Girls and investing

Discuss all general (i.e. non-personal) investing questions and issues, investing news, and theory.
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Mademoisellebogleheads
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Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

Bonjour, Bogleheads,

For those of you who are parents, grandparents, or teachers,

How old is too young for a young girl to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?

Merci,
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by The Wizard »

7 or 8 is way too young, yes...
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

May I ask you why?

What if there was a bubblegum pink princess Disney type of book to explain the vocabulary in the most girl friendly concept?

My colleagues have taught their 7 year old boys on investing, but never the girls. Why not?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

Also, if 7-8 is too young, when do you think would be a good age to start teaching our girls how to invest?

Warren Buffet started when he was 7.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Sandtrap »

Fundamental business concepts can be learned by anyone at any age in a way that can be understood. As simple as making good choices, thinking before acting and/or choosing, and the consequences of poor choices in the near and long term. It doesn't have to be about money. The concepts apply to everything around us. As simple as plant an apple tree, sell the apples, or, sell lemonade get money buy toys. Or, get good grades, be paid 50 cents for every "B", a dollar for every "A", which is investing in one self.

I grew up amongst business families. Uncle's laundromat. His children all helped out. Auntie's drug store. Her children did everything. And so forth. The lessons are organic and behavioral. It's not the currency of money but the currency of one's skillsets, values, and so forth.

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Re: Girls and investing

Post by bottlecap »

My oldest is 7. I don’t think I’m going to teach her about investing. Stuff like saving is more digestible and important at this point.

I also have a boy child. I don’t think that the yardstick will be different for him. I suspect that every child is different regardless of sex and I suspect that I will know when the time is right. Probably between 14 and 16, if I had to guess.

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Re: Girls and investing

Post by oldcomputerguy »

I would think that 7 or 8, while not too soon to learn about saving, is too soon to learn about investing. To get a good sense of investing, it’s important to have an idea of one’s goals, and very few 7 or8 year olds can wrap their heads around, say, retirement. Just my opinion.

By the way, why would it be different for girls versus boys?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by averagedude »

I think the best age to teach the BASICS of investing to a child is when you start to give them an allowance. Thats what my parents did.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by pkcrafter »

bottlecap wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:21 pm My oldest is 7. I don’t think I’m going to teach her about investing. Stuff like saving is more digestible and important at this point.

Yes, one must learn to save before there is anything to invest. :happy

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Re: Girls and investing

Post by tibbitts »

I don't think it would be different for girls vs. boys, but the issue to me is that investing as it's discussed here is boring, so I don't see how it would be interesting for kids.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by GoldenFinch »

I have four children and have found that their interest and maturity signaled whether they were ready and willing to learn about investing, not their age. The child being a boy or a girl has nothing to do with it.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

While retirement may be a foreign and unnecessary concept at this age of 8, the concept of investing can be taught in more tangible terms for the child, like being able to buy Barbie dolls, and lip gloss, etc.

Also, yes, one needs money to invest. So saving yes. Allowance yes. But the other way is to get a JOB.

What's wrong with planting the seed in an 8 year old girl about how to get a job? One can wash a neighbor's dog, or baby sit someone's plant. Make some money. Save some money. Invest. Then see one Barbie doll grows to 5 Barbie dolls.

I feel like the concepts of saving, entrepreneurship, hard work, business understanding, investing shouldn't be that difficult, if it's presented in the right way. Warren Buffet started these when he was 7.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

GoldenFinch wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:34 pm I have four children and have found that their interest and maturity signaled whether they were ready and willing to learn about investing, not their age. The child being a boy or a girl has nothing to do with it.


I would agree. But sometimes I feel like it's us, the adults who are prejudiced. I've known colleagues who have opened stock investment accounts for their 7 year old boys, but I have never heard of anyone doing that for girls.

Do we think girls are just not able to comprehend, or they are just not interested? Is the math too hard?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

pkcrafter wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:29 pm
bottlecap wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:21 pm My oldest is 7. I don’t think I’m going to teach her about investing. Stuff like saving is more digestible and important at this point.

Yes, one must learn to save before there is anything to invest. :happy

Paul

Or, get a job?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by arcticpineapplecorp. »

on a basic level you could teach some introductory concepts along the following lines:

1. have her set up a savings account and track the interest earned. Ask her why and how the account earns interest.

