It's never too early to invest in the stock market. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 17, Fool contributor Travis Hoium shares with fellow Fool contributor Rachel Warren his approach to building stock portfolios for his two children, and how he's setting them on the road to financial success from a young age.
Rachel Warren: Let's see, we have a couple of more questions here. Vihaan says for Travis. I think Vihaan's saying, I have a two-year-old to start investing. Can you please share your tips and thesis about how you are building your kids' portfolios?
Travis Hoium: I absolutely love this. This is something I'm really passionate about. I bought my first stock, personally, when I was 13 and learned a lot about investing. I paid for part of college through investing, my wedding, our house. This is why we do this.
Is to be able to prepare ourselves for these big moments in life. I have a one-year-old and a four-year-old, they both have their own portfolios. I have them in taxable accounts. That's maybe not the right answer there, but that's what we've chosen to do because it's liquid.
I'm really trying to invest in companies that could be iconic for them as kids learning to invest. I want to build their wealth over time. That's really important, we're adding money to their accounts every month. But one thing that I really want to do for my kids is make investing identifiable to them. My son and I, for example, watched the Virgin Galactic space launch when Richard Branson went to space.
I am trying to explain to him, which is tough as a four-year-old, that he owns part of this company. That's a cool tie that you can have when investing with kids. You watch a Disney movie, and you say, hey, you own a little bit of the company that made this movie. That I think is really effective.
The other thing that it does, for me as an investor, is having kids, having a family, opens my eyes to a lot of investing ideas that I wouldn't have had myself. Kids are the early adopters.
There are investments that I have made because of what my kids are doing that I never would have even had on my radar, that have been absolute home runs, even in a short period of time that they've been investing. Just because, I could see their excitement about something and I was like OK, maybe this could be a good investment.
Over time, I think that's a really good way to teach each other about investing. That's the way that I look at it. For better or worse we're all learning and we're learning together as a family about investing and so that's what we've done. But really I'm just trying to get my kids excited about investing and owning a little piece of the companies that they are into right now.
Rachel Warren: That's so great.
