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How to Teach Your Kids About Money

How can I teach my children to invest money?

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Janet Bodnar
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine
www.kiplinger.com  

Janet Bodnar is deputy editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, for which she has written articles on a wide range of topics, including investing, money management and the economy.

Bodnar is a nationally recognized expert in the field of children's and family finances. Her latest book is Money Smart Women: Everything You Need to Know to Achieve a Lifetime of Financial Security (Kaplan). She speaks frequently on the subject of women and money.

Bodnar's "Money-Smart Kids" column appears regularly in Kiplinger's magazine and at <a>www.kiplinger.com/columns/kids</a>. It was chosen by Moneysmartz.com as one of the top financial columns online. Bodnar is also the kids and money coach on the AOL Coaches site.

Her book Raising Money Smart Kids (Kaplan Publishing) was a finalist in the personal finance category of the Books for a Better Life awards, honoring the best self-improvement books of 2005. It was also a selection of the Washington Post's Color of Money book club.

Bodnar has appeared on Oprah, Today, Good Morning America, The Early Show on CBS, Fox, CNN and PBS. She has done hundreds of radio and TV interviews and appears regularly on WUSA, the CBS-TV affiliate in Washington, D.C., and WTOP, the major all-news radio station in Washington. She is a popular speaker and has been quoted in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor to Parents and Glamour.

Bodnar has been recognized by American University for excellence in personal finance reporting, and by the National Council on Family Relations for her televised reports on children and money. The audio version of her book (read by the author) received three "best of" awards, from Publishers Weekly (business category), Library Journal (nonfiction) and the Audio Publishers Association (educational category).

Prior to joining Kiplinger's, Bodnar worked for The Providence Journal and The Washington Post. She received her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism.

Married, she is the mother of three children.

How can I teach my children to invest money?

In this video, Deputy Editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance and author Janet Bodnar answers questions on the many issues surrounding what kids should know about money.

This series: 35,469 views

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Host: How can I teach my children to invest money?

Janet Bodnar: Well, I think it helps to teach your children to invest money. If you are an investor yourself, do not hesitate to talk about it with your kids. Show them what you are doing. If you are following the stock price, show them what you are doing. If the market is going up and down wildly, talk about what is happening in the stock market and talk about what it means to own a share of stock. Owning a share of stock is really nothing more than owning a share of a particular company. So, you can often pick the interest of kids by buying them shares of stock in a company that makes products that they use or a store where they shop. A share of McDonald's is a classic or Wendy's or any fast food place or Pepsi or Coke or Disney or any of those places, Nike. Companies that again, make products that the kids use or run places that the kids frequent, stores and things like that.

Certainly, you can do this as a holiday gift or a birthday gift for the kids. That is really a good way to get them interested so that they actually become an owner of this company. But the thing to do is do not think that it is so complicated that they cannot understand it because certainly, middle school kids can understand the idea of being a part owner of a company and that is really all you need to tell them. You need to be just very simple about it. Keep it very simple and basic and there are ways that you can buy shares of stock without getting too complicated and without getting too expensive and I think that just having the kids be a share owner on their own and then showing them how to follow the shares and stock online everyday to see where the company is going is really an interesting thing and to learn a little bit about that particular company.

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