Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest
roberdam.com166 points by roberdam 11 hours ago
166 points by roberdam 11 hours ago
There's an awful lot of negativity here, but as someone who's 55 and has earned a good wage since I was 17, I really wish I had taken investing more seriously from the very beginning. While I knew of compound interest, I really didn't understand it until like a decade ago. If I'd started putting 5% of my money into a target retirement plan from 17, I'd be retired now. As it is I'm not doing badly, but I really wish I'd started earlier.
So I say: Good on you.
Somewhat related: I just got my son set up with a custodial account and put his "kid retirement" plan into it, and let him pick a couple stocks to put some money into, and put the majority of it into target retirement and a few stocks and EFTs, so he can get some ideas of how they perform, make it a little fun with picking things he's into, and also follow ups and downs of the market, all of which I think is good education.
Investing for retirement at 17 is a bad idea! At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education - the right education investment today will pay back far more than any other monitory investment. There are of course bad education investments, and some are not willing to study even more (or not able to pass a good education course), in that case retirement might be the best investment you can make, but it should not be your first choice.
A different reply said they waited until 26 to start - that is probably about the right time to start saving for retirement. Maybe a little late, but close enough. Before about that age you are still getting started and so you have little spare cash. You need to pay off school loans (if you took any). You need to save for down payment on a house, and buy a lot of those will last a lifetime household items everyone needs. You should be thinking about marriage and saving for it (even if you don't get legally married most people will live with someone else and should be planning on how to make that life work).
Most important: you don't know how long you will live. Save for the future, but not everything - you have no guarantee you will live to tomorrow - if you are under 60 odds are strongly in favor of it, but people die young all the time. You should have a little play money as well in your budget. Go climb Mt Fuji while your body is young and healthy enough to do so (I picked a random activity here, you should decide what you care about, not rush to Japan)
I think it's actually a bad thing to think about money early on. Because it adds a layer of responsibility which I think takes away from simply enjoying life and focusing on what you might be truly passionate about.
One of the things I hate about my 30s is that I'm focused on money now and it feels like I'm not living the life that I want. It just feels like I'm preparing for death.
Which I'm not saying isn't the sensible thing to do, there's just something inherently managerial about it which doesn't seem intuitive to living a meaningful life.
If you start investing a small amount at age 17 you can build the habit and increase totals later.
Saying "I'll do it later when it is rational" often translates to "I won't do it (for a long time)". Which is not rational
This is true of most money behaviors! My mom taught me the same thing about giving.
And even today, knowing way more about personal finance than I did at the start of my working life, I'm still amazed at how blocking out money in the budget astronomically increases your chances that that money actually goes to the thing you want.
"My mom taught me the same thing about giving."
care to share what you learn???
Probably something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ayPuijerjQ tldr; have your kids split their money into three separate "jars": Spend (can be freely spent), Save (this jar generates interest from the money in it, they also have to wait some time to access the money if they want to spend them) and Give (for charity).
>Investing for retirement at 17 is a bad idea! At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education
Why would you assume they are mutually exclusive? You can just do both.
And poor people just should eat cake, I know..
For real, I believe most 17 year olds on this earth do not have the funds to invest in education AND in a retirement fond, so there are choices to be made. (there are also the choices of creating social bonds and investing into activities together, ...)
The root comment was talking about investing 5% of their earnings. If you're making any kind of income at 17 (which admittedly is not everybody) then learning to save+invest a small portion of that can have incredible positive snowball effects beyond the compounding itself.
I can't imagine a scenario where at 55 years old, you would miss the 5% of your summer income you invested back in high school. But I can totally see a scenario where investing those 5% led you to increasing it to 10% in college, 20% on your first job, and being financially independent way before you hit the age of 55.
"I can't imagine a scenario where at 55 years old, you would miss the 5% of your summer income you invested back in high school."
If those 5% were the question of whether to go with the group on a adventure together or not - and you end up alone at 55 years and not invited .. you might have rather invested different back then. But on the other hand I don't think those 5% of earnings with 17 make a difference later.
The only real difference they can make, if they made you start a habit of saving income for important purchases. (But not really fore retirement at that age. But each to his own)
I think this really comes down to how a teenager is wired and life circumstances. Some of us made all our close friends in college and dont even live near our hometowns anymore. My high school friendships are all “dead” so to speak.
I think if a teenager is the social type, or they have a positive (non-toxic) friend group, then absolutely - spend the money! It’s an investment in your friends that may or more not pay off.
But some teenagers don’t have much in common with their peers, are bullied in high school, or just want to move on to the “real world” and graduate already. For those kids, invest!
"or just want to move on to the “real world” and graduate already. For those kids, invest!"
In general sure, it really depends .. so invest in what? It can mean many things, like also saving for the drivers licence/first car to make that move away into a nicer worlds with better opportunities.
absolutely! It’s always a good idea to write down your life goals and major planned expenses. Then you can prioritize them as needed.
That usually helps answer questions like “if i invest X% of each paycheck into an S&P500 index fund, and put the remainder toward saving for my 1st car, i’ll have money for the car by date Y.”
And this skill translates to adult life really well. I find myself doing just that a couple times a year! Of course for some teenagers investing a substantial amount is simply not realistic…not every family is middle class after all.
One important reminder: inflation is no joke these days. I’d only recommend a savings account to a teenager for short term goals. Even if they are poor.
Most 17 year olds have very low income and education goals. They will miss that 5% in a retirement fund because they are forced to take a student loan to cover that.
Forgive my puzzlement, as I come from a country where you would not consider taking a student loan (if this even existed) to cover the $50 you put into an ETF from your summer job.
Eventually you just don't have enough. If are short $50 where does it come from?
Im not claiming everyone can do it. Im saying they are not mutually exclusive. If they were mutually exclusive that would imply no one could do both. For those that have to chose one or the other I agree they should choose education, but thats a subset of cases.
What educational path is safe to invest in right now?
What kind of job will be in high demand in a few years and will remain in demand for at least 20 years?
It seems like learning about personal finance is itself educational, and there are a lot of jobs where you deal with money. So this isn't entirely separate from investing in education, depending on which kind of education you mean.
As with many times when we use the word "should" (and you've used it a lot), the perspective you're sharing is deeply influenced by your own cultural background and might not apply to many people reading.
A few examples: school loans, considering a house purchase to be a sound investment, purchasing once-in-a-lifetime household items, saving for a wedding (from the age of 17!?) or marriage (not sure what you even mean by that if you don't mean the wedding itself?).
[should, shouldn't, supposed to, never, always]
These are key words to mentally breakpoint on and more carefully consider what is being said.
The details matter and are personal I agree.
Even if a house isn't right for you, you still need to save for the deposit on an apartment. You still need to buy furnishings for your apartment. You won't even know if a house is right for you until you are mid 20s to 30, so it is probably best to save for a house and if you decide at 30 it isn't right for you roll that money into retirement savings (if a house isn't right for you that means you need more retirement savings)
Relationships - even if you don't have a wedding or kids - come at the time you have those starting to get out on your own expenses. You will need to figure those out.
You just replaced "buying a house" with "buying an apartment", proving my point about cultural bias :-)
I meant, for many people (especially young ones), taking that same deposit to purchase an investment property (which could be a house or apartment, but has a tenant who lives there rather than being for oneself) can be a better deal than buying for themselves.
In the end, buying a place to live in is very much an emotional choice, which is totally valid. But in some locales and for some lifestyles, being a landlord who pays rent elsewhere can be a better financial decision.
> At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education
I mean, sure, in a perfect world you can postpone retirement savings. But if we're doing perfect world, you shouldn't have to think about "investing in education", your government should have the basic cognitive skills that would let it recognize that they should invest in education - ROI is pretty spectacular.
Realistically, both, because... otherwise you just pick how screwed you'll be later in life.
Sometimes I feel like I started investing late at 26. Already, six years into the best decade for compounding in your life. But such was the power of compounding that I had reached a substantial net worth by age 35. So even just nine years can make such a tremendous difference even into later ages. It's never too late to sock money away.
It remains to be seen what's going to happen over the next few decades. It's entirely possible that it'll all get wiped out (the substantial gains, not all value).
While the market was a very good bet for the last 50yrs, its not a guarantee.
Especially in the current climate you should be fully aware that it's significantly more risky to start investing today vs 10 yrs ago.
(Riskier doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea. It should just be a conscious decision under the acknowledgement that the upward trajectory is not certain. Especially in current political climate - and that "hodl"-ing doesn't necessarily mean you'll eventually get back what you invested, if a downturn manifests)
>> Especially in the current climate you should be fully aware that it's significantly more risky to start investing today vs 10 yrs ago.
First, I don't think this absolute statement is true; I think you need to look at it from the alternatives perspective. If not investing then what? bury gold? spend it all?