This will explain future value concepts : money today is more valuable than money a year from now, so to set it aside should require interest earned, otherwise you'd spent it now. This teaches that if you set money aside you should expect to earn something for delaying gratification now.

and how banking works (they take the money you deposit and lend it out to earn money. They give you part of the interest they earned since you lent it to them). This teaches them that they can either pay interest to a bank (by taking loans) or earn interest from lending money out (deposits at bank, bonds, etc.)

2. Talk to her about some of her favorite products. Could be CocaCola, Hersheys, McDonalds, Nike, Disney, etc. Explain these are companies that sell products and make money (have profit left over by selling items for more than the cost to produce them. You can get into economies of scale later, automation/industrial revolution that increases production at lower costs, etc.) Explain she can be a part owner of these companies and get a share of the profits these companies produce (dividends. This teaches introductory concepts about stocks). Eventually you'd teach her about owning the entire market rather than just picking some of these individucal companies she likes.

3. You could teach her about renting vs. owning a home. How renters pay rent to someone who owns the home. Explain how renters are essentially (if strucutred properly) paying the homeowner's (landlord's) mortgage and hopefully leaving profit (depending on what repairs need to be made, etc). You can also explain that owning a home builds equity over time and many sell their homes for more than they paid after many years (or decades) due to paying off the mortgage and appreciation of real estate.

These may seem advanced, but I think the concepts can be taught in an easy way for an 8-10 year old. I think the interest has to be there though. If they're not interested, it's just lecturing. But if you picque their curiousity, that's when you can make inroads, and use these real world examples (which I think work best).

Anything you can do is better than nothing. Women tend to live longer than men, so they need to understand financial concepts and investing even more than men if for no other reason than they need their money to last longer than men.

Also eventually you should teach her that women tend to do better at investing than men because they tend to leave their portfolios alone, unlike men who generally keep searching for new shiny objects to move their money around to. Its been said that investing is like a wet bar of soap. The more you handle it, the smaller it gets.
Last edited by arcticpineapplecorp. on Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

Thank you for all the thoughtful answer.

What do YOU think could pique the young girl's mind? How would you incentivize the process to make it fun for them????
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

When we look at the roster of all the famous legendary investors in the world, NOT A SINGLE WOMAN.

Maybe it's too late for our generation, but I hope not for the next!
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

We make children memorize stuff in school, math, vocabulary, social studies, government, but we don't give them a way to see how the knowledge could be transformed to personal wealth.

I supposed that if a girl feels like she could be a millionaire (a very tangible goal given inflation) she might be more motivated to learn in school about asthmatics, reading, writing, and speaking. And if she wants to follow the market's news, she better understand politics, economics, world geopolitics. It seems like a wonderful, real world way of learning, just my 2 cents.

I just wished someone had taught me when I was younger. That's why I'm wondering if other parents are thinking the same?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by NJ-Irish »

My first exposure to investing was around 11 with a school competition to manage a paper portfolio of $10,000 for 6 weeks. I remember for that six weeks my team “bought” a small amount of McDonald’s shares, not nearly $10k worth of shares, and because the market went down during those 6 weeks we ended ranking pretty high.

I remember thinking through the logic and figuring out why we ranked so high. It didn’t immediately make sense but I eventually figured out that everybody else’s portfolios went down and ours stayed around even.

Overall it was a good experience, especially learning that markets go down almost as often as they go up. I learned this at 11, not sure if I would have taken the same lessons away any younger.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

NJ-Irish wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:58 pm My first exposure to investing was around 11 with a school competition to manage a paper portfolio of $10,000 for 6 weeks. I remember for that six weeks my team “bought” a small amount of McDonald’s shares, not nearly $10k worth of shares, and because the market went down during those 6 weeks we ended ranking pretty high.

I remember thinking through the logic and figuring out why we ranked so high. It didn’t immediately make sense but I eventually figured out that everybody else’s portfolios went down and ours stayed around even.

Overall it was a good experience, especially learning that markets go down almost as often as they go up. I learned this at 11, not sure if I would have taken the same lessons away any younger.


May I ask you in the investment team, how many girls, and how many boys were there?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by tibbitts »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:49 pm We make children memorize stuff in school, math, vocabulary, social studies, government, but we don't give them a way to see how the knowledge could be transformed to personal wealth.

