NEPC’s Sarah Samuels was recently quoted in a Barron’s article where she shared insights on how to inspire elementary-aged children to develop an interest in investing. View excerpts below or read the full article on the Barron’s site here.
From preschool through adulthood, there are many opportunities to help children develop healthy financial habits.
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Elementary-age children should also be taught basic investing principles, says Sarah Samuels, partner at NEPC, an institutional investment consulting firm based in Boston. To introduce her 6- and 9-year-old daughters to investing, she took them on a field trip to see the Fearless Girl statue outside the New York Stock Exchange and talked to them about financial independence and what the exchange represented.
She then preselected several well-known public companies, familiar to her children, and helped them research potential stock picks, discussing tickers, prices, and earnings growth in ways they could relate to. For example, she compared a company’s earnings growth to a child growing in height.
Investing at an early age helps foster independence and confidence that will stick with children throughout their lives, Samuels says. The day after her 6-year-old daughter made her first stock purchase, she told her mother she was going to make her own school lunch because she was now an investor.