Your Turn: How to Help Yourself and Your Favorite Companies

How Would You Run Your Favorite Company?

 Wow! Time really has flown by this last Financial Literacy Month, hasn't it? It's already time for our last Weekend WHAT IF blog post! For our last big “WHAT IF” question, we're asking the kids to put themselves in the shoes of the investor by imagining they're investing their own money in the stock market to help their favorite companies grow bigger and bigger.

Weekend-What-Ifs are one of the best ways to engage kids to think about what they would do in a given investing, entrepreneurial, and financial literacy situation. This is crucial in getting the students to actually care about investing and helps them begin to grapple with their own personal philosophies in investing. In addition, by putting your kids in the visualization driver’s seat on a weekend, you are helping them to “see themselves” in their bigger future——now.

Opening your kids’ eyes to the fact that finance is a very real concept both now and in their will help kids to understand that the choices they make today and the things they are learning today will both help to shape their lives as they grow up. Helping kids figure out how to best navigate the vast world around them helps kids better relate the importance of financial literacy today and for many tomorrows. There’s no time like the present to begin or review these powerful life skills. This blog post with certainly help with that.

How to Begin

Use this graphic to show the big picture of investing. Keep it close by during the activity to refer back to it as needed.

Begin by asking kids what companies they like. Ask them why and what they think it would be like to invest in these companies. Help by choosing your favorite company too and going through this activity together. Remind kids that as a lead investor in one of your favorite companies, you’re actually a part-owner! Remember, a stock represents ownership in a company; if you buy a stock from a company, you are now part owner of this company.

Five to One Faves

Ask the kids to brainstorm what some of their favorite companies are; suggest they make a list of five faves and narrow down to one for this exercise. If they're having trouble thinking of some, help them think of some of their favorite products and toys and help them think about who is making them.

• Coffee cup and tennis shoes

• Do you love going to Starbucks and getting to choose your own Frappuccino? Maybe it's time to follow that sweet tooth and invest in the company that makes some of your favorite treats.

• Are you excited for the newest animated movie due to hit the streets soon? Maybe you should invest in your entertainment future and buy some stock in a major entertainment company.

• to follow that sweet tooth and invest in the company that makes some of your favorite treats.

• What about the new and hottest, most popular shoe company—ever? Maybe you should put your money where your favorite shoes take you.

Know Your Company

By encouraging kids to invest in companies they already support and like, they’ll learn a very valuable investing lesson: investors need to understand the company, its end users, the customer base, the market segments, and the company’s philosophies and priorities in order to be a savvy investor. What better way to learn than by experiencing the company first-hand (or first-foot) as a consumer?

It's Your Decision

It's important to stress that each kid can make a personal choice about their company—there’s no right or wrong choice for this exercise. Give kids ample time to think about their choices, favorites, and ultimate decision. Weave in a few future-based ideas and “what if” ideas by asking what kind of future they “see” for themselves. Ask them how they could potentially change their own future by investing in companies they believe in or in which they have a personal stake. In so doing, you're helping them discover and delve more deeply into their very own “Early Stage” Investment Philosophies.

Having an Investment Philosophy means that as an investor, you have a set of guiding principles that inform and shape your investment decision-making process. Summarize by underscoring that this same kind of decision-making that the kids just went through to arrive at the decision of what companies they wanted to invest in is the same kind of thinking any investor does. It's important to go through the different types of philosophies now and stress that there can be more than one that can influence why you might choose to invest in a company by buying stock.

• Some classic investing philosophies include:

• Value Philosophy

• Fundamental Philosophy

• Growth Philosophy

• Socially Responsible Philosophy

• Technical Philosophy

• Contrarian Philosophy 

Many Factors, Many Choices

An overall decision on why you might choose to invest in a company goes beyond your investing philosophies to encompass a multitude of factors. Ask kids to identify the most important factors that influenced their investment choices.

• Are they concerned about Global Warming or the future of the world? Then they might be a Socially Responsible investor.

• Did they have a favorite candy company that they want to see make bigger and better candies? They might be an investor with a keen eye for Growth.

• Did anyone invest in something that isn't doing well now? They might be a Contrarian investor.

It's great to clarify that there are many philosophies beyond the ones we've reviewed here.

The most important part of any investing philosophy is the person behind the decision:  YOU. It's all about what each investor wants to achieve and accomplish through their investment strategy.

What Kind of Future are You investing in?

Exercises like this that allow kids to imagine what they might like to do in the future is a key developmental strategy. It provides the foundation for focused goal-setting. FUTURES gives kids a solid framework within which to understand the complex world of investing. By providing many different exercises and opportunities for your kids to put themselves in that “future” world now helps jumpstart kids to develop their own investment philosophies, a key stepping stone to full financial literacy.