Second, are we at a much riskier time than past history, both short & long term? I made significant contributions in 2014, saw 30%+ wiped out within 6 months and seen it all come back and more with the power of long timeframes.
Third, investment can take a lot of forms, not just today's hot tech stocks. I won't get into it beyond the standard think long term and avoid leverage, which seems to be completely inline with start early; start now.
Your money has to go somewhere or it will rot to inflation. If you're ultrabearish on stocks, snap up bonds. If you're bearish on stocks and bonds alike, snap up gold. Either way, bare minimum of what to do with your money long term is to preserve its value across inflation.
But really I would recommend nonetheless staying the course with investment advice on a stocks/bonds balance relative to your age. Increasingly, the economy distributes not through labour but through capital and holding stocks is essential even with their inherent risks. Even in light of that CNN article about meme stock and crypto investors having the last laugh over the past decade, indices of ordinary large-cap stocks bring you exposure to these things.
> Your money has to go somewhere or it will rot to inflation.
Inflation is mainly created by this act of "putting your money somewhere". For most people, this "somewhere" means loans. Money is being loaned out to people, spent, deposited back into the bank, and loaned out again, on and on it goes until $1,000 turns into $100,000 in circulation, not a cent of it real until all loans are paid back.
You are very confidently incorrect. So incorrect, it is hard to even start correcting you.
* Inflation is not caused by "putting your money somewhere" What on earth. * At a high level, inflation is caused by either "too much money chasing too few goods" and/or the cost of producing the goods rising. Money supply can increase without causing inflation if the supply of goods can also increase. In short, the supply of money can increase without causing inflation if productivity rises to match it. * Most people do not "put money" in loans what are you even talking about there? * Bank loans do not automatically increase the supply of money. When a loan is taken out, it is (mostly) deposited to another bank, resulting in a net-zero change in money. Increasing the supply of money requires the federal reserve to take steps.
> In short, the supply of money can increase without causing inflation if productivity rises to match it.
You're actually agreeing with me. Money supply must be backed up by real wealth and production.
That's not how things work in current times. We have nearly zero interest rates, and currencies are backed up by literally nothing.
> Most people do not "put money" in loans what are you even talking about there?
Fractional reserve banking. Banks loan out the cash you deposit. They "efficiently allocate" the money in their custody.
> Inflation is not caused by "putting your money somewhere" What on earth.
It absolutely is. Banks can easily turn thousands of dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars by repeatedly loaning out the exact same dollars numerous times.
It's some kind of society wide financial call stack. Too many defaults and everything starts unwinding.
> Bank loans do not automatically increase the supply of money.
Obviously they do.
Imagine you deposit $100 at your bank. It takes your $100 and loans out $90 of it to someone else. There are now $190 dollars in circulation.
Whoever took the loan goes off and spends it. Eventually it gets deposited back into a bank. Then the bank loans out $81 out of that $90. There are now $271 dollars in circulation.
And it keeps going.
You can inflate bitcoin via this algorithm.
> When a loan is taken out, it is (mostly) deposited to another bank
Irrelevant. Banks form interconnected systems. They all settle debts and accounts with each other.
> Increasing the supply of money requires the federal reserve to take steps.
The physical supply of money is irrelevant. It contributes only a small fraction of the circulating money supply. Money is numbers in bank databases now. They could run the money printers 24/7 and they'd never even come close to catching up to the inflation caused by banks.
Saving is follows the same advice as for planting a tree.
The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago.
The second best time is now.
Historically, it takes about 7-10 years to double your money in the stock market. So between doubling your money and incremental saving, yeah you should see a pretty significant difference from 26-35. And that's before it skyrockets :)
Please share https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started with your son.
You say that now but as a young person with a decent income and no family or many responsibilities it's hard to even know where to start.
And I'm not even talking about what to invest in, I'm already confused at which platform/bank/whatever to do it through. The "meta", if you will. I just want to invest the 70% of my salary I don't need every month and not think about it for 40 years but how? Maybe an important detail, I'm from Switzerland, perhaps it's easier in the US with things like Vanguard.
Don't know about Switzerland, but most US brokers offer some kind of "target retirement date" fund, which automatically shifts from higher-risk assets to lower-risk as you approach retirement. VFIFX is one from Vanguard, for example. Pick one you like (just ask a coworker what they use, if you pick a big-name brokerage it really doesn't matter which one), shove your extra cash into it regularly, and forget about it. Then cross your fingers the market isn't actively crashing when you plan to retire (this is unlikely, but it does happen a couple times per century).
If you start to get into truly high wealth amounts (USD$500K+) you might consider hiring a wealth advisor, who can probably do better even after accounting for their fees.
> If you start to get into truly high wealth amounts (USD$500K+) you might consider hiring a wealth advisor
That's not nearly high enough for a "wealth advisor". Maybe a fee-only financial planner, but even then it's borderline.
Even when it crashes it's like 20% no? It's not actually that big of a deal.
The idea is that over a 40 year window that 20% (or more) crash is eventually going to rebound, so just sitting on the target retirement fund is going to do well over it's lifetime. As you get closer to retirement, and don't have the time to recover from the crash, the plan moves to safer investments.
I’m sorry but 20% of a retirement fund is a lot of money.
It may be a lot of money but it shouldn't matter because you don't need all of it right away.
My understanding is that, if the market generally continues on the rate of return it's averaged throughout its history (that is, if you're not a doomer), then the single most important thing is showing up to play.
People who try to time the market or wait for a perfect time or pick the exact right blend of stocks, on average, don't do as well as people who pick a boring index or mutual fund and forget about it for 40 years.
> People who try to time the market
If you have doubts about the long-term __existence__ of the market, then investing in the first place necessitates "timing the market" since you'll need to determine when to sell before the panic sell-off which inevitably comes before the global minimum is reached.
Mind you, I'm not talking about figuring out whether or not to "hodl" through local minima. I'm talking about rolling into a different store of value (e.g., cattle, crops, ammunition) before the whole thing goes up in smoke.
If it goes up in smoke, you personally can't ever buy enough ammunition to matter. Who's gonna man all those guns?
Yes, however: My father in law gave me some great advice: Pick a stock or two and put some small amount of your investments into it, like 1-5%. This makes the investing more fun. And he was very right, not the least of which because the stock I put $7K in exploded and ended up worth over $200K. ;-)
My BIL put money into Underarmor (he's an outdoors guy) and Electronic Arts (he's also a gamer), both of which have done good for him. My son put some money into Roblox (he's a gamer), and that's done well also.
All the choices you have to make can be very daunting. I was very lucky to have a colleague at work who gave a talk at the right time in my life with some plausibly right choices.
In the UK I started out using https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/ and later moved to https://www.ii.co.uk/. I initially invested in https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-life... which is a fund which is available on a bunch of platforms. These days I recommend https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/ to some people as an easy and low fee way of getting started with Vanguard funds in the UK.
I don't know what the best trading platform options are in Switzerland - it looks like all of the ones I'm familiar with are not relevant to you.
The key thing is you want to minimise two types of fees: * Platform fees * Product fees
For example Charles Stanley Direct charge 0.3% platform fees, and https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/ charges 0.15% platform fees.
Vanguard LifeStrategy® 100% Equity Fund charges 0.22%.
The bottom line is that there are lots of good choices, and the main thing is to make a choice and get started. You can always optimise/improve your choices later.
Are you saving for retirement or buying property? Then start filling your 3rd pillar (Säule 3a) first because of the tax cut. Ideally in a low cost provider (viac/finpension), but the bank you already have probably has an offer too. It might be a bit more expensive than viac, but still much better than not investing. Stay away from 3rd pillar at insurance companies, they might be hard to cancel. Do yourself a favor and do this just for the tax cut.
If you max out the 3a, you can start of thinking investing elsewhere. IBKR is the cheapest to buy a US domiciled world ETF. But the UX is not super easy and you will have to fill all transactions manually in the tax report.
Neon with investments is another option I can recommend if you prefer a swiss company and a simple user interface. Fees are low if you set up a savings plan and pick one of the 0% ETFs
Read "The Four Pillars of Investing". Basically index funds, diverse whole markets, leave it alone and watch it grow.
I did this at 22, and that seed money has grown a ton.
I'm also in Switzerland, currently my approach is to invest in Vanguard VOO (tracks the S&P500) via Interactive Brokers. There is a way to setup auto transfer and invest every month
As a caveat your money will be in dollars and in American companies, which might not be what you want, but it's worked for me well so far
- Your bank's platform will cost an arm and a leg; Interactive Brokers or Degiro are both available in Switzerland and you will save so much on fees (especially if you only buy and hold ETFs of which Degiro offers many with 0% fees) that it's the equivalent of faster returns on your money.
