Eg put it on an index fund and tell them they can have it when they turn 18. Could teach them a valuable lesson about taxes also haha.

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Interesting-Dish8894 t1_j24653s wrote

Actual investing is very boring and long term so if the teenager thinks it is something exciting then he will be disappointed most likely. If his mindset is that crypto and windfalls of cash from rapidly increasing single stock prices is what he plans on being part of then that is called gambling. Important distinction between the two

I realize there are a bunch of know nothing fortune tellers on tik tok that like to video themselves looking at cool looking stock charts on their computers and talk about the candlesticks and dips and all that shit but the only thing they are doing is fucking guessing and trying to make sense of the past so that it makes them look way smarter than they are and this can look very exciting to the ill informed

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