I supposed that if a girl feels like she could be a millionaire (a very tangible goal given inflation) she might be more motivated to learn in school about asthmatics, reading, writing, and speaking. And if she wants to follow the market's news, she better understand politics, economics, world geopolitics. It seems like a wonderful, real world way of learning, just my 2 cents.

I just wished someone had taught me when I was younger. That's why I'm wondering if other parents are thinking the same?
But Boglehead investing has nothing to with listening and reacting to market news, politics, geopolitics, etc. Honestly although we try to make math involved even that has almost nothing to do with Boglehead investing. The things you mention you need to earn wealth to invest - you don't need to know those things to invest once you have wealth.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

By math, I simple arithmetics. 25% of $1 million is $250,000. The concept to compound interest. The addition of $468,000 + $25 = $268,000. The subtraction of 1% interest from keeping the money in a certain account. All of these require math skills.

Even reading Vanguard statements, accountant statements, lawyer's statements, house purchase contracts, all of these things need reading and writing.

I would say that reading, writing, speaking, and math skills are absolutely critical to financial success. Even as a Boglehead.

Even as a Bogleheads, we have to understand politics, who's in control of the government all those things - this helps us understand why we tune them out and we have a real understanding of why we are Bogleheads.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by tibbitts »

NJ-Irish wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:58 pm My first exposure to investing was around 11 with a school competition to manage a paper portfolio of $10,000 for 6 weeks. I remember for that six weeks my team “bought” a small amount of McDonald’s shares, not nearly $10k worth of shares, and because the market went down during those 6 weeks we ended ranking pretty high.

I remember thinking through the logic and figuring out why we ranked so high. It didn’t immediately make sense but I eventually figured out that everybody else’s portfolios went down and ours stayed around even.

Overall it was a good experience, especially learning that markets go down almost as often as they go up. I learned this at 11, not sure if I would have taken the same lessons away any younger.
So the lesson you learned was that index investing was bad and picking the right stock was good.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by tibbitts »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:08 pm Even as a Bogleheads, we have to understand politics, who's in control of the government all those things - this helps us understand why we tune them out and we have a real understanding of why we are Bogleheads.
I think there are lots of people who have effectively tuned out politics without having any idea of who's in control of government. As in lots of people don't have a clue who their elected representative are. The thing about being a Boglehead is that you have to understand almost nothing to do it well. But yes, you have to understand things to generally get along well in other aspects of life.
Last edited by tibbitts on Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by danielc »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:16 pm For those of you who are parents, grandparents, or teachers,

How old is too young for a young girl to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?
I don't shy away from teaching complex subjects to a child. For a 7 year-old it might be a challenge, but you can still try. For example, you could spend $74 to buy her one share of Vanguard Total World Stock ETF then you can tell the child that now she owns a very tiny little piece of every company in the world. So take her to a store and show her the products, and explain that any time anybody buys a product, a very very small part of that money will now belong to her. Then on every birtday she will get a small little bit of money from all the products that people around the world have bought. Then what you would do is on every birthday you would give her a few coins.

Just an idea.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

tibbitts wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:12 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:08 pm Even as a Bogleheads, we have to understand politics, who's in control of the government all those things - this helps us understand why we tune them out and we have a real understanding of why we are Bogleheads.
I think there are lots of people who have effectively tuned out politics without having any idea of who's in control of government. As in lots of people don't have a clue who their elected representative are. The thing about being a Boglehead is that you have to understand almost nothing to do it well. But yes, you have to understand things to generally get along well in other aspects of life.
I kind of think that investing is tied into 'understanding things to generally get along well in other aspects of life.' I am concerned that younger people are not taught the concept of investing, but only the concept of working hard, saving, and doing the right things. Those are not enough. With inflation, globalization, and robotization, if folks are not investing as early as possible, the wealth gap between the 99% and the 1% is going to be bigger, and bigger, and bigger...
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

I am concerned about the gap between the 99% and the 1%, especially with the incoming robotization. Living in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the dream is becoming a night mare. We have robots that make and sell pizza. In Seattle, they have stores that are 100% powered by machines. In San Francisco, we have a sushi boat restaurant that has no waitress.

