If you were to spend $100 on your pre-teen as some sort of long term investment crap shoot. What would you buy. Thought being it hits big down the road they have a lot of cash, if not eh they probably would have broken the dumb electronic device you would have bought instead anyhow.
Also not sure it matters, thinking that as friends and family start into the next generation and having kids, maybe do the same thing for a new born. (of course tieing it to the date of their birthday would be cool) (find an IPO and buy $100 shares? ) other suggestions ideas
I’d let the pre-teen have some fun with it. Ask him/her what they think is cool, and then research if they have publicly offered stock, and if they’re small companies.
The first two pre-teen-ish things I could think of were Beats by Dre and* Oculus Rift VR*. But unfortunately Apple and Facebook bought those two companies, so they’re no longer “small and risky.”
But I’d ask your pre-teen and say, “If you were Steve Jobs, what’s the next small company you’d buy?” (substituting other famous capitalists if your pre-teen is instead interested in fashion, sports, etc.)
I’m going to take your concept, add a bit from the inheritance thread to it, and tell you a little story:
A good friend of mine was given a choice by his parents between a $10,000 gift on his 18th birthday, or $10,000 when his parents died. The strings attached were that the $10,000 would be used as a downpayment on his first house (or condo, or whatever he could afford to buy). They said they would help him with the initial transaction of buying the house (negotiating with the RE agent, inspection, etc), then he would be on his own to do whatever it took to pay for the house and manage it. The parents decided to do this because he was not going to college and just staying at home, working, and partying his money away with no clear goal for his future. Kind of a one shot deal to get a leg up.
So he agreed, worked full time in construction during the day, delivered pizzas at night, and got 2 friends to move in as tenants in a small 3 bedroom house. Now, they were also the beneficiaries of extremely good market timing, but fast forward 11 years, and the guy has bought and sold 3 houses (profitably) since then and is now well on his way to being mortgage free in a very expensive housing market and is way ahead of the curve for most in his position.
What would that 10,000 buy him when his parents died 30 or so years later? Not a heck of a lot.
Back to the OP though, taking a long shot on a stock is no different then taking him to the casino and putting that $100 in a slot machine.
Back to the OP though, taking a long shot on a stock is no different then taking him to the casino and putting that $100 in a slot machine.
First your model is not really the same, clearly $10,000 now is worth far more then $10,000 30 yrs from now.
Back to my point – in the American Christmas model, I easily spend a couple hundred on my kids each Christmas. Looking back, just made me think, what if instead you did just roll the dice.
Same thought on the Baby Gift. The kid is not going to remember the clothes / or whatever. Sure you could invest it and it would be worth something for college, but roll the dice, maybe you’ll be covering all their college, worst case, they don’t remember it just like the clothes.
For risky, but with potential to be worth a lot a loong way down the road, I’d get into energy tech stuff, wind, solar, tide turbines. Being poo pooed right now a lot in the U.S. but we will need it some day, when we do it will grow a lot. I threw 5k at it and told my finance guy to let it sit until I said otherwise. Another thing to look at along the same lines is carbon fiber, being used now, but has the potential to become a much bigger market, actually i would say that about the whole materials industry.
If you were to spend $100 on your pre-teen as some sort of long term investment crap shoot. What would you buy. Thought being it hits big down the road they have a lot of cash, if not eh they probably would have broken the dumb electronic device you would have bought instead anyhow.
Also not sure it matters, thinking that as friends and family start into the next generation and having kids, maybe do the same thing for a new born. (of course tieing it to the date of their birthday would be cool) (find an IPO and buy $100 shares? ) other suggestions ideas
Pre-teen?- just buy them 1 share of Disney -It’s something they can understand — also, there’s a new park opening in Shanghai, and they’ve just started cashing in on Marvel and Star Wars.
For birthdays and Christmas for years my parents bought savings bonds until the maturity date became 17 years. After that he started buying stock. Some are good bets and some aren’t. In the end so far they are up a little. He did the same thing with my brothers when they moved out of the house and the stocks he bought them turned out really well. I didn’t want stocks, I wanted a boom box. Wish I had the stock now because I don’t know where the boom box is but that was 32 years ago.
I did something like this right out of college with $1k. Dropped it into a Fidelity fund, it’s now in VOO, VOOG or VOOV can’t remember. Reinvested dividends, never added $ in or took $ out. It’s over $7k now.
can’t remember a lot of things I’ve bought myself since then, but I do remember setting this up. Fidelity asked me several times if I was sure I wanted to open an IRA, that I couldn’t spend the money for a long time. Which was the point.
I did something like this right out of college with $1k. Dropped it into a Fidelity fund, it’s now in VOO, VOOG or VOOV can’t remember. Reinvested dividends, never added $ in or took $ out. It’s over $7k now.
can’t remember a lot of things I’ve bought myself since then, but I do remember setting this up. Fidelity asked me several times if I was sure I wanted to open an IRA, that I couldn’t spend the money for a long time. Which was the point.
I kind of like that idea. Maybe when the kids graduate college, The gift will be $1000 in Fidelity IRA. good idea.
Someone mentioned Disney, while it may not be the first place I would put my money, I do recall they have a program for people doing this. They will send you a stock certifiacte with the Disney characters on it that does make it a unique gift.
The stocks I have put my “play” money that have done best are Facebook and Churchill Downs and in the mining industry, especially African mining and mining equipment producers.