With the help of the Investing Strand and FUTURES, your kids will not only be able to understand the complicated world of stocks, they'll also begin to understand how they can start investing in their own future.

Visit Us Every Day in April

Check back tomorrow for our next financial literacy post. For more information about FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™, this amazing (and FREE!) financial literacy program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, or to download sections from the program, please click below.

Investing in One's Own Future: Financial Literacy and FUTURES

Investing isn't just for adults. Investing in one's future is a key part of life and starts long before someone becomes an adult or enters the workforce. This is why it's so important to help kids understand the complicated ways finance works in the world, and how with a little bit of thought and application starting now, they can begin to plan and invest in the bigger future they want for themselves.

Simplifying Complicated Investing Concepts
As we've seen over the last couple of blog posts, the fundamentals of investing come with a lot of complicated concepts. From stocks and bonds to low- and high-risk investments to mutual funds, it can be a little challenging for kids to grasp the concepts and to wrap their heads around the nuances of investing. What matters most is to help kids understand that investing can be such a beneficial process for their future. That's why we’re pulling the curtain back even more to showcase the power-packed Investing strand of the FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™ program.

In these lessons, students learn to define not only what investing is, but how to understand the myriad complex investment opportunities that are available today. This is crucial engagement that helps kids to begin to develop their own point of view and awareness of the many different life factors that can so easily influence the value of various investment options such as stocks. Life factors also influence us, as investors, making it a good time or not-so-good time to take a risk or make a move. By teaching kids about investing, we’re underscoring vital life choices that kids will make as they move forward in school, their careers, and life itself. It’s always about choices.

This rich, scenario-packed program Investing strand is ideal for kids from grades K through 8—and beyond. These sections also make for a quick and easy review for grad students, MBAs, entrepreneurs, and anyone who’s curious about what it takes to successfully invest in one's own future. Financial education knowledge is key to planning a bigger future, increasing your financial literacy, and working to become a wise and seasoned investor. The detailed Investing strand covers a wealth of topics in this stand-alone section of the program:

• Fundamentals of Investing

• Stocks

• Mutual Funds

• Bonds

• Purchasing Investments

• Portfolio Managements

Through easy to understand, engaging lessons involving real-world scenarios, helpful worksheets, fun activities, and even some games and everyone who explores this strand will discover:

• how to define investing and learn why investing is a beneficial practice.

• how to determine what it costs to own a stock and how one might go about choosing a stock.

• More about mutual funds, it's advantages and disadvantages, and how to evaluate mutual funds as an investment option.

• the characteristics of a bond and what key information is need to evaluate a bond as an investment choice.

• how to plan to make their investments grow by learning to manage risk.

• the role of the stock market, the roles of financial advisors, how to make a self-directed investment purchase, and how to buy certain stocks directly from the company.

As with the other strands in this powerful financial literacy program, each section is organized around an engaging Focus Question and divided into five parts, providing a spiraled, progressive presentation of the topic. Five levels of instruction move from a basic to advanced understanding of topics concerning entrepreneurship, helping teachers “meet their students where they are.” Adult learners will also be able to learn from the ground up with this progressive instructional model.

Just check out a few of the sections to get a first-hand look at the wealth of information. The supplemental activities help all of us to apply our skills and talents from other experiences. Students can make cross-curricular connections with other subject areas, too—including math, art, writing, science, and social studies. 

No Such Thing As A Free Program?

Guess, again. During this Financial Literacy Month of April, we've shared a substantial preview of the informative worksheets and engaging exercises that make up the Investing strand from the FUTURES program. That said, nothing can compare to actually going through the whole program with your kids. That’s why this program is FREE. 

Investing is a substantial part of financial literacy and with the Investing Strand, kids have access to over 300 pages of easy-to-digest content and exercises to help expand their world view on stocks, mutual funds, risk and most importantly, themselves. From hard-to-understand key concepts and definition breakdowns to fun and memorable games that help bring out the FUNdamentals of investing, kids will begin to understand the trickier concepts involved with investing and will begin to develop their own personal investing philosophy. By allowing kids the time to think and respond to the worksheets, FUTURES helps promote an inspire kids to think for themselves and starts them off on the path to better understand the world around them.

Investing in YOUR Future

Not only does the Investing strand offer many stable stepping stones to help kids along the path of financial literacy and sound investing, it also provides kids with the necessary materials and examples to begin to engage in investing and to see the value of investing in their own future.

FUTURES Investing Strand helps kids understand that investing requires resources including time, money, and talent. FUTURES helps kids begin to self-actualize their own personal investment philosophy and provides them with a framework to understand complicated investing concepts.

Visit Us Every Day in April 

Check back tomorrow for our next financial literacy post. For more information about FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™, this amazing (and FREE!) financial literacy program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, or to download sections from the program, please click below.