Finance Investment

Your successful personal finance investment portfolio might be a great tool to use when teaching your children how to handle money wisely. Money is such a mysterious subject that finding reliable advice is no easy task. Wouldn't it be nice to have dear ol' Dad to the rescue? Again.

Since money is the fundamental unit involved in all finance investment or savings transactions, start teaching your children early how to use cash to buy and save. Like any other skill set a child acquires, mindful and deliberate money handling becomes second nature as the child matures.

Older children can learn how banking works by maintaining their own savings account, perhaps opened with a finance investment from Mom or Dad. Paying that seed money back may involve an after-school or summer job but the experience would be a great way to illustrate the impact income and loan repayments have on the bottom line.

Your teenager may be begging you to teach him how to drive. Might be a good time to teach him how to navigate the finance investment maze called Wall Street. The two of you could pick a few companies of common interest - you like their products, they're local, any reason is OK - and use the internet to track the performance of those companies on the stock market. Think of it as investing with training wheels on.

By the time your child reaches high school graduation, you'll know if he's ready to try his hand in the real world. If so, imagine the look of pride on his face on prom night when you hand him the keys to the car alongside certificates for a few shares of real stock, his very own.

The personal investment alone will last a lifetime.