There’s something magical about kids talking to kids about critically important issues. In this case, Personal Finance.
Life can be hard in many cases, and financial issues amplify them 10-fold. Wouldn’t it be nice if kids learned young about personal finance a little at a time in short 2-minute burst from a whiz-kid finance guru?
Meet Rishi Vamdatt, now in his teens, who at age 8 started Easy Peasy Finance: https://www.easypeasyfinance.com/
Rishi has a YouTube channel with everything you might want to know about finance: https://www.youtube.com/@EasyPeasyFinance
While “professionals” make 10-minutes videos, in exhaustive detail, trying to show you how smart they are… Rishi spends two minutes, covers the topic completely, and shows you how smart you can be. Easy Peasy!
Rishi has created over 700 free educational videos for kids, starting at about age 9. Easy Peasy Finance is featured in a “Paying It Forward” article in the Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, an excellent magazine for people who manage their own investments and personal finances (2023, Dec. 31, p. 72). (Kiplinger publications are likely at your local public library in the periodicals section.)
A January 2024 video talks about a very current topic of the 11 ETFs approved for Bitcoin. It is short, simple, and impressively accurate. Actual buying bitcoin tokens is awkward and a poor investment for the average person, buying in an ETF is much easier… but still a poor investment.
But let’s back up to financial literacy for everyone, especially kids starting at a very young age. Most people over their lifetime will earn more than $1M dollars. Most people will spend it all as they make it. People who are able to manage personal finance, save a little money, invest a little money and end up with a sound retirement. With the magic of compounding, money doubles… and then doubles again. The rule of 72 is an easy-peasy formula as to how long it takes your money to double. Take 72 and divide by the interest rate you might expect to invest at over time. The stock market yields about 6% to 10% over longer periods. Let’s go with 10%. So 72 divided by 10 is 7.2 years for your single investment to double. At $100 per month, or $1,200 per year, your money from the first year would be $2,400, then $4,800, then $9,600 in the 38th year. But, if you invested $100 per month every month for 40 years (called an annuity in finance) all of the compounding would add up to about $500,000. You would be half way to a millionaire, or more, by the time you are ready to retire. That’s the magic of compounding! In the meanwhile, other people who did not manage and invest their money are preparing to work longer or retire very modestly on social security, you would have a nice cushion for emergencies, travel, donating to charities and more.
It is not how much you make (your salary), it is more about what you do with your personal finances over time that makes the difference as to people who are financially stressed and those who are more comfortable. Surprisingly, as important as it is, personal finance is not taught at all, or not taught very well, at school. At college, personal finance is not required, even for most business students. In fact, many managerial finance programs do not require personal finance. Really! Students are taught to manage a corporation’s finance and investing, but not their own. It seems that learning to manage your own bank account, budget, finances, spending and investments would be infinitely more comprehendible than the complexities of corporate finance. Plus, learning about finance from your own personal perspective seems to be more relatable. Relating how it works on a small scale for you personally and applying it to finance at a company should result in an interesting ah hah moment. Every entity needs to do the same things: budgeting, paying bills, managing cash flow, investing. Easy peasy finance!
What other wonderful learning tools do you have in your toolbox to share with youths, parents, and teachers?
#YouthEdu #LearningMadeEasy #FinancialLiteracy #BestLearningTools #NonprofitPlan
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