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- Hacker News
- 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 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 - 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
- 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 - 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 - 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.
by freitzzz - 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.
by ericyd - 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.
by linsomniac