Plant The Seed About Investing

Here is a simple activity. It came about because during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was 7-months pregnant and at home with my son. The markets were in a complete free fall and I was on the phone every day with clients doing my job. My son, Kai was getting an education on TV and learning to be very patient. I am sure he sensed something was wrong and thought it was neat he could stay home and watch TV all day. At any rate, he was a trooper.  

This is when, for the first time, he really got an awareness of what a job was (previously he had been dropped off at daycare and mom went to work).  He would ask, when I came up for air, “Mommy what are you doing?”. I would say, “Mommy keeps track of the markets and lets people know about them”. I kept it brief and high level.  

Eventually he would start saying to me, “How are the markets doing Mommy?”.  

I’d say good or bad. Then I had an idea, - this is a teaching opportunity.  

Next time, he asked me, I said, “Come here Kai, I am going to show you what to watch and you can tell me how the markets are doing”.  

I turned on CNBC, which always has a box on the right-hand lower corner, that lights up either green when the markets are up or red when the markets are down. I explained to him, if the box is green that means the markets are doing good and have gone up. If the box is read that means the markets are doing bad and have gone down. I would introduce one concept at a time. At first just “green/good”, “red/bad”. Then “green/good/up” and “red/bad/down”. It took him a week and he got it.  

Then I introduced one more concept around this. The concept of money. I told him, when the markets are good or go up, people make money. When the markets are bad or go down, people lose money.  Within another week, he could tell you the full sentence and we had fun with it.  

I videotaped it and you can watch it here

I understand he does not really know what this means. But there is some level of consciousness now and it is a shared thing that we enjoy doing together.  

My plan is to grow on this seed I planted, through a multitude of other exercises that I will share with you. Think about how you can start planting the seed with your kids.