If people don't start investing early, they're not going to be able to keep up with the wealth distribution. So I'm not raising this issue as a 'feminist.' I am just trying to understand why we don't teach our younger girls the concept of investing when they are taught the concept of the Constitution, for example.

The bigger question is how do we make the process FUN and enticing for this audience?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by golfCaddy »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:21 pm Also, if 7-8 is too young, when do you think would be a good age to start teaching our girls how to invest?

Warren Buffet started when he was 7.
You're asking on the wrong message board. If learning to invest means learning how to select individual stocks like Buffet did, the answer from 99% of this board would be never. This board is dedicated to passive investment strategies.
Last edited by golfCaddy on Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

There is also a social disparity. I know of a family, dad is a venture capitalist, dinner conversations routinely contain topics on investment.

How about all the girls who's daddy is not a VC? or a Hedgefund Manager? Or a Boglehead? What about them????
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

golfCaddy wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:25 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:21 pm Also, if 7-8 is too young, when do you think would be a good age to start teaching our girls how to invest?

Warren Buffet started when he was 7.
You're asking on the wrong message board. If learning to invest means learning how to select individual stocks like Buffet did, the answer from 99% of this board would be never.
I would think that Boglehads approach is a subset of investing in equity, like a smaller circle in a Venn Diagram. I think it's important for someone to understand the principles of investing (company, stock markets, earnings, shares, shareholders, dividends, etc.) and then decide what kind of approach they want to take. Being a Boglehead, of which I am one, and I'm very familiar with this school of investing, requires understanding the bigger picture. Then we can justify why we are Bogleheads.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by NJ-Irish »

tibbitts wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:09 pm
NJ-Irish wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:58 pm My first exposure to investing was around 11 with a school competition to manage a paper portfolio of $10,000 for 6 weeks. I remember for that six weeks my team “bought” a small amount of McDonald’s shares, not nearly $10k worth of shares, and because the market went down during those 6 weeks we ended ranking pretty high.

I remember thinking through the logic and figuring out why we ranked so high. It didn’t immediately make sense but I eventually figured out that everybody else’s portfolios went down and ours stayed around even.

Overall it was a good experience, especially learning that markets go down almost as often as they go up. I learned this at 11, not sure if I would have taken the same lessons away any younger.
So the lesson you learned was that index investing was bad and picking the right stock was good.
No. I learned that equity markets have risk characteristics that are different than cash. I didn’t have a clue what index investing meant.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by randomguy »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:45 pm When we look at the roster of all the famous legendary investors in the world, NOT A SINGLE WOMAN.

Maybe it's too late for our generation, but I hope not for the next!
One of the most famous investors of all time (and a boglehead patron saint for the miser crowd:)) was a woman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green

There are might not be many woman in the top 10 list (I am not even sure if I can really name 10 great investors of any genders :)) but there are tons of them in the next tier. But nobody every talks about them.

Age for this type of things is very kid specifc. Most 7/8 year olds are working on basic money math (i.e. how many .05 gumballs can I get for 10 dollars) and don't have a great idea of what exactly things like companies are. Working on things like deferred gratification (i.e. save your 10 dollars for 3 months to buy a more expensive item) is more reasonable. This isn't a gender things. It is an age thing. Obviously some kids are more advanced in areas than others.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

danielc wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:12 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:16 pm For those of you who are parents, grandparents, or teachers,

How old is too young for a young girl to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?
I don't shy away from teaching complex subjects to a child. For a 7 year-old it might be a challenge, but you can still try. For example, you could spend $74 to buy her one share of Vanguard Total World Stock ETF then you can tell the child that now she owns a very tiny little piece of every company in the world. So take her to a store and show her the products, and explain that any time anybody buys a product, a very very small part of that money will now belong to her. Then on every birtday she will get a small little bit of money from all the products that people around the world have bought. Then what you would do is on every birthday you would give her a few coins.

Just an idea.


That's a cool idea. Would you take her to visit the NYSE for her next birthday? To see the bull?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by JoinToday »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:45 pm When we look at the roster of all the famous legendary investors in the world, NOT A SINGLE WOMAN.
...
Not true: Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green

edited to add: looks like randomguy already listed her

1. My initial reaction regarding boys and girls is that I would have guessed that girls would be ready to learn investing earlier than boys, the girls seem to mature a little faster than boys. But that could be a bias on my part.