- There are many "getting started" guides available, I found Mister Money Mustache the most straightforward to my liking, but you're golden as long as you understand a couple of basics: 1. investing a high% of your income is more important than chasing returns (you seem to be there already), 2. don't trade, just buy the whole market (you mentioned Vanguard, they offer a "total market" ETF), 3. look for the lowest fees as long as you hold title to your shares (IB and Degiro do this ; eToro does not so if they sink, you're SOL), 4. don't time the market, just buy now and sit on it as it grows
Your bank probably has an investment platform, you can just use it, it doesn't matter. My portfolio is 70% XEQT 30% CASH.TO—don't bother with anything else.
Oh, that can be bad advice. It does matter a lot if the bank asks for high fees, which would be the case with all(?) German banks, and I'd be surprised if that's different in Switzerland.
Banks don't typically charge any fees for a self-directed account that holds primarily ETFs, beyond maybe a small trade fee or account fee(?) - which we would never pay in North America. Active management of either your account or the products you hold is where they stick it to you. Each product will have a management fee which you should check, but you'll likely avoid the big bank and insurance company products because they do no better than the market funds and take more in fees so the returns suck.
My bank also charges a trade fee which I think is bullshit, but at least it's a major bank. It's like $10 so doesn't matter all that much, not sure how much it would be for Switzerland, but you could just buy the stocks in larger batches if trades are expensive.
With the amount people usually trade $10 is a huge percentage. When you factor that in with the missed compound interest of that money you usually lose tens of thousands of dollars until retirement, likely more.
There is no need for a big bank here, in Europe. If one of those regulated companies goes bankrupt the etf is still yours and transferable to a different institution.
War in Europe is the remaining risk factor, but if that happens it won't matter anyway.
Not sure how it's like over in EU, but in Canada, at this point, I assume all fin tech startups are scam. Neo financial and wealth simple are definitely fucking scam. Major banks may suck but at least you get what you pay for.
Curious about your opinions on WealthSimple, if you can share. I got introduced to them when they bought out SimpleTax, and so far they've been pretty reasonable for investments.
They require a paid subscription to use USD. They claim to have customer support, but the button isn't actually working, it does nothing. At least they respond by email. That's all I found so far, but I haven't actually made any trades yet.
For the plattforms, that also blocked me for a while. But it is easy now. You just get one account at a platform that offers a free broker account and supports buying the etf you want without extra fees.
Typical options in Europe: Trade Republic, scalable, Consors Bank.
Then the usual: Around 10K where you can access it directly, a small amount in an investment with percentage (scalable and trade republic both offer that, limit there is or was 50k), rest in one broad ETF like one that follows the FTSE all world (vanguard or invesco offer that, one is bigger, the other asks for less fees).
No affiliation, and I dont know whether being outside of the EU changes things. And yes, there is the risk that we are in a huge bubble now and it popping would at first significantly lower the money put into the etf. But you certainly do have access to vanguard etc.
Have a look now and at the latest this weekend you have this solved, hopefully forever.
That's why you shouldn't leave it up to a kid with very little money who quite literally cannot understand the long term impacts of their decisions to invest or not. Instead, put aside something for them. You can even start well before they are 17.
Naw, dawg, Imma try and try to encourage them to get started early and put a little bit away, because it's good for them. I'm acutely afraid of a scenario where they have bad habits and anything I leave them they flush down the toilet because of those bad habits. I'm hoping to leave them plenty, but they need to be in a position to not waste that for it to be worth anything.
Yeah you can do that. Doesn't prevent you from setting something aside for them and giving it to them if and when there is a good time.
I started my daughter investing with a custodial account at 13. She put a few hundred dollars of her money in and I convinced her by matching her investment and told her if the amount ever went below the original investment I would backstop any loss.
Investing is all about that long term gain and slow growth. Having 10 years of experience after finishing college will do so much more than Robinhood for refrigerators.
I've made a similar deal with my kids: Around 7 years ago I set up a "kid retirement" plan for them, where they couldn't touch the money until they were 18, but any money they put in I would match, and I'd also give them 10% APY with monthly compounding. My daughter aged out of it a couple years ago, she got something in the $100 range. Her brother still has a 18 months left, and I just recently rolled his over into the custodial account, he's got over a grand in there currently.
My daughter I just recently set up a ROTH for her and told her I'd match anything she puts into it, and stressed she should put something into it now from her savings, and then put some of her paycheck into it, anything is better than nothing. So far she's declined the free money. I'm going to set one up for my son, once he's at the point of having an income to justify it. She's very smart, but in some ways she's very stupid.
I hope that @roberdam reads this and implements those into his PWA.
OP, enabling: - deposits (and withdrawals) - a matching logic (which we can do manually I guess, by doubling the deposit amount) - and correct calculation of compounding (if I had $100 for 11 months and add $100 in december, I shouldn't see the value compound $200 for the whole year)
would be great.
Bonus points if there was some kind of password (even hardcoded) so that the kids can't just click the gear icon and write themselves a blank check of $1,000,000
Excellent suggestions! For now, what I do is update the amount every time there's a deposit or withdrawal, and I set the initial date to the day of the withdrawal or deposit.
That young you should be investing in a 527 education account not a ROTH retirement account. Education is a much better ROI when you are young than anything else. As you get older the value of education decreases. In generally the cross over is sometime in your early/mid 20s (Could be as young as 16 if you don't do well in school, or as old as 35 for things like medical doctor)
If you don't live in the US you will have different options, but the idea still applies
I'm doing a 529 as well as wanting to set up the ROTH Note that you can also just take money from your other investments, deposit it into a 529, and then immediately pay yourself back for educational expenses you've paid for off the 529.
My kids have some 529 buffer, and we are paying for my daughter's school right now (though she's paid us back for the class she got an F in). My son, it's not clear that the typical school track is going to be the right thing for him, but we also have a 529 for him that I've been contributing to.
You mean a 529 account right? 527 seems to be associated with political contributions. I looked it up to ensure I wasn't missing out on something I did not know about...
The spiraling price of college in the US today has been questioning the assumption that education has a better ROI.
There are a lot of it depends. If you are going to be a retail worker all your life there is no reason to go to college. A music degree has questionable value on its own, but many people get them understanding that "any degree" is needed for some good jobs and those that find those do well enough (your generals and non-major electives are important). The school matters - Harvard is expensive but the networking can be worth it if you network well in school. State schools tend to be a lot cheaper than private or out of state as well, and generally pretty good. Scholarships enter in as well. Degrees like Engineering or Medical doctor tend to have a much better ROI long term, but only if you pick the right one and pass.
But you need to make your own decisions. For some your best ROI is dropping out of school at 16 - but for the vast majority more school will be worth it.
This would be fun to model. Lifetime earnings are higher for those who have more education, but there's potentially decades of servicing a potential mountain of non-dischargeable debt to consider (potentially decreasing post-college investment ability) too.
I don't know the first thing about student loans (interest rates, amortization periods). I never had one. I just search-engined 2025 federal student loan rates and I'm blown away by the interest rates. It looks like avoiding student loans at all costs is the way to go.
I wonder if spending a few years working (especially if your parents are able to continue to house you and pay for health insurance) and contributing to a 529 plan might meaningfully decrease the overall cost, albeit at the "penalty" of starting college later in life (at, say, 22 instead of 18).
Ah, she's barely out of her teens, give her a break :) Better things to spend one's life on in those years than worrying over a few hundred bucks in a bank account. She'll come back around in a few years.
My dad made a deal with me that, of doubling what I would save during the week.
Same. But is same for most people. Average American retirement savings is like $200k. I've done better that that but not by orders of magnitude.
About six years ago I was hired to make an investment simulator. I wish someone had show the results to me when I was a teen. I did show it to my daughter at the time (she was in college), and used it to explain the power of compounding interest.
I found they still an old preview online (sorry not https)
http://simulators.gibsoncapital.com/new-preview-for-total-si...
Thanks for your encouragement!. I started investing in my mid-30s, and compound interest really works wonders after a while. I hope my kids do better than me, though.
> and let him pick a couple stocks to put some money into
And yet we complain that corps today are too focused on their market valuation over everything else; customer experience, longevity, worker conditions, R&D are all being neglected in order to make the needle go up.
'Investing' in stocks in order to flip them when the price goes up is feeding this insanity. Teaching kids that this is perfectly rational seems selfish and short-sighted.
Our children should be encouraged to invest into something like bonds which actually help promote economic growth.
Bonds returns don't match inflation so long term you're loosing money to inflation, it might be better to spend it
Actively invested retirement funds throughout 30+ years can also catch more concentrated moves if you are educated on a sector. For example, choosing the mag7 in the early 2010s vs just the SPY. Following the market could also let you pull out during serious world events.
