Comment by latexr

Comment by latexr 4 days ago

> How is teaching your kids to invest some portion of their money

That’s not what the article says. I explicitly quoted the relevant part. It’s not “a portion of their money”, this is not money they had lying around in an envelope that grandma gave them. This father is incentivising the kids to not get what they want for their birthday and instead ask for money with which they’ll do nothing but unrealistically watch grow for a period of time. That’s not a good core memory, no one looks fondly on “that birthday I had as a kid where I got nothing but a number on an app stated growing at a snail pace”.

> doesn't suddenly make investing bad.

That’s not the argument. Nowhere in my comment does it say investing is bad.

> This is such a wild take.

Any take is wild when you blatantly misrepresent it. Don’t straw man.

roberdam 4 days ago

Kids are 7 and 10 , this is a mini "Marshmallow Test" and they can use their money whenever they want if they find a book or toy they like while they learn how investments work.

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B56b 3 days ago

Seems more like a "mega" Marshmallow Test. Instead of putting off a snack for 15 minutes they're giving up an entire year of birthday gifts for a reward years into the future.

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macNchz 4 days ago

I dunno, while they didn’t tell me to ask for cash, my parents basically made me invest any cash I got as gifts, plus everything I earned at summer jobs. I think that this kind of “investing by default” mindset (plus getting my own desktop computer for Christmas at age 11) extremely significantly impacted my current life in a positive way.

Also, learning to use Excel by playing fantasy stocks during the dot-com bubble, and having a Lycos homepage “Portfolio” widget just like my mom did is a fond memory for me, and zero people on Earth would call me a finance bro today.

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latexr 4 days ago

The major difference is that in all your examples you were already getting cash. In the article, the poster is incentivising their kids to get cash instead of something else specific. From the article:
> we suggested that instead of asking for physical gifts, he ask for their equivalent in money.
For their equivalent. In other words, the kid has to decide something they want then deliberately choose to not get it so they can “invest” it and see line go up.
It would’ve been different if this had instead been a case of “grandma just gave you an envelope with cash; if you don’t have plans for it, how about investing?”. Which works on many levels, they could’ve also spent some portion of the money on something they wanted then invested the surplus, or a myriad other options.

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