2. What is interesting is that there are very few female chess grand masters, and women are under-represented at the top of the math fields/accomplishments. Perhaps it is interest related, perhaps aptitude related. I have read that boys & girls (men & women) have roughly the same average math aptitude or skill, but sigma is larger for males (more smarter males and more males on the other end of the distribution (I am looking for a polite way of saying dumber)).

Men are over represented in stamp collecting, coin collecting, violence, etc. So perhaps investing is similar with respect to interest in investing.

3. And I am sure there is societal conditioning, that men are "expected" to take care of the money (a bad expectation in my opinion)
I wish I had learned about index funds 25 years ago
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by danielc »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:33 pm That's a cool idea. Would you take her to visit the NYSE for her next birthday? To see the bull?
I doubt that she would understand, but a holiday is a holiday, so why not. She'll probably be more impressed by the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. I went to see the bull last year and it was pretty busy. There wasn't a lot of room to move or to see much.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by golfCaddy »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:28 pm I would think that Boglehads approach is a subset of investing in equity, like a smaller circle in a Venn Diagram. I think it's important for someone to understand the principles of investing (company, stock markets, earnings, shares, shareholders, dividends, etc.) and then decide what kind of approach they want to take. Being a Boglehead, of which I am one, and I'm very familiar with this school of investing, requires understanding the bigger picture. Then we can justify why we are Bogleheads.
While it can be fun to geek out on investing, the only part anyone truly needs to understand is this: https://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/ ... active.htm. Everything else is noise.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

danielc wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:41 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:33 pm That's a cool idea. Would you take her to visit the NYSE for her next birthday? To see the bull?
I doubt that she would understand, but a holiday is a holiday, so why not. She'll probably be more impressed by the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. I went to see the bull last year and it was pretty busy. There wasn't a lot of room to move or to see much.


I might take her to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania then, to visit the Vanguard HQ! Then have some ice cream..
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by ResearchMed »

pkcrafter wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:29 pm
bottlecap wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:21 pm My oldest is 7. I don’t think I’m going to teach her about investing. Stuff like saving is more digestible and important at this point.

Yes, one must learn to save before there is anything to invest. :happy

Paul
Yes, but saving, to me anyway, IS part of investing, not just a pre-cursor.
After all, it's acceptable, depending upon one's goals and risk comfort levels, etc., to keep some or much in cash-like instruments, and at all stages.

Nothing "wrong" with encouraging saving, and as time goes on, introducing other things.
Perhaps a short term CD, and thus the concept of tying up money longer/being more patient, and getting better returns. (That's just an off the cuff thought just now.)
The trickier part will be introducing something riskier, such that the child might see the total go *down*. That's a bit tougher at any age :wink:

BTW, there was just an article I read (NO idea of validity/etc., or where I read it) that pointed out that at the allowance stage, in general, boys get more than girls, starting very early.

RM
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Hulu
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Hulu »

Trying to teach my toddler to take only what she needs. And to care about other people. I think investing can dovetail off of that so I'd say it's never too early. In terms of actual investing she knows that I help people by "giving people houses" (investment properties) to "make money to help people" (philanthropy). Even if she has no idea what it means I feel like it's good for her to start young. Even more important for girls than boys.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:33 pm
danielc wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:12 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:16 pm For those of you who are parents, grandparents, or teachers,

How old is too young for a young girl to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?
I don't shy away from teaching complex subjects to a child. For a 7 year-old it might be a challenge, but you can still try. For example, you could spend $74 to buy her one share of Vanguard Total World Stock ETF then you can tell the child that now she owns a very tiny little piece of every company in the world. So take her to a store and show her the products, and explain that any time anybody buys a product, a very very small part of that money will now belong to her. Then on every birtday she will get a small little bit of money from all the products that people around the world have bought. Then what you would do is on every birthday you would give her a few coins.

Just an idea.


That's a cool idea. Would you take her to visit the NYSE for her next birthday? To see the bull?
They don’t give visitor tours anymore, however at age 12 you could take her on a tour at The Ferderal Reserve Bank of NY located at 33 Liberty Street. The best you’ll do at NYSE is take a picture of it on Broad Street.

You could take her on a tour at Museum of American Financial History located off of Wall and Williams Street.

