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Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

roberdam.com

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Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#391

Post by mathgeek »

simianparrot wrote: post #386
Brendinooo wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less: yup. The great thing about saying "give 10%" is how well it scales.

Except it doesn’t. If you’re poor, 10% directly impacts your life negatively. It means less (or lesser quality) food. It means less money set aside for yourself in the case you need it — and you will. 10% for middle class is fine. That’s just one less night out. People should not give to charity if they themselves are likely to be dependent on charity.

This comment perfectly illustrates the mindset folks are talking about. "I'll give when it doesn't hurt me so much" is another form of "I'll give when I have more." It doesn't make the person "bad" or any such thing for not giving, but you won't convince folks to not give by saying "but what about you, don't you want nicer food/clothes/etc."

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#393

Post by roberdam »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #310
linsomniac wrote: post #102

There's an awful lot of negativity here, but as someone who's 55 and has earned a good wage since I was 17, I really wish I had taken investing more seriously from the very beginning. While I knew of compound interest, I really didn't understand it until like a decade ago. If I'd started putting 5% of my money into a target retirement plan from 17, I'd be retired now. As it is I'm not doing badly, but I really wish I…

Please share https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started with your son.

great resource, thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#394

Post by mathgeek »

lukan wrote: post #249
nonethewiser wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Investing for retirement at 17 is a bad idea! At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education Why would you assume they are mutually exclusive? You can just do both.

And poor people just should eat cake, I know.. For real, I believe most 17 year olds on this earth do not have the funds to invest in education AND in a retirement fond, so there are choices to be made. (there are also the choices of creating social bonds and investing into activities together, ...)

> I believe most 17 year olds on this earth do not have the funds to invest in education AND in a retirement fond

There is also a huge overlap between "kids who have wealthy parents" and "kids who can afford to invest".

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#395

Post by a96 »

joquarky wrote: post #318
bluGill wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing for retirement at 17 is a bad idea! At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education - the right education investment today will pay back far more than any other monitory investment. There are of course bad education investments, and some are not willing to study even more (or not able to pass a good education course), in that case retirement might be the best investment you can make, but it…

What educational path is safe to invest in right now? What kind of job will be in high demand in a few years and will remain in demand for at least 20 years?

I'd offer learning skills, personal finance and other life skills, (more or less public) speaking, potentially languages and (modest) mathematics as some examples of skills that will probably be useful for any foreseeable future including most dystopias. Particularly they are things that many 17 year olds will be lacking.

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#396

Post by dangus »

mavamaarten wrote: post #153
dangus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet $10 that it’s vibecoded, and it’s such a dirt simple calculator that perhaps it was even done with a single prompt. The AI just picked react because that’s the most common framework.

That's the first thing I thought when opening it. Sure looks like a "make me an app" response that Claude would output. I mean nothing wrong with that, I needed a silly calculator thingimabob too yesterday (for some CRC checks on a piece of text) and Claude quickly cooked something up for me. But I'm not writing blog posts about it, releasing the tool in the wild, and claiming I wrote it. Blegh.

There’s definitely nothing wrong with it normally but then like you said it’s got the blog post and the project basically clones every calculator out there that already exists.

This type of calculator is so common you can even find one on an official US government website.

https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#397

Post by a96 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #152
onli wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that can be bad advice. It does matter a lot if the bank asks for high fees, which would be the case with all(?) German banks, and I'd be surprised if that's different in Switzerland.

My bank also charges a trade fee which I think is bullshit, but at least it's a major bank. It's like $10 so doesn't matter all that much, not sure how much it would be for Switzerland, but you could just buy the stocks in larger batches if trades are expensive.

$10 may not feel like much, but it's the proportional costs that you have to figure out.

If that's e.g. for a monthly $1000 investment, it means 1% of your savings is lost in fees each time. That'll be 1% that's not going into savings. If you end up with a million by some time, that small fee will have cost you 1% of that, which is $10k.

"It's just a cup of coffee" -> "that's a 10 000$ cup of coffee". But if you only save 200 a month, that 5% is 200k you've lost by the end.

One percent is often considered a reasonable cost ratio, but it's definitely worth considering what the real numbers are for a given option.

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#398

Post by bluGill »

mathgeek wrote: post #391
simianparrot wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it doesn’t. If you’re poor, 10% directly impacts your life negatively. It means less (or lesser quality) food. It means less money set aside for yourself in the case you need it — and you will. 10% for middle class is fine. That’s just one less night out. People should not give to charity if they themselves are likely to be dependent on charity.

This comment perfectly illustrates the mindset folks are talking about. "I'll give when it doesn't hurt me so much" is another form of "I'll give when I have more." It doesn't make the person "bad" or any such thing for not giving, but you won't convince folks to not give by saying "but what about you, don't you want nicer food/clothes/etc."

Most people do think they have less than they really do - which is to say there are families living on less income than they are thus proving it is possible with some luxury quality of life compromises. However that doesn't destroy the point that there are people at or near the bottom who shouldn't be giving.

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#399

Post by a96 »

dingaling wrote: post #284
linsomniac wrote: post #102

There's an awful lot of negativity here, but as someone who's 55 and has earned a good wage since I was 17, I really wish I had taken investing more seriously from the very beginning. While I knew of compound interest, I really didn't understand it until like a decade ago. If I'd started putting 5% of my money into a target retirement plan from 17, I'd be retired now. As it is I'm not doing badly, but I really wish I…

> and let him pick a couple stocks to put some money into And yet we complain that corps today are too focused on their market valuation over everything else; customer experience, longevity, worker conditions, R&D are all being neglected in order to make the needle go up. 'Investing' in stocks in order to flip them when the price goes up is feeding this insanity. Teaching kids that this is perfectly rational seems se…

Stock picking and speculation especially with a single company is indeed a spectacularly bad strategy, but it can be a motivating start.

A well diversified fund would be the better alternative if you need to aim at a single thing. But it's hard to say what's the better first step if you're trying to teach personal finance management.

Re: Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

#400

Post by a96 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #378
triceratops wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the application to real life practical financial scenarios was definitely not done Of course it was. You can't teach compound interest without referring to money or banks. That's the whole point of it. Otherwise it's just multiplication.

Not only you can, I still don't see how the financial "magic of compounding" isn't bullshit for vast majority of people - you can't really make significant money this way in reasonable time spans (5 years rather than 50).

5 years is "get rich quick!" scam territory. The real aim is to manage finances for the rest of your life which may or may not be 50+ years, but will definitely be in double digits if you're of an age for thinking of managing your savings. If your horizon is shorter than that, you're essentially on your deathbed already.
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