There is definitely money left on the table when you ignore the market, even in a retirement fund.
Retirement is not mentioned in the post
It is one of the most common reasons people invest though so it's entirely relevant
I don't think you need a reason to invest. You should be making more money than you spend, so you might as well put the surplus to work.
Be careful here. You should have some "rainy day" savings. You should have some retirement plans. You can save for big items like a vacation.
However you don't know how long you will live. Don't be a miser who spends nothing. If you have surplus after the above you should either spend it or donate to charity.
Okay
I said that because I find it puzzling when asked the reason why I invest. They're like, are you saving for a house? No, I'm saving in general, and then I buy whatever I want.
Financial literacy is a gift, and absolutely omitted from standard education, which is unfortunate.
That said, I don't think knowledge of investment gets you very far if your job pays subsistence wages. I worked for a popular fintech focused on personal investment and their narrative was essentially "financial freedom through investment". I think it's important to understand that even the most sophisticated knowledge of investment and personal finance does nothing substantial if you aren't making surplus money to begin with.
I don't know what you mean by that. They teach compound interest in every school. Basic economics too. Anything more advanced is going to be lost on most kids, because that's most adults' level of financial literacy too.
The problem is many kids don't have much money to save or invest. Or if they do, real banks kinda suck when you only have a kid amount of money ("Here's the 0.2% interest on your $37 balance"). So they can't apply what they learned. An app like this, backed by the Bank of Mom and Dad, is great for practice.
While I certainly had the _concept_ of compound interest taught to me at some abstract mathematical level, the application to real life practical financial scenarios was definitely not done [1]. Economics as a whole was an optional subject.
I think schools and curriculums could do a whole lot better in representing this important facet of life. More broadly, I often feel that "applying all that math you've learned to real things" is a subject that could be taught.
[1] Seriously, having applied math questions like "Johnny earns X per year, with a cost of living of Y. Assuming inflation of Z and average yearly returns of R, what percentage should he be putting away, starting at age 25, so that at age 50 he essentially gets the equivalent of his own salary each month?" would likely cause some lightbulbs to go off in the kids' heads.
> the application to real life practical financial scenarios was definitely not done
Of course it was. You can't teach compound interest without referring to money or banks. That's the whole point of it. Otherwise it's just multiplication.
It... is just multiplication. And can't talk about GP's experience, but I can tell you that going through scientific schooling and engineering schools in the French system you'll learn exactly how to calculate the math and never have a single example such as mentioned above.
We're here to build bridges, not count stashes of money after all!
You'd probably get those if you went through "economic studies" (which is a different track and where math includes a lot more statistics even in high school).
> that's most adults' level of financial literacy too.
The vicious cycle! We have to start somewhere..
I give my kids a copy of their 529 accounts I opened and contribute to in their name. This is real money and they can see a return on investment and growth happening.
Where do you send your money to invest? What is a stock? This is the type of information missing.
> Where do you send your money to invest?
If they had taught you that in high school 10 or 20 years years ago, it would be outdated by now. People used to save in savings accounts. Then 401ks. Then individual brokerage accounts with index funds. Now crypto or whatever is hot using some fintech app.
> What is a stock?
That's fair. It can come up in basic economics but not always.
> If they had taught you that in high school 10 or 20 years years ago, it would be outdated by now.
That's a fair criticism, but I don't think it's enough to outweigh the benefits. I think I learned how to write a check in second grade. It was useful information.
> Financial literacy is a gift, and absolutely omitted from standard education, which is unfortunate.
With my tinfoil hat on, I feel like that is by design.
I don't think you even need to wear a tinfoil hat to reach this conclusion. Knowing about the origins of the modern outcome-based education systems in the West (we borrowed from the Prussian education system which replaced the classical education system based on the Trivium and Quadrivium) I would assert that your claim is spot on.
Probably, because everything would collapse if everyone was an "investor" and fewer people did actual work to keep the world going.
This type of investing isn't about day trading following the latest hype. It's about putting some surplus money to better use for when you need it in 10-20 years.
There are people who don't invest? Do they just keep their retirement savings in cash? I imagine for most people either the government or their employer invests for them.
Most of my family and extended American family doesn’t really invest. I think probably 10% of us “believe” in the stock market. The rest sometimes buy houses (which I encourage because it’s better than nothing), but otherwise are planning on social security, pensions, and lump-sum savings to cover their retirement
> social security, pensions, and lump-sum savings
Isn't that very little money?
While defined-benefit pensions are less and less common, they may not be small.
Incredible HN post. I'm hoping it's because you are from a country where people are generally well taken care of.
Yes, there are people who don't invest. Where do they keep their retirement savings? 40-50% of Americans, at least, simply have no retirement savings! Most people in America aren't earning enough to put away a meaningful amount for retirement. It's going to be grim as boomers and millennials hit retirement age and have to keep working.
And it doesn't occur to them that they will need money when they're old and can't work? Incredible.
I am very certain it does occur to them but they simply have no financial means to do anything about it. Which must be soul-crushing to them.
Rest assured it usually isn't their choice.
> Rest assured it usually isn't their choice.
People choose to marry, have kids, and buy a house.
Your comments make me think you've never seen hardships in your life that weren't self-afflicted.
Life can be cruel even if you've made great plans and took all the precautions you could think of. Illnesses, accidents, the lack of a social net because your country was set up that way, crime, the list goes on.
Illnesses and accidents are exactly the things you need savings for, and aren't really relevant here because they don't prevent you from saving until and after they happen. The issue appears to be that 50% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and have no savings? I can't imagine how this could be anything other than them just spending money on shit they don't need.
And yes, I am assuming you live in a developed country. I have Ukranian citizenship and right now the Ukrainian government is abducting men who are over 24 years old and sends them to death. If you live in a country like that, true, you shouldn't worry about investing because you don't even have basic human rights.
> The issue appears to be that 50% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and have no savings? I can't imagine how this could be anything other than them just spending money on shit they don't need.
Or that there's no standard minimum wage, or income protection if something does go wrong. Student debt is crippling to people in itself never mind hospital events.
That's so many people you should think "something must be wrong with the system"
> Illnesses and accidents are exactly the things you need savings for
It shouldn't be though, if you pay taxes, the government should be there for you in an emergency when it comes to health.
> It shouldn't be though, if you pay taxes, the government should be there for you in an emergency when it comes to health.
As far as I know in the US your employer provides health insurance?
Oh. No. Not in most jobs. Many jobs do provide some health care.
If you are working many jobs in the US you get no health care. You have to pay for it yourself. Even jobs that provide it you still need to pay for it. The employer basically pays a portion of the insurance bill. Good employers pay a lot, bad employers pay none.
Then you have deductibles. The amount you have to pay out of pocket every year before insurance does anything. If you have a ten thousand dollar deductible, insurance only kicks in at $10,001 and beyond.
I.... they are dealing with systemic poverty. Being poor is expensive. They absolutely know they need to save, but if the choice is "starve to death today but save for retirement OR don't die, but don't save for retirement" most people are going to choose the latter.
I just checked and McDonald's pays $15 an hour, no? That's more than enough to not starve.
McDonald’s will not let you work 40 hours a week, or any consistent schedule at all. You will show up when they tell you to and that’s that. Same with grocery stores or most retail jobs.
Also you’re neglecting the cost of transportation (almost certainly a car, with gas and insurance), rent, and medical expenses.
Median rent value in Seattle is $2300/month if you are looking for a one bedroom, a little cheaper if you are looking at a studio. Minimum wage here is $21/hr. The first quartile for rent is $1600.
Assuming you work full time, you are making $3360 a month, less taxes.
That means that even if you get the bottom 25% of rents, over half your take home pay goes to rent. Then we need health care, food, taxes, transportation, clothing, etc.
Not a lot of savings easily available there.
They're worried about paying for their next trip to the dentist. Not working when they're old is not in the picture.
median emergency savings in the US is $500-600
1 in 5 have $0
50% have enough to cover 3 months of expenses
The math doesn't add up here?
You're saying that $500-600 (the amount you claim 50% of people have saved up, if it's the median) covers 3 months of expenses?
I mean no offense, but your understanding of a median seems flawed. The median is the number/point that separates the upper half from the lower half - it is not what 50% has.
The math does add up. There is no contradiction in your parent’s post.
I'm not sure I catch your explanation, so let's try with some simple numbers and you'll tell me where I'm wrong.
I have a family of 10 people. These people have, respectively,
$0 ; $0 ; $1 ; $5 ; $49 ; $51 ; $190 ; $8,000 ; $150,000 and $1,000,000.
What's the median amount of savings in this group?
And what amount would complete the sentence : "50% of people have ..."?
How couldn't it be? If the finance industry made things clearer then more people would benefit from it.
