Thursday, March 19, 1998

Me and My Kids
By Rick Gleason ([email protected])

The recent appearance of the Fribble How Do I Get My Wife Involved? got me to thinking just how lucky I am, even though I've never been successful in getting my wife involved in investments. After realizing that my spouse would probably never share in my enthusiasm, I have turned to my children with some success.

My eighteen-year-old daughter has recently taken some interest in the subject because of a college finance class. An ongoing assignment is an investment of an imaginary $50,000 into the market. With a little help from her dad, her portfolio to date is up over 8% in under two months. I try to keep her motivated these days through e-mail and will work on her more aggressively when she comes home for the summer.

My sixteen-year-old son was at the right age at the right time as he watched my investing interest expand. In the last year I've organized a seven-member investment group and in addition have started my own Intel DRiP account. My son has also joined the group and for his sixteenth birthday my spouse and I bought his first share of Intel through the National Association of Investors Corporation's DRiP program. Since then, he has made a number of additional investments into the DRiP.

His very first investment, prior to the investment group and Intel was in Microsoft. He and I both bought shares in October of 1996. So far his first investment is up 142%! The only bad thing about his early good fortune is that he expects all of his investments to perform comparably.

Matt is very motivated and has a couple of jobs that bring him regular income. As a sixteen-year-old high-school student, with a driver's license, you can imagine the distractions he faces, but he has thus far managed to accumulate a portfolio of just over $2,100.00. When I pick him up at school the first thing he wants to talk about is today's action in the stock market. To say the least this has been very exciting for me to see. I wish I knew at age sixteen the things he knows. I would certainly be driving a different car and living in a different neighborhood these days.

I also have a thirteen-year-old son and a nine year old. The thirteen-year-old has invested his own money into an Intel DRiP over the last few months and is beginning to show quite a bit of interest. I now need to get my nine year old involved as well, but haven't to date.

Although my spouse has never shown much interest, I have my children with whom I can share in the excitement of investing in America's best companies. Their early interest makes me very excited about their financial future.

The key, I believe, is to start early with your children, in fact much earlier than I have done. Share your thoughts on money and investing and work to educate them on whatever level they'll understand. One might even consider organizing a family investment group. Get the extended family involved as well.

As all of us Fools know, money has a tremendous impact on our lives. While there are many important lessons we can teach our children, the value of an early knowledge of, and commitment to, investing cannot be overestimated.

It is often easy to recognize that "the love of money" may be the root of all evil, but when managed properly it can give us the opportunity for personal freedom and the right to live our lives on our own terms, without stress and worry. Dwight Eisenhower once said, "There's opportunity all about you. All you have to do is reach out and grab it." This was taught to him at an early age by his parents. Let's do the same for our children, and let's never give up on our spouses as well.

[Hey, Fools. If you've got a balance on your plastic, don't miss our Foolish tips on how to pay it down!]

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