The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens

Wired Cool. Actually, quite hip....The Gardners set out to do something different in the investment world: have some fun while making a wad of money.

Autorentext

David and Tom Gardner, with Selena Maranjian

Klappentext

The pioneers of cyber-investing and personal finance education direct their wry, irreverent approach to a new young audience, delivering serious advice in fun-to-read, accessible language. This guide is designed to help teens begin investing, build a portfolio, and take advantage of the years ahead to watch their profits grow.

Zusammenfassung
From the personal-finance duo Fortune magazine called “funny, smart, cynical, [and] opinionated” comes savvy financial advice for today’s street-smart young investors.

The Motley Fool has made investing fun and easy for millions of people. Now, it custom designs its wit and wisdom for today’s money-savvy teens. The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens helps teens stand out from the ho-hum mutual-fund crowd, build a portfolio of stocks they can actually care about, and take advantage of the investor’s best friend—time—to watch their profits multiply.

Strike a blow for financial independence. The Fool shows you how to:

· Question authority when it comes to managing your money
· Save cash (for investing, for college...and, yes, even for having fun!)
· Dodge the spending and saving pitfalls that trap so many adults
· Get started investing—online and off—with just a few dollars
· Discover up-and-coming businesses that could become future blue chips

Warning: this is not your parents’ money guide! From identifying companies that are both cool and profitable to building a portfolio that makes tracking investments exciting, The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens shows young investors the way to financial freedom.

Leseprobe
Step 1. Set Goals (and Reach Them)

Success to me is having ten honeydew melons, and eating only the top half of each one.

-- Barbra Streisand

What does success mean to you? If you´re like many teens, success might be excelling at school or in athletics, getting into and thriving at the college of your choice, preparing for a career you´ll love, finding the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, or just not making a complete idiot of yourself in public!

Since this is a financial book, think for a moment about what success means to you financially. Hey, we know that up till now, you might not have given it a moment´s thought. So humor us. You might start by thinking, Success is...well...hey, I just want to be rich! So let´s start there. How would you define "rich"? Today, 40 percent of the world´s population, more than two billion people, struggle to live on less than $2 per day. Viewed from that perspective, you´re already stinking rich. In that context, virtually all Americans are.

We asked a bunch of teens to define "rich," and the answers varied widely. Some thought that if you made $250,000 per year, you were rich. Others thought having $2 million or $5 million stashed in an account would do it. One explained that if you had enough money in the bank to live comfortably just off the interest (payments a bank makes to you for keeping your savings with them), without working, then you were rich. The common thread running through most of the responses was that you´re rich if you´re able to buy what you want, within reason.

What´s "reasonable"? It´s probably not reasonable to anticipate owning mansions in three different countries, driving a Porsche with a Bentley in the garage, and having a large staff (masseuse, fan waver, grape feeder, foot rubber, and palm reader) tending to your every wish. You may not even want any of that stuff. It is reasonable, though, to aspire to someday own a house you love, one or two cars for your family, and enough of the things that give you pleasure that you call yourself content with life. Stuff like musical instruments, pets, maybe a boat, a home entertainment center, a fast computer, a decent wardrobe (um, less than fifty pairs of shoes, please), workout equipment, shelves full of books...and an android (gotta have an android).

Take a few minutes now to list some of your goals and dreams, both long- and short-term. You might think this a silly exercise. But ain´t it peculiar how few people spend time thinking out and writing down their dreams? Dream a little. What do you want to be, to do, to call your own? Then estimate how much you think each one would cost (some will be easier to guess at than others -- and some will have no associated financial cost).

My Goals and Dreams

I want to be: Estimated Cost:

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I want to do:

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I want to own:

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We´ve got some good news for you. And then some even better news. Chances are you can meet a bunch of your goals even if you don´t read our book. Just be ambitious for them -- whether it´s hiking the Himalayas or starting your own bookstore or writing for The Simpsons.

All of that said, if you do learn the basics of your money with us, you´ll likely reach more of them -- perhaps even all of them. Without robbing any banks, without saving and overpolishing every penny you ever get your hands on, without sacrificing joy, you can finance the dreams that need financing. If you get started now.

Time for a relevant tale.

Anne Scheiber: From Simple to Substantial

In 1932, Anne Scheiber was a thirty-eight-year-old auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. Attracted by the promise of the stock market, she forked over most of her life savings to her brother, a young stockbroker on Wall Street. Disastrously, his entire brokerage firm went bankrupt, and Anne lost all her investments. (Moral of the story -- and you´ll find us nodding our heads at this one: Keep a darn close eye on your brother.)

Determined to try again and do it on her own, she then saved $5,000 and plunked it back into stocks in 1944. By the time she died in 1995 (at the age of 101) -- get this -- her money had grown to $22 million -- far more than any of us need in this life.

How´d she do it?

Well, to start, she was a long-term, involved investor. She wasn´t trying to strike it rich overnight. She didn´t buy stock today and then sell it tomorrow (something that too many people try, with little success). She attended shareholder meetings and followed her companies closely. She bought big, name-brand companies like Pepsi, Chrysler, and Coca-Cola. She reinvested the money that companies sent her as "dividends," buying more shares of stock with it. And she placed her faith -- and her money -- in these growing companies and patiently watched their earnings expand over decades.

Some years, Anne´s companies struggled. Other years, the stock market got hammered.…