Today was Senior Checkout Day at school, and my 6th period class had only 2 remaining students. What shall I do with them?
A couple weeks ago one of them asked if we were going to learn anything about investing in the stock market. I spent a week on that last semester, but these 2 students weren't in the class last semester.
Today we started with the basics: what is a stock, what is a broker, how does one purchase stocks, how does one read financial information about stock performance, and what is a mutual fund. With just the 3 of us it was a very involved conversation, and at the end of the period one of them said, "that time feels like it went by in 5 minutes." I'll call that a victory.
What are we going to do tomorrow? We'll cover the different "sectors" of stocks, and then I'll let them play at finding companies in each sector.
What will we do on "final exam day", given that they already took the final with all the seniors? I assume they'll get sick *cough* *cough* and call mommy to go home. If not, I'll come up with something.
Explain how index mutual funds are a great investment for someone who wants their money to work for them but don't have time to follow individual companies or sectors. Of them, Vanguard has one of (if not the lowest) fees in the market.
ReplyDeleteActually, we talked about Vanguard's S&P 500 Index Fund. We also talked about how much money I've lost trying to cherry pick individual stocks when I should just keep putting money into the index funds. Yes, I've made money on others, but I've lost a crap-ton on Verizon!
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