Personal finance for young adults

Mr. Bowler, a teacher from Fonda-Fultonville Central School has allowed me to help teach his 12th graders a little bit about personal finance, before they head off to College next year. Our goal would be to teach a little bit about inflation, compound interest, investing, credit cards, and anything else to do with personal finance. Our hope is to prevent a few students from getting into credit card trouble when they leave for school and to promote the importance of early investing.

I believe it will be obvious to you that this is my first attempt at creating a web site. I thought this would be a way to keep the information from year to year and maybe you would look at this site or contact me if you needed some help after you graduate high school.

I believe each and everyone of you can be a millionaire, just by setting up and sticking to a plan when you are young. It certainly would be a honor to myself and Mr. Bowler if we had anything to with that. Many people are going to try to help you with your finances in the future, but don't forget there may be a hidden reason there trying to help you. They may tell you they can do better for you than your doing yourself. There is only one problem a good percentage of professionals can't beat the indexes and are looking to charge you fees.

I will give you some example's of setting up a portfolio of conservative stocks that won't make you rich short term, but long term will do very well. The advantage you have by starting at a young age is time and a steady 8% to 12% return over the course of your lives will make you very wealthy.

I will try to get through to you the dangers of credit cards.

Examples of inflation.

The benefits of compound interest.

Don't buy lottery tickets--Create your own lottery

You have money to invest--think about the amount of money you and I both waste on a daily or weekly basis. $3 per day will make you a million.

401k, Roth IRA's, other retirement vehicles--Once you get a job you need to fully fund whatever retirement vehicle your company offers. I have seen some that I don't particulary like some of the choices that they have, but you still need to do it. Look for a low cost index fund with the S&P 500 or something like it.   Do you need a Roth IRA?   Yes you do!!!!! Open up a Roth IRA as young as you possible can, invest in the total market index symbol (IYY) with almost all of it. Invest every month and don't stop when the market goes down, if anything add more--the market is on sale. 

529 Plans--Once you have children of your own and I'm not rushing anyone, but you need to start saving in a College savings plan as soon as possible I can't even imagine what the cost of college is going to be when your children are ready to go.