Sure but if you learn a lot about investing then surely you have learned a lot about other stuff too and maybe have chances at a good job. Not that I disagree
investment for many is more important than ever, because with home ownership out of reach younger people those with any savings are looking for alternatives. I just hope that - much like how you wouldn't buy and sell your house every day - they can resist the urge to be overly active investors.
Hi, sorry to be that guys, I just wanted to make some corrections on what you call your app a "plain html file". Your HTML file loads:
- react app - pwa manifest - tailwind css
This is not at all a "plain html" file.
One small html file, and half a megabyte of CSS and Javascript framework... oh and the html file contains 800 lines of additional Javascript.
I bet $10 that it’s vibecoded, and it’s such a dirt simple calculator that perhaps it was even done with a single prompt.
The AI just picked react because that’s the most common framework.
That's the first thing I thought when opening it. Sure looks like a "make me an app" response that Claude would output.
I mean nothing wrong with that, I needed a silly calculator thingimabob too yesterday (for some CRC checks on a piece of text) and Claude quickly cooked something up for me.
But I'm not writing blog posts about it, releasing the tool in the wild, and claiming I wrote it. Blegh.
is plain html different from single HTML? Because it is a single HTML that you can "Save as" and have one html with the working app.
In my opinion this can't even be labeled as a single HTML file, because it loads external files to complete the app. But back to the question, a "plain html" file doesn't load any external resources and is usually semantically described.
Agreed - which is disappointing.
My firewall shows blocked connections to cdn.tailwindcss.com and unpkg.com
When people talk about a single plain HTML file, it implies that all markup and code is contained in the file and no libraries are being used
If you can run the app without any other files and without internet then it’s plain and a single file.
[flagged]
It's a valid point lol. "A single html file" for me is a Ciechanowski page, not something that needs many gigabytes of bloat to compile.
You are that guy. It was obvious that he built some interactive app packaged in a single html file. There's going to be javascript and stuff in there...doah.
EDIT: I wouldn't have expected external dependencies, though.
There’s an old story about Rothschild getting a haircut when the barber started giving him stock tips. Rothschild thanked him, left the shop, and immediately sold all his holdings. The reason was: “When even the barber is investing, the market’s gone too far.”
I might be wrong, but reading this, I couldn’t help but think: if we’ve reached the point where we’re building apps to get our kids into investing, maybe we’re living through our own “barber moment.”
The reasonable interpretation of such a project is not to pump the stock market even higher by getting children to invest their savings into it, but to inculcate the habits of investing over time so they can do it properly as adults.
I'm sure Mr. Rothschild would be fine with this learning tool.
The Rothschild bloodline is responsible for helping to orchestrate every modern war since the Napoleonic Wars, by loaning money to both sides of the conflict. Major General Smedley D. Butler wrote about this in War is a Racket. I personally, don't give a damn what Mr. Rothschild would be fine with, or the rest of his disgusting family.
Standard antisemitic trope
Standard bs defense to prevent any legitimate criticism of Jewish people no matter how reprehensible their actions are. Please spare me.
Maybe we should get into what Natalie Rothschild said while being interviewed, about her family's fondness for incest? Or would that be anti-Semtiic as well?
What exactly can you say about the Rothschild bloodline (except for praising them) that isn't considered anti-Semitic? Please do tell!
To your credit, your original comment didn't mention all Jews, just made heavy allusions to stereotypes about them. But now you've removed all possible doubt about what you meant.
Criticize individuals all you want, but don't do it by "bloodline", ethnicity, or whether they're a banker or not. Agency lies with the individual.
I am criticizing individuals - individuals who are members of a bloodline that have historically engaged in war profiteering and have been instrumental in running the international central banking cartel. You're right that I didn't mention all Jews, because that would indeed be anti-Semitic.
Sorry but I'm not going to kowtow to your ridiculous logic. It's perfectly fair to lob criticism at bloodlines, and if you had ever opened a history book you would readily understand that.
Criticizing individuals because they're part of a bloodline / ethnicity is:
- the exact opposite of criticizing individuals; you're really just going after the group
- the definition of prejudice
- the foundation of most (all?) giant human catastrophes like the Holocaust, the various communist land reforms, the crusades, and all sorts of horrible events
I'm a conservative, but I have to say this idea of not being prejudiced is really something great that liberalism brought to the table over the past 100-200 years. I'm gobsmacked to see people rejecting this idea.
So when authors of history-related works criticize or make remarks about bloodlines such as the Hapsburgs or the Medicis or the Colonnas are you equally as outraged as when it involves a bloodline of Jewish people?
If I navigate to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_the_Rothschild_fa... - every section of the page mentions the family being involved in banking. Am I stereotyping members of the Rothschild bloodline by saying they're involved in international banking? I don't think so.
I'm equally gobsmacked by people who claim we shouldn't utilize pattern recognition or who want to pretend stereotypes materialize out of thin air.
Narrative: You are teaching about the intricacies of finance and the stock market.
Reality: Dump everything into Nvidia / S&P 500. Number go up.
It's certainly apocryphal and you have the British version, probably. In the US it is usually Joe Kennedy and a shoeshine boy, and also didn't likely happen. These stories are useful parables, and they serve the purpose of explaining why the smart money didn't get cleaned out when the rubes did.
Still, if a 10 year old had started investing 10% in the market in 1920 and stuck through it during the depression, even with no income coming in at the time, they would have done handsomely through the recovery and into old age. In fact, a middle aged person who had been investing until 1929 would have not been fully cleaned out, and that money would have recovered its value by 1943. Margin was what killed fortunes in the day, so the lesson to learn is to avoid margin for your investment portfolio. (Speculation is a different story).
In December 2017 I literally saw shopkeepers and barbers checking Coinbase every few minutes when they weren't with customers. I sold a substantial portion shortly afterwards. Of course I'd be much richer today if I hadn't done that. But I don't really regret it because it's not real investing; it's speculation.
The market's are different now. Everyone's 401K plans are automatically investing in them each month (my theory on why equities are so expensive now).
Different as in much worse? It's not that you're wrong but, just to be clear, the problem with investing as the only place to keep up with inflation means that markets will detach from value, and become a giant Ponzi scheme.
There is no such thing as "growth detached from value" lasting forever.
I think the assumption here is the investment vehicle will be large bundles of diverse stocks, e.g. via a mutual fund or equivalent ETF. That's the standard way to invest 401Ks and other savings, and something for which stock tips are no use.
Greed is at a 21st century high. I am just waiting for the rugpull moment when billionaires decide the show is over (https://seekingalpha.com/news/4464647-deeper-dive-the-wealth...).
Even George Hotz understands this is the symptom of a larger issue and it is going to end bad: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/10/24/gambl...
What is going to happen specifically when billionaires decide the show is over?
I had a very similar idea this summer. But my kids are 6 and 8, so I approached it using the video game approach. It's been an absolute smash hit and entirely altered the habits of doing chores in this home. It's been about 3 months and it's still going stronger than ever. The whole thing is a static page, driven by a Google Spreadsheet that Mom and I edit to adjust goals and track progress.
https://ibb.co/RTw5sCDJ https://ibb.co/ycRB8750 https://ibb.co/gLGQ0tKT
great!, mobile app?
It’s just a static hosted page they run on the family iPad. There’s no server at all!
I should really clean it up and make a blog post about it. But wanted to share it here because this project reminded me of it :)
I wouldn’t want kids to grow up chasing a number. It’s just too reductionist. If you want them to be financially secure, teach them skills and the money will follow. TC obsession is a blight.
When I started working at 24, a friend of mine (a few years older than me) asked me if our company had a 401(K) and what was the match.
I was confused. What's this gobbledygook? So I asked around and got him the answers, and he responded with: max out your 401(K). Just do it. And do not ever think about taking money out of it.
So I followed his advice. At that time, the ~$5500 cut in paycheck (my gross was around $35K, IIRC) stung a little. I was single, footloose and fancyfree, and those extra few hundred dollars a month would have been fun to have. But I stuck to his advice.
Today, almost 30 years later, thanks to that, I have a nice nest egg and don't have to worry about retirement (modulo catastrophic illnesses, of course).
So recently my friends' kids started working, and I gave them the same advice: Max out your 401(K), pick a Vanguard Target Retirement fund, and forget about it. If your place offers a "Mega Back Door" option, use it to the fullest extent possible. And if your company has a HDHCP, put funds in your HSA too.
We have a lot of avenues to save these days. Make full use of them.
> We have a lot of avenues to save these days.
Consider investing your time, not just your money. In other words, do careful research, start a business, then put your labor into offering a product or service that fills a need, instead of simply working for someone else. If you fail, you'll still learn a lot for another try. And if you succeed, the payoff can be much larger and faster than anything else you might attempt.