Teach her about compound interest- those who understand it, earn it. Those who don’t, pay it.
Ask your young pupil which is better, one hundred dollars today or investing it for a period of 1 year at an interest rate of 8%. What about investing the same for a period of two years at 8%? Investing means to delay self gratification and to grow ones assets. Consumerism is the opposite, spend today, leaving you with less instead of more.
"One should invest based on their need, ability and willingness to take risk - Larry Swedroe" Asking Portfolio Questions
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FiveK
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by FiveK »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:16 pm How old is too young for a [child] to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?
As others have noted,
- The sex of the child is irrelevant. We have both.
- Learning to earn and not immediately spend should come first.
- For a child's first "investment" beyond a savings account (e.g., in a custodial Roth), "just put it all in Vanguard's 2065 target date fund, and check back in ten years" is reasonable advice.
- Further investment lessons shouldn't be much more complicated than the one above.
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Mademoisellebogleheads
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

Hulu wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:56 pm Trying to teach my toddler to take only what she needs. And to care about other people. I think investing can dovetail off of that so I'd say it's never too early. In terms of actual investing she knows that I help people by "giving people houses" (investment properties) to "make money to help people" (philanthropy). Even if she has no idea what it means I feel like it's good for her to start young. Even more important for girls than boys.


But that's part of my frustration. I see society (myself included, guilty as charged) almost feeling 'guilty' about teaching investment to girls, as if there's something sinful or unsavory or ungirl like about it. So we focus on doing well in school, philanthropy, going into the caring professions, like nursing, teaching, medicine, the arts.


But for boys, it's as if there is no shame in teaching them about how to be successful including in wealth. Go for it. Take some risks. Make big bucks. Support your family.

And the end result is at the end of life, men are hugely outperforming women in terms of quantity invested.

Hettie, is known as Witch of Wall Street. Warren Buffett, the Wizard of Omaha.
Hettie, is known as a 'miser.' Warren, a 'frugal' sage.
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Mademoisellebogleheads
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

Grt2bOutdoors wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:56 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:33 pm
danielc wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:12 pm
Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:16 pm For those of you who are parents, grandparents, or teachers,

How old is too young for a young girl to start learning the basics of investing?

7 or 8, too young?
I don't shy away from teaching complex subjects to a child. For a 7 year-old it might be a challenge, but you can still try. For example, you could spend $74 to buy her one share of Vanguard Total World Stock ETF then you can tell the child that now she owns a very tiny little piece of every company in the world. So take her to a store and show her the products, and explain that any time anybody buys a product, a very very small part of that money will now belong to her. Then on every birtday she will get a small little bit of money from all the products that people around the world have bought. Then what you would do is on every birthday you would give her a few coins.

Just an idea.


That's a cool idea. Would you take her to visit the NYSE for her next birthday? To see the bull?
They don’t give visitor tours anymore, however at age 12 you could take her on a tour at The Ferderal Reserve Bank of NY located at 33 Liberty Street. The best you’ll do at NYSE is take a picture of it on Broad Street.

You could take her on a tour at Museum of American Financial History located off of Wall and Williams Street.

Teach her about compound interest- those who understand it, earn it. Those who don’t, pay it.
Ask your young pupil which is better, one hundred dollars today or investing it for a period of 1 year at an interest rate of 8%. What about investing the same for a period of two years at 8%? Investing means to delay self gratification and to grow ones assets. Consumerism is the opposite, spend today, leaving you with less instead of more.

That's a fun trip idea. I'm hoping you all will give me some FUN ideas about how to girl-talk this to my younger girl. I'm not too low to stoop down to the Disney princess level. :D
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by golfCaddy »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:45 pm When we look at the roster of all the famous legendary investors in the world, NOT A SINGLE WOMAN.

Maybe it's too late for our generation, but I hope not for the next!
What's the goal here: to teach the basics of investing or to groom her into the next Warren Buffet or Ray Dalio? For the former, give her a Random Walk on Wall Street or one of Jack Bogle's books. For the latter, focus on getting admitted to a top college, and the best way is to be good enough at a sport to be a recruited athlete, assuming grades and test scores are otherwise above some minimum threshold. Instead of teaching investing, focus on golf lessons or tennis lessons or becoming the best in some other sport.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

How old should a girl be before she starts to take golf lessons?
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by CedarWaxWing »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:38 pm
GoldenFinch wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:34 pm I have four children and have found that their interest and maturity signaled whether they were ready and willing to learn about investing, not their age. The child being a boy or a girl has nothing to do with it.


