<sub>Once, a long time ago, I was a momma to two little ones.

These little ones kept me very busy during the day.

The older one had taught me very early on that I could either spend 2-3 hours trying to get her settled for a nap and then sneak out of the room only to have her wake up tired and wired twenty minutes later, OR I could lie down with her and she would sleep for a good 1½ - 2 hours.</sub>

I quickly figured out that I could sneak a book under a pillow until she fell asleep, and then happily indulge my curiosity and reading habit while she rested.

This suited the introvert and passionate learning aspects of my personality very well!

Around the time of the arrival of my second child, I must’ve stumbled across a book about investing which I devoured.

Then I proceeded to read at least half of the investment section at our small library.

I learned all about how amazing dividend stocks were: not only were their stock prices a little more stable, but, as their stock price bounced around (eventually trending up in most cases), they paid you a dividend while you waited!  And, if you picked the right stock, they even increased the dividend every year.  If you held on long enough, you could have a stock paying you as much every year as you originally paid to buy the stock in the first place!

I also learned about diversifying your portfolio and that age-old adage about why you do not want to "keep all your eggs in one basket".  If you had the misfortune to buy only one stock and that one stock looked great and increased in value….until somebody uncovered massive fraud or a lawsuit and suddenly the value of the stock plummeted, you would be devastated. 

The chances of any one stock going bad are much higher than the chance of a whole portfolio (15-20 stocks) going bad.

Having a variety of stocks, especially if they are in different industries and products, means that, at any one time, some stocks might be doing poorly, but others are probably making up for it by doing really well.

It was about this time, when my two littles were still very young, that my husband decided to take a new job in Nebraska, far away from our home in Syracuse, NY.

Now, we had been told that you should pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible to save yourself lots of money in interest payments, so we had been dutifully paying at least one extra payment on our mortgage every month.  Between the extra payments and the increase in value of our house since we had bought it five years earlier, we ended up walking away from the sale with about $90,000.

Of course we used part of that $90,000 for the down-payment of our new home. 

But I had been doing a lot of reading about finances at that point, and I had come across several experts who pointed out the following:
 

1. Interest paid on mortgages is about the lowest kind of interest you will ever pay

2. If you have extra money and invest it in a portfolio of stocks that earns approximately 8% per year (which is reasonable in many years) and pay 4% in mortgage interest, then you are 4% ahead.

3. If you pay off as much as you can on your mortgage, you will have a lot of money tied up in your house that is pretty illiquid and inaccessible.  You might be able to get a home equity loan (that you would then have to repay again), but that takes time and lots of effort.  Whereas if your extra money is invested in stocks, you can immediately sell stocks and access funds if an emergency comes up.

So I took the money we had leftover from the down-payment, and I bought my first stocks.  (Home Depot, a little company called Netflix that my husband was subscribed to, Microsoft, and a few others for a nice little portfolio.) 

Then I read some more investment books, subscribed to investment newsletters like The Motley Fool, and learned even more about investing.

About 4 years later, my original portfolio of stocks had doubled in value and I was off to the races!  (And 15 years later, it has increased in value by a factor of 11.)

Now, why do I tell you all this?

The thing is, I think the best way to learn about investing is not by reading 100’s of investment books and subscribing to lots of investment newsletters.

I think the best way to learn is by ACTUALLY INVESTING.

But it’s a scary thing to invest. What if you pick a stock that goes bad? What if the market crashes right after you put your hard-earned dollars into it?  How in the world do you pick a stock or two to invest in out of 1000’s of options?

As I mentioned before, I read a lot of books and newsletters while I was beginning to invest.  But I learned the most as I watched my few stocks bounce around, pay dividends, experience stock splits and other corporate actions, and eventually (mostly) go up in value.

But what do you do if you don’t have the time and patience to read tons of books and newsletters and then wait for years to see how your investments do?  How can you get the benefit of all of my knowledge in the most efficient and timely manner possible so you can increase your confidence and start investing within the month?

I’ll tell you in my next blog post how I started solving this problem when I realized it was time to teach my own kids how to invest (and a story about how a snotty teenager inspired my first investing course!)

Until then, the best way to teach our children about finance, is to just start!

One of my survey respondents said, “Have never tried to talk about investing - still in the stages of just teaching them to be smart with what little money they have. To save money for things you really want rather then spend it as soon as they get some.”

This is SUCH an excellent start.  Along the same lines, here’s a great article for you:

Your Child’s Fortune: 10 Tips to Teach Investing to Kids
https://www.thebalance.com/top-tips-to-teach-your-kids-about-investing-4115938

And here's another:  How to Teach Kids About Investing

https://www.bankrate.com/investing/how-to-teach-kids-about-investing/