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- Hacker News
- 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.
by thw_9a83c - 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)
by mattmanser - I can feel the vibe-coding "vibe" from every vibe-coded websites, somehow.by meatjuice
- When 50% of the words are bold you know you're in for a treatby lm28469
- 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!
by cbeach - That was the idea! I hope it works out that way.by roberdam
- I feel like this is a great way to raise a crypto "line-must-go-up" addictby pprotas
- > I act as their investment agent, assigning realistic interest rates
Author then proceeds to put 15% annual interest rate...
by Galanwe - 11% is a safe interest rate on my country (py), I just got a 14.5% offer for local bonds BBB+by roberdam
- Commenter just discovered that there are other countries and economic realities outside the US/Europeby neucoas
- 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.)
by neilv - 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.
by mlmonkey - 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...
by mothballed - > 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.
by sema4hacker - I run a "Bank of Dad", tracked in a spreadsheet for my kids. They can choose to "invest" their money with me or not. To make investing meaningful for them, I pay 10% interest per month, up to a $50 balance.
To avoid bankrupting myself—and to encourage them to get a real investment account when the time comes—the rate drops as the balance increases, similar to progressive tax brackets. By the time they get to $1000 balance, the annualized rate works out to ~6%, and after that it drops fast enough that it's essentially free for me to operate.
Overall, it's been quite successful. Now whenever the kids get money, they invest it immediately. And they often delay or forego spending so that they can get more interest the next month. They haven't turned into complete misers, but it has encourage a mentality of thinking about saving, and I think the concept of interest has landed quite well. I think things really started to click for them around age 8 or 9.
If you're interested in doing something similar, I made a sanitized version of the spreadsheet. Feel free to copy: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f3FgHUohw26sHuCoO40s...
by bruckie - These kids are going to be so mad at how low interest rates are at actual banks that I wonder if this is ultimately going to teach them to borrow rather than save. I guess it’s the same thing, really: they’re learning the time value of money either way.by singleshot_
- 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?by nxor
- For me, the ethics of investing is a bit more profound. I see stock market investment and share holding to be one of the main drivers of civilisations obsession with endless consumption and growth. To me those things are damaging to our minds and our planet. This is just doing the same retarded shit we’ve been doing since the end of the war. Personally I feel like we need to turn a corner now; ease-off this obsession with accumulating as much money as possible for ourselves and focus on our communities, our families, living in balance with nature, and securing a healthy future together with new values and goals that last. Investing into the stock market is like the opposite of this. Just my opinion.by whackernews
- 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
by Waterluvian - great!, mobile app?by roberdam
- I made a similar thing for my adult flatmates when I was still a student. I was less 8bit and less a game, but the same priciple.
The incentive was a slight rent reduction at the end of each month.
It completely failed to motivate my friends to do more chores, but it landed me my first job.
by 243423443 - That is very cool! Do you have any details on how it was built or is the source code available?
Also, what happens if one of the daily missions is not completed? Is there a passive income from those?
by koyote - 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.”
by johntiror - 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...
- 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.by sd8f9iu
- the story is about Joe Kennedy and his shoeshine boy
- Sure, I did that in 2018 as I was leaving London. Cabbie was talking about the coins he was buying and this and that. Bitcoin was $10k/coin at the time. I sold my bitcoin as soon as I reached Heathrow. This was a very wise move because I followed the story.by renewiltord
- 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).by taude
- 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.by kccqzy
- 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).
by projektfu