I would agree. But sometimes I feel like it's us, the adults who are prejudiced. I've known colleagues who have opened stock investment accounts for their 7 year old boys, but I have never heard of anyone doing that for girls.

Do we think girls are just not able to comprehend, or they are just not interested? Is the math too hard?
Why do you think your sampling of colleagues is a representative sample of "us"?

It would never occur to me to treat my girl (or in my case nieces) any different than a boy in regards to their financial education or any other subject on the basis of their gender. This applies to most any educational topic, or survival skill for that matter.

We started the financial education of my kids by having a small savings account for each, plus a small CD for each that was renewed on every maturation date, and when they started earning money we matched some of their earnings IF they put it into a roth ira. We also showed them the returns on an annual basis, or on CD renewal, and when they had a roth we also showed them the comparative difference in returns and risks. In their teens I reviewed with them the impressive effects of compounding, and showed them on a future value spreadsheet that we made how starting very early can make a huge difference on the final outcome, and also how the difference between a savings, cd, and roth put into a low cost mutual fund can make to the long term final outcome. I also have reviewed with them the big recession we had starting about 2007, and showed how that caused things they/we had to take a dive, and how important it was to keep socking funds away into that index fund during that period.

During their college years I gave them each a copy of the Bogleheads Guide to Investing, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, and How a Second Grader Beats Wallstreet. I included a USB drive full of interesting spreadsheet tools (much of which was from the Bogleheads Wiki), some pdf books (all legal), and some published papers that I came across online from Mr. Bogle, Sharpe, and a few others.

If I find a thread on Bogleheads.org that seems to be especially pertinent to their lives, I send links.

I also educated them about life insurance and what to watch out for when a sales person starts trying to sell something. This included a warning to never make a decision on any products like that without running it by me, and/or referring to a good book on personal finance that is written by someone who in not in the insurance business.

We showed them with numbers how the effect of costs of mutual funds, and "FA" costs also are a huge issue. (They don't need an FA but sometimes we talk over decisions they are stewing about.)

Because I am now in the right age group... we are filling them in on SS and how to evaluate your decision on when to collect or postpone, and some of the nuances of spousal benefits and restricted filing. We have discussed the controversies of SS funding in the political arena which of source we don't go into here.

We discussed unwanted pregnancy and since I have only boys, I mentioned that if they father a child that is unplanned that will have a huge financial and social impact on their life because the will be held to a high standard of behavior in regards to supporting that child and his/her mother as need be until the child is an educated adult. A daughter of course would have had a similar talk with a slant on the uneven burden a female bears when she has an unintended pregnancy.

Regardless... imho.. financial education can start as early as a child can understand the concept of money and that it can buy life's essentials and non essentials, and what happens when you spend money for essentials on things that are not essential.

None of this has any bearing on gender as far as I can tell. One of the biggest personal decisions in financial welfare of a young adult is imho, is one's selection of a life partner, so we have brought that up also. Does gender have any bearing on that? No, except perhaps how the law effects both parties in a divorce, but since that is not within my expertise I simply said divorce is very expensive for everyone, and takes a very big toll in other ways also.

Once the investing and finance education starts, simply advance as tolerated.
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by JoinToday »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:10 pm How old should a girl be before she starts to take golf lessons?

7 or 8. The earlier the better
I wish I had learned about index funds 25 years ago
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by CedarWaxWing »

Mademoisellebogleheads wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:10 pm How old should a girl be before she starts to take golf lessons?
When she wants to take the lessons and is capable of taking the instruction. No special age, but the instructor will likely have something to say about that...
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by danielc »

Grt2bOutdoors wrote: Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:56 pm
Teach her about compound interest- those who understand it, earn it. Those who don’t, pay it.
Brilliant! I think I found my new signature!
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Re: Girls and investing

Post by Mademoisellebogleheads »

900 views in 2 hours - hopefully this was useful to some as it was useful for me to hear from the different perspectives. I am intrigued by Hettie, the Witch of Wall Street. Sounds like a cool gal.
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