I used a lot of the money I could have 'saved for retirement' on a house instead. Given how fast housing prices have risen and the compounding issue of the cost of rents, I'm not sure I'm too far behind. If you look at REITs, which combine the value of housing appreciation with increased values of rents, they are beating stocks in general over the period I've been working.
You might actually be worse off saving for retirement, at early career stages. Of course, some will point out retirement savings are tax protected, but so are modest capital gains on primary residence.
https://i2.wp.com/financialsamurai.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
> You might actually be worse off saving for retirement, at early career stages.
A very well-diversified, international fund usually performs at 8% annually which is far more than you would get holding REITs (or worse, properties themselves). What you invest for (e.g. education, retirement, projects) is irrelevant as long as your time horizon allows for crash recoveries (measured in decades at worst and months at best).
REIT is largely a reflection of property appreciation plus rents, which is the opportunity cost of not owning your own property. The link I posted was showing an 8+% return once accounting for both over the a 20 year period that doesn't even include the recent COVID era price explosions.
> The link I posted was showing an 8+% return
If I'm not mistaken, they usually pay at least 3% dividend which is added to your salary. ETFs don't trigger any tax as long as you don't sell. And I didn't check but REITs probably have higher annual fees.
I was using REITs as a proxy for the value and opportunity cost of buying your housing rather than investing in a retirement account. If you actually buy REITs this breaks down because REIT capital gains are taxable, while residence capital gains on a primary residence of modest value are not.
It was not my intent to convey you should buy REITs instead of a place to live.
After early career this breaks down though, because the tax advantage are only good for primary residence modest value homes, it's not a strategy that can be continually employed.
> 8% annually
Historically, yes - but the last 5 year average has been ~14% (I guess it's like ~9% if you're adjusting for inflation). I think 10% is a bit of a better number these days.
That's not to say I couldn't be eating my words when the market crashes tomorrow, however.
> I act as their investment agent, assigning realistic interest rates
Author then proceeds to put 15% annual interest rate...
Where can I get 15% annualized returns, please?
(I'm told to no longer bet on even averaging 7% annually, over decades, on US stock indexes.)
Commenter just discovered that there are other countries and economic realities outside the US/Europe
11% is a safe interest rate on my country (py), I just got a 14.5% offer for local bonds BBB+
stay vigilant Lebanon was granting 12% rates and everything was fine and “covered” by central bank until it wasnt
> 11% is a safe interest rate on my country
11% may be the safest bond you have access to, but that doesn't make it _safe_ in absolute terms.
up to 30k, cover 100% by the central bank
So, bonds basically all tend to converge on the same risk adjusted yield. If you're seeing yields that look like this, the market believes the currency will slip or there's repayment risk (relative to USD bonds that are in the 4.75% range.)
Imagine you have a scenario where inflation is 0 in currency A and 10% in currency B. Would you rather have a 2% bond in currency A or a 9% bond in currency B? This is why Euro bonds go negative sometimes, when USD interest rates were very low and the Euro was deflationary relative to the dollar, it could push rates even further lower.
Look, you do you, but rest assured that you don't get 11% for no reason.
I wrote an article (it's in Spanish) in which I took data from the central bank since 1990 and created a tool to simulate various scenarios. The tool includes a column showing the average interest rates on central bank-backed investments. Maybe you might find it interesting. https://roberdam.com/jubilar.html
M dashes everywhere, bold text everywhere ... what's next, teaching them to over-rely on LLM's? And if we're teaching them about investing, can we also teach them about the ethics of investing? As in, employing a bunch of people to direct the profit of their work into the hands of investors?
I can feel the vibe-coding "vibe" from every vibe-coded websites, somehow.
When 50% of the words are bold you know you're in for a treat
My decade in the making habit of only reading HN comments is finally paying off. Nowadays when I do randomly skim an article it's almost always slop.
Nice! I also created a "virtual bank account" for my kids when they were 7-8yo. They can choose to take the weekly cash or put it in their savings account. My bank gives them a 5% interest rate per month, which isn't bad. Explaining the idea of compound interest this way is easy.
However, I think that's the easier part of being an investor. The more complicated part is risk management. With a savings account, there is basically zero risk. But that's not how you invest these days.
5% per month? Where is this crazy money generator? Assume you meant per year here!
It's not zero risk:
- Your currency may collapse, see Germany 1930s, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezula, etc.
- Only a certain figure is protected in savings, though governments will act aggressively to protect that (see 2008 + the Icelandic/UK/Dutch palava)
Yes, it's 5% per month. You wouldn't be able to explain the concept of a yearly compound interest rate to such young children. One year is an eternity in their life. I also don't give them too much pocket money to encourage them to save. They would spend it on junk food if they had too much cash.
A agree, that the currency is not a 100% safe investment. Inflation especially makes it bad for long-term savings. Indeed, money in any savings account is insured only up to a certain amount. However, that's not something you can explain to kids with a "virtual account." I suppose the idea that Daddy's bank will go bankrupt is probably not an ideal way to teach kids financial literacy.
Will they also have periods of a bear market and see their money go down ?
hopefully, “The first national bank of dad” remains solvent.
And can they take loans with negotiated interest rates and lock-in periods? Or invest in more risky products such as derivatives with a corresponding chance to lose all money? So much potential... ;)
Just add a $6-7CHICKENJOCKEY memecoin where they can put money in, see a 50% daily return for a random period of time, and suddenly have it go to zero.
Or even worse, in the tradition of these unclickable javascript buttons of the late 1990's, just detect when the finger is approaching the "withdraw" button and have the asset crash right before they can click!
First they have to fill in KYC questionnaire and have no risky products if they did not have investing experience.
Be careful with comparing real-life things and experiences with a (virtual) number on a screen, especially for children.
I used to know an adult who only cared about that number going up, despite making more than a comfortable amount of money. Live with parents, save on rent/mortgage, number goes up faster. Buy cheapest food, take leftovers from work-catered lunches, number goes up faster. Scam your way into being hired for a position you are severely underqualified for, get terminated after three months, keep the salary and sign-on bonus, number goes up. Invest pretty much everything (because there are almost no expenses), compound interest.
This feels like a severe anecdotal example which I'm not sure applies to most people.
It is definitely a single point, but that is who this post immediately made me think of.
And to be fair, investing does not apply to most people either.
Agreed, in 7th grade we did a stock market simulation, it made winning feel too easy.
You're giving a 15% growth rate with zero volatility? That isn't going to teach many important lessons.
How about offering a range of rates with volatility increasing as rate increases. Then they can think about the benefit of guaranteed return vs the benefit of long-term growth, or a combination of both.
OP: I think introducing volatility (which you can just model with one percentage variable and a sinusoidal multiplier based on this: 100% volatility means if your "real" balance was going to be $100 today, it varies between $0 and $200 ; 10% volatility means you're fluctuating between $90 and $110) is also a good idea in teaching kids to refrain from the impulse of withdrawing the money just because today's daily gain is in the red.
Another add to the feature request list :)
The biggest challenge with pensions is convincing people in their 20s to invest in high risk/high return investments. This is usually the right strategy because of the long time horizon of several decades until they will need to crystallise losses/gains.
However if they see their pension balance fall in a big correction, they can panic and move to less volatile investments, thus reducing their long term gains.
You can theorize all you want but the best way to learn to cope with this is for it to happen to you so it would be great to include it in the simulation!
Tangentially i can't help but notice a pattern. Generation1 says "build more homes", then they build them and convince Generation2 to invest despite ever climbing real estate prices. Then the internet happens and Generation2 says "build more companies". They build them , and proceed to convince Generation3 to invest in those companies despite ever climbing stock values. Seems like these trends run in cycles
Happy to see a PWA. These things need to make a comeback for a variety of reasons.
How can you have a localhost reference as canonical? You should fix your jekyll configuration I guess.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://localhost:8080/en/dinversiones" />
Am I missing something? When they went to add money, do you go back in and increase the initial investment?
Are they actually investing anything? If so, wouldn’t the app for the brokerage do this with real numbers?
They invest with “The first national bank of dad” as user loloquwowndueo pointed out, I'm their broker, no penalties when they want to make a withdrawal
I think what he's saying is: Given a balance of $50, they "earn" $5/mo. Given a balance of $200, they "earn" $10/mo (or $199*0.10 + $1*0.05). If they don't spend it, I'm assuming it's "rollover", and if they eat into their capital (eg: buy an xbox) then they feel the sting of earning less-per-month.
Showing siblings' investment performance side-by-side on a fridge-mounted screen.
Author understands child psychology.
You can't motivate kids by filling their heads with theory. Instead, make the outcomes of their actions visible to them - then they -motivate themselves- to learn how to improve those outcomes. Add in some friendly peer-competition and you're golden!
That was the idea! I hope it works out that way.
