  
Feature:
Teens Can Own Stocks!
How to start doing your own
investing. Think pizza...
More excellent advice from financial expert
and author, Paul W. Lermitte.
Last month we talked about setting goals. This month I'd like to encourage
you to think about setting some goals for saving.
Perhaps you would like to go to University some day, or buy a car when
you turn 17! You may even be thinking about buying a house someday!
You can start saving for that now! A great way to save is with something
called a "Mutual Fund"!
Imagine that you want to buy a pizza, but you only want one slice.
So you and several friends put your money together, and buy a pizza
from a pizza maker. He looks after the pizza for you. A mutual fund
is like this pizza. Many investors put their money together (like the
pizza buyers), invest , and then the fund manager (like the pizza maker)
looks after the fund (the pizza). The difference is that the fund manager
is making sure that your fund value grows (sort of like having your
medium pizza become a large, without paying extra).
Over many years, a well cared for Mutual Fund can make your money grow.
And right now the stock markets are down so more mutual funds can be
bought for less money. Many teens are interested in the stock market,
and you may even have learned about it in a business course.
Money invested in mutual funds is used to purchase stocks of companies
on the stock exchanges that are doing business around the world. If
the companies are profitable, the value of the mutual fund goes up as
the underlying stocks go up. So by investing in mutual funds, you are
actually 'playing the stock market', but in a much less risky way.
The Internet is a great place to look to learn more about fund companies
and which companies they are investing in. Just do a search on Mutual
Funds and you will find mountains of information! Check out some of
the investing sites on our Links page. Good luck!
Now, if you'd like to start doing some serious saving, talk to your
parents about starting a mutual fund account!
Want to download forms that help you get control of your
money? Click
here.
Head back to the Teenzone
page.
I'm outta here, and gone to there.
Site
contents © by Paul W. Lermitte
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