Give Kids Supplies Instead of Toys
The kids have too many things, says any parent who waited for the kid to rush to school so that she could pull all the lonely, untouched toys from her where Kondo just was into the local donation basket.
Some have said NO MORE , and I support them. Friends on the net gave me some great gifts for birthdays and holidays – museum memberships, baseball walks, donations to cool nonprofits on behalf of a kid – but one idea that really captivated me was promotions.
Stocks are something I would never, never have thought of – when I read the sentence, I really thought that someone had misspelled the word socks. But there are companies that make the process of granting shares easy enough for the inexperienced in finance, making it an ongoing learning process. It is hoped that children will gain a sense of responsibility for their financial future.
Stockpile, an online brokerage firm , lets you buy a gift card, select a promotion – preferably something that might interest a child, such as Disney, Mattel, or GameStop – and give it to a young recipient who pays nothing to keep the investment. These are shares of, say, $ 25, $ 50, or $ 100, depending on your budget.
A child can go online at any time to see how stocks are doing and why their value might rise or fall. (If you hear shouts of “No! No! NO!” And a light banging of your head on the keyboard, the market may have crashed.) With parental approval, your new investor can trade stocks.
If the kid is really passionate about it, parents might want to use an app called BusyKid for $ 12 a year. When the child completes tasks on the household to-do list, he or she can use his / her stock investing manual.
This is an opportunity for the whole family to learn about investing and money management, as well as basic life skills.