Can they pull money out? I don't see any place to update the balance up or down as the kids want to add money into the piggy bank or withdraw it.
features coming with the next update, meanwhile they can withdraw at any time
> meanwhile they can withdraw at any time
How does the withdraw work? You manually reset the date to today and the amount to what it was last time you saw it minus the withdrawal?
Love this.
Especially the opening line:
"“What comes with the milk, leaves with the soul” — Russian proverb."
I love a good proverb. This one goes hard.
You forgot to add taxes, market crashes, sanctions, asset depreciation, companies goes bankrupt and other fun things.
Where can I find this 15% annual interest rate?
sample= 14.5% on local currency, https://www.bolsadevalores.com.py/nuevas-emisiones/investiga...
Found a fun little bug. If you try to type into the date picker, and press backspace, the entire screen blanks out. (MacOS 15.0.1, Safari 18.0.1)
Being encouraged to invest is nice but having the ability to is a massive luxury.
I knew I wanted to save a lot for my future and retirement since I was in high school. I didn’t gain any reasonable ability to do so until much later.
A much better life skill in my opinion would be to teach about budgeting, how to cook economical meals, how to avoid debt traps and lifestyle inflation.
HN is a very specific and privileged demographic, very far from an average citizen. (of the US at least)
I'm always bummed when I comment on HN and then scroll down and find another comment which said it better.
Good. Financial education is sorely needed for everyone in America.
Now if only there’s an app that can teach delayed gratification.
> I explained to my kids that investing is like having a magic box that generates more money over time.
That is wildly misleading. Investing is super important, but it shouldn't be described in this fairy-tale way. Young people might be misled into trusting investment advisors/counselors/brokers, whose real goal is to enrich themselves at your expense. In fact, there are adults who haven't yet learned this.
An article about investing that doesn't mention the WSJ dartboard contest isn't worth reading -- essentially, over 14 years, random stock picks produced returns equal to those of stockbrokers, before the stockbroker's fees and other costs were subtracted.
An investment counselor's primary goal is to make you think you need his services. His secondary goes is to keep you from performing your own research to discover that is false.
never speak about investment counselors on the article, I will forward the WSJ article to my 7 year old girl so she won't be scammed by her broker (me).
is 15% realistic?
No. Since the late 1920s, US stocks have yielded an average real annual return of about 7%.
Source: "Since 1957, the S&P 500 has delivered an average annual return of 10.54%, but when adjusted for inflation, the real return drops to 6.68%."
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...
And on top of that there's huuuuuuuuge variance over time. You have to scale in and out of the market over a very long time to actually get the ~7%. Any one time investment is just a straight up gamble. It's only in aggregate over a long time that you get something somewhat reliable. But then the numbers aren't that impressive. I understand why people are so fond of buying bigger or second houses instead. It's a shame because it drives up the price of housing making it less available for our young. We're basically saving for our future by robbing the future of our young. It's pretty dark to be honest.
Yes, the trick with houses is that it’s the only chance most retail can get 5:1 leverage. Your brokerage will never extend that to you to invest in equities.
But without leverage, long run return of residential real estate is like 3% after costs, which is less than equities but above bonds.
At least that’s what I tell myself as I go to sleep in my apartment, a non-homeowner watching people accumulate serious paper gains in their houses ;(
Source: a paper called the real return on everything.
Leverage comes with a cost though through interest rates. It is entirely possible (and even typical) to come out with a loss even on appreciating real estate, since your house must appreciate by more than the interest on your loan. In the UK at-least you can get 1:5 leverage on equities, but you'd be looking at a 20-25% APR, instead of the 5% mortage.
The paper "the real return on everything" notably cuts off in 2010 and is talking about global averages, if you narrow it down to specific countries we can see stark differences. In the USA and UK you get 8.4% and 7.2% returns on equity, but only 6.03% and 5.36% returns on housing, a stark difference. Adding in mortage leverage adds on about a percent or so of return, thus still not bringing housing in-line with equities.
If we narrow our window to post 1980, we see in the UK returns of 9.34, 6.81 and 6.67 % for equity, housing and bonds. If we look at post 2010 in the uk, house prices have only stayed the same or decreased in real terms since then in the uk for instance, whilst equities have soared.
They also in the paper assume bond yields are roughly the same as mortage interest rates, which maybe was true for their data period, but hasn't been true since 2010 (https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/uploads/monthly_2022...)
Finally you can diversify equities globally, you cannot diversify your housing globally (if using leverage in a mortage).
Good points! And the period since 2010 has been mostly up and to the right.
While the housing market as a whole may go up, the likelihood that any individual house will go up probably varies more.
How do you get that much leverage from a brokerage to invest in equities? In the US we have something called Reg T, which basically says brokerages can only lend at 2:1 against securities in most cases.
Even most leveraged ETFs will generally stop at 3X.
Not in real-life terms, but for a kid, a larger interest rate will be less slow and boring than a realistic one, and it will be more engaging.
“The first national bank of dad” is a book that suggests a similar approach and I believe it also advocates a 15% interest rate.
I remember watching the statements for my savings account as a kid and getting like 2¢ of interest per statement and thinking… that’s it?? Why bother??
11% is a safe interest rate on my country (py), I just got a 14.5% offer for local bonds BBB+
It's less surprising Paraguay has 14.5% interest rates when you realise there's persistent 4% inflation (spiking to 11% in 2022).
Effective interest rate is something like 7-10%
Yes, in Brasil and South Sudan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_central_b...
Those two aren't similar. Brazil's annual inflation is 4-5%, you get 10% real return. South Sudan is 74% against your 15% return: you lose money.
you need to add the meta utf8 tag
But how do you charge the phone?
disabling wifi+data extend a lot the battery
The screen is the biggest consumer imho.
I mean of course I understand that the phone can be removed by the suction mount, but thus also defeats the idle infotainment concept.
Also seen screen burn in...
The number one thing people fail to truly take advantage of is the triple tax advantage of HSA accounts. So powerful.
Even better is that you can save medical receipts throughout your life and withdraw all that money for any purpose in the future without paying income tax on it.
> One thing that school doesn’t teach you (not even high school) is how to manage your personal finances.
Can we stop with this myth? Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate. The reason it feels like it isn't happening is because it's boring and most just don't pay attention or absorb the lessons.
> Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate.
Prior to 2020 only 8 states required a standalone financial literacy class. So a good percentage of people from the US on here probably didn't have to.
There were also states that had it integrated with another course but I'd question if they were any good. My state was like that and all we did was a 2 week project where we pretended to trade stocks starting with $1k. Which didn't even include things like dividends, short vs long term capital gains tax, etc...
We weren't taught basic things like budgeting, planning for emergencies, how loans and interest work, how taxes work, how credit scores work and affect you, etc...
> Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate
What's a state? Pretty sure we don't have those here.
Even if it was true for America (probably not), it certainly isn't true for the entire rest of the world.
Maybe they should be teaching Geography.
My mistake, it's just such a common trope in the US I didn't realize it was a universal complaint. It is true for US incidentally, people generally don't remember it because a) the learning and real world practice are too far removed b) people often are poor with finances regardless of knowledge.
All good.
I think it's common everywhere to be honest.
Here in the UK there's never been financial literacy taught at a national scale that I'm aware, there certainly wasn't when I was in school, albeit that was some decades ago now, and from what I've seen of my nephews/nieces it still isn't.
My children are still too young to worry about the minutiae, but we're already trying to teach them about income/outgoings and saving even at their middle single-digit ages.
Investing is something I can't say I'm extremely comfortable with the details of even at my advanced age besides the simple things like "I have a pension" and "I have a LISA".
I definitely think there's room for some self-service tools to aid in teaching these things to our kids from an early age.
It's not true for the US.
https://www.ngpf.org/blog/advocacy/how-many-states-require-s...
It's apparently now 30 states.
Are you from the US? I went to a good high school and even that class was awful. No one wants to teach it and genuinely, you learn more about money in history, english, science, and math. Additionally, you can take it online and over the summer, which kids do so they can take nicer looking classes. Granted, students with a work ethic tend to learn these things on their own.
I graduated high school almost 30 years ago so whether I'm from the US or not isn't particularly relevant. I did live in the US for 25 years though, and up to however many minutes ago, I didn't know these classes were a requirement in any state (let alone 30).
But going from "it's not a requirement" to "the class is awful" would kinda be moving goalposts, no?
This is frankly depressing.
> As my eldest son’s birthday was approaching, we suggested that instead of asking for physical gifts, he ask for their equivalent in money. That way, he gathered a decent amount of capital for his first investment adventure.
Yes, why would you want a toy or a book? Why waste time having fun or learning? You could instead watch a number go up slowly while you do nothing. Fun for the whole family, seconds at a time!
> Each day, as they watch their small fund grow, they grasp the magic of compound interest — and that, more than any gift, is a lesson I hope will stay with them for life.
This feels like raising finance dude bros and gambling addicts. There is no “magic” to compound interest, no one should have “watch money accumulate” as a life goal.
Okay thank goodness I’m not the only one who finds this incredibly sad. Especially as someone who is trying to make money less important in my life.
In what way are you doing that? Not that I disagree just curious how
All I mean by that is having an honest job I don’t totally dread, not getting a high-paying job that wrecks my mental health solely because it pays a lot, buying only what I need with minimal wants, trying to live simply without extravagance. I do in fact track budgeting very consistently and have a 401K, among other things, so that I avoid homelessness and stuff. But I do not think about how to make more and more money constantly.
The simple way would be to not "manage" your finances, don't build an investment portfolio. Have an honest work, live happily within your means and save whatever's left in cash.
I don't think you understand. In the US you have to invest, or you simply won't retire before you die.
Kids used to be encouraged to work hard and to learn. Every day I realize that some kids are not raised with this idea. Why work hard when others can, and you'll get even richer? Learning schmearning
He's teaching them the most important lesson of living in a capitalist system: wealth comes from having money, not from earning money.
If he's not able to also provide them with a sizeable initial capital, this lesson is also completely irrelevant. No one becomes really wealthy by investing savings off their modest salary.
I mean you can literally do that. And get wealthly. It'll just be a meagre existence up and until retirement.
It's better to invest in assets though than just the stock market. The wealthy build wealth by borrowing and buying assets like real estate. This ways makes it easier to avoid income taxes and capital gains taxes and you also get massive tax deductions for asset deprecation that you can use to offset most or all of what income it does provide.
Kids are 7 and 10 , this is a mini "Marshmallow Test" and they can use their money whenever they want if they find a book or toy they like while they learn how investments work.
agreed - he doesn't say the age of the kids but I imagine they're both under 10? Done right this could set them up for life and make them millionaires with virtually no effort by the age of 30 and still give them a childhood filled with toys and fun. But removing birthday gifts entirely from a young child... woah. Kids need physical items and tangible hobbies to share and bond with friends, even if it's just a cool looking stick. Is a child's brain developed enough to understand, enjoy and share a lot of these concepts, could it maybe lead to them becoming isolated?
>Done right this could set them up for life and make them millionaires with virtually no effort by the age of 30
This seems hyperbolic. Given that money doubles in roughly 10 years at a 10% rate of return, if kiddos are 10 years old they get two doublings by 30. To be a millionaire by 30 requires a present value investment of $250k per child.
You should take inflation into consideration, so the million in 20 years won't be the same as now.
It’s been my experience that when people are talking about some future sum of money without specifying real or nominal they are referring to a real sum, based on their current day concept of monetary value.
How is teaching your kids to invest some portion of their money "raising finance due bros and gambling addicts"? Just because modern culture has incentivized these kinds of people doesn't suddenly make investing bad. This is such a wild take.
> How is teaching your kids to invest some portion of their money
That’s not what the article says. I explicitly quoted the relevant part. It’s not “a portion of their money”, this is not money they had lying around in an envelope that grandma gave them. This father is incentivising the kids to not get what they want for their birthday and instead ask for money with which they’ll do nothing but unrealistically watch grow for a period of time. That’s not a good core memory, no one looks fondly on “that birthday I had as a kid where I got nothing but a number on an app stated growing at a snail pace”.
> doesn't suddenly make investing bad.
That’s not the argument. Nowhere in my comment does it say investing is bad.
> This is such a wild take.
Any take is wild when you blatantly misrepresent it. Don’t straw man.
Kids are 7 and 10 , this is a mini "Marshmallow Test" and they can use their money whenever they want if they find a book or toy they like while they learn how investments work.
I dunno, while they didn’t tell me to ask for cash, my parents basically made me invest any cash I got as gifts, plus everything I earned at summer jobs. I think that this kind of “investing by default” mindset (plus getting my own desktop computer for Christmas at age 11) extremely significantly impacted my current life in a positive way.
Also, learning to use Excel by playing fantasy stocks during the dot-com bubble, and having a Lycos homepage “Portfolio” widget just like my mom did is a fond memory for me, and zero people on Earth would call me a finance bro today.
The major difference is that in all your examples you were already getting cash. In the article, the poster is incentivising their kids to get cash instead of something else specific. From the article:
> we suggested that instead of asking for physical gifts, he ask for their equivalent in money.
For their equivalent. In other words, the kid has to decide something they want then deliberately choose to not get it so they can “invest” it and see line go up.
It would’ve been different if this had instead been a case of “grandma just gave you an envelope with cash; if you don’t have plans for it, how about investing?”. Which works on many levels, they could’ve also spent some portion of the money on something they wanted then invested the surplus, or a myriad other options.
> Why waste time having fun or learning?
yeah definitely no learning happening here
> You could instead watch a number go up slowly while you do nothing.
and then...spend it on something nice?
> This feels like raising finance dude bros and gambling addicts.
This is a super reactive take speaking from no experience whatsoever. My own parents did something like this for us when we were in elementary/middle school and it taught me restraint in spending, not the opposite.
> This is a super reactive take speaking from no experience whatsoever.
You have no idea what my experience is, please don’t assume.
> My own parents did something like this for us when we were in elementary/middle school and it taught me restraint in spending, not the opposite.
I’m glad it worked out for you. Truly. But don’t assume your experience is universal, because I unfortunately know for a fact it’s not. Also, the argument isn’t that it causes unrestrained spending, that’s not what financial dude bros are about. Excessive restraint in spending can also lead to unhappiness and an unhealthy attachment to money.
At the point with investment I was lost. Children should learn to be patient (saving money) and prepare for bad situations (saving money). That’s enough.
When older we can teach them what capitalism considers as investment. Capitalism is a longer word for greed. Money doesn’t work. Employees do. Customers pay. Both suffer to make greedy persons rich.
Give them a piggy bank. Teaches the concept of preparation.
Even saving can be seen as greed. Someone can focus too much on accumulating for themselves. Both investing and saving can be seen as preparation.
To avoid things becoming evil, you just need to make sure that your interactions with other are cooperative and not zero sum, and not all investments are zero sum.
I mostly agree but greed is a part of human nature is it not?
People keep repeating this. But why is it people’s nature. Maybe it is learned, because everyone keeps repeating this phrase!
Capitalism itself is a rather modern idea around 1800. And greed is maybe rooted in human nature, within the need to keep a buffer of food.
But we’ve brains and are social entities. I don’t think greed is necessity. But greed of other harm our needs. And we need to get greedy to get enough?
Examples: I want a nice bicycle. I need small house or nice flat. I enjoy good food from time to. I’m rather sure I don’t need a super-yacht, no swimming pool and no villa. I think stuff which I cannot keep myself clean is too much. If I cannot keep it clean myself it was greed?
But we’ve big dreams?
For the big dreams I would probably consider a cooperative society. These airliners are so expensive and suffer from not being used. Sharing them would be nice? Like…like owning airline stocks. Without the enforcement to gain money. Maybe some people enjoy flying it around, other maintaining it and others care about safety and passengers. Others maybe want fly to the moon. And others enjoy ships. Maybe sharing them deliberately makes sense?
You say "when older we can teach them what capitalism considers as investment" but you never specify the age. What exactly counts as older? My mom started telling me about how the new home we just moved into was both a place to live and also an investment at age 8. My dad started telling me about his brokerage account when I was 7. My dad also explained to me why the new car we just bought was not an investment when I was 6.
That's to say, I strongly disagree. It's almost never too early to teach this to children. As soon as children know money could be spent on exchange for things, they should begin to think about how money is made.
Wait until they want to divest their portfolio and start hyping meme stocks and shitcoins because number go up faster.
Then orchestrate an artificial bubble and crash
What's the point of this comment? To discourage investing? Reddit-style shitposting? Not sure what you're going for here.
That comment is spot on and in my opinion completely in the spirit of the post. It is all about number go up and competition.
Investing is not a safe piggy bank where you add coin and see green numbers go up.
What is the point of your comment, actually? At least GP is talking about children psychology and is totally on topic. Wanting a faster profit then getting scammed or lose money in a crash market is also part of the learning.
It's for the lolz. I laughed and upvoted, just imagining my kids someday lecturing me on crypto. Then I thought about creating a bubble for them and then saying to their faces "Annnnnd it's gone."
main di jo777. pasti cuan
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Brilliant idea!
Do you deduct short term and long term capital gains taxes?
That's quite interesting. When do they start to understand that saving is better, if they do? I can imagine kids never wanting to save for later, but also I remember that I enjoyed saving more than spending coins when I was a kid.
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