In this episode of Money Talk with Tiff, special guest Maya Corbic shares her insights on getting kids started with investing at a young age. Maya explains how parents can normalize money conversations with kids as young as 4 or 5 using simple concepts, then get them more involved around age 8 by explaining things like savings accounts, CDs, and stocks.

Maya discusses her approach of having kids invest half their gift money, starting with individual stocks in companies they know and then moving up to ETFs and index funds. Her book "From Piggy Banks to Stocks" aims to explain investing basics in a 10-year-old-friendly way.

Tune in to hear Maya's tips for raising financially savvy kids and her own journey learning to invest as a first-generation immigrant.

About Our Guest

From challenging beginnings in shelters and government housing, Maya Corbic is a first-generation immigrant and CPA who draws from her experience of overcoming financial challenges and simplifies money matters to inspire children to pursue financial success.

Maya is the author of a kids’ book, "From Piggy Banks to Stocks: The Ultimate Guide for a Young Investor," which simplifies investing concepts and equips children with essential investing skills while keeping them engaged.

She founded the Wealthy Kids Investment Club and has a popular Instagram account @teach.kids.money with 128K+ subscribers, through which she inspires parents to raise financially independent kids.

Connect with Maya

Get the book From Piggy Banks to Stocks: The Ultimate Guide for a Young Investor (Amazon Link)

Instagram: @teach.kids.money

Twitter: @Educ8Money2Kids

Connect with Tiffany

Website: https://www.moneytalkwitht.com

Facebook: Money Talk With Tiff

Twitter: @moneytalkwitht

Instagram: @moneytalkwitht

LinkedIn: Tiffany Grant

YouTube: Money Talk With Tiff

Pinterest: @moneytalkwitht

TikTok: @moneytalkwitht

Timestamps

[00:00] Explaining investments to kids in simple terms.

[04:52] Encouraging investment in stocks and diversified funds.

[09:09] Investing in ETF gives broad US exposure.

[12:11] Book made friendly for kids and adults.

Key Takeaways

• Introducing kids to investing concepts early
• Explaining stocks as owning company shares
• Certificates of deposit for guaranteed returns
• Investing in companies kids are familiar with
• ETFs and index funds for diversification
• "From Piggy Banks to Stocks" book overview

Support this Podcast

Copyright 2024 Tiffany Grant

You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk money with your money

nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings

and open those ears. It's the money talk with Tiff

podcast.

Hey, everyone. I am so excited because I have Maya Corbeck

on the line now. Maya is here to talk to us about something we haven't

talked about on the podcast before, and that's getting kids started with

investing. So. Hey, Maya, how are you? Hi. I'm doing well. How are you,

Tiffany? I'm doing good. Great. This has been a long time

coming from when I met you at Fincon

last year, but we can spare the audience the details. Let's hop

right in. So, first and foremost, when we're talking about getting kids

started with investing, what ages are we talking about here?

So, you know, the actual investing, I would

say it would be a little bit later on when they're eight years old,

but I don't think that it hurts to talk, even to our four or

five year olds, and just casually mention, you know, like, if you're

going to the bank to maybe deposit some money or if you're doing something,

maybe if you're checking your investments, if they ask,

it's really good to talk to them and just normalize talking to

kids about investing and normalizing the fact that we are

investors, and one day they're going to be, too. So I

would definitely start earlier talking about it and making

it not taboo, but when they're about eight

years old, that's when I would really start getting them more involved.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, you mentioned just start talking about it at,

like, four. So now if somebody's listening, they're like, oh, I have a four or

five year old, and how do I even start this

conversation? Like, what will they understand?

So it would be like, for example, let's say you are, you know,

you are checking your investments, and you're like, you know, maybe on your laptop,

and your kid comes in and wants your attention, and if

it's nothing urgent, right? Like, it's something that, you know, maybe they could just, like,

wait minute, right? So it could be a conversation like, hey,

you know what? Mommy is just looking at my investments.

I'm looking at my money. And, you know, sometimes they

might just walk away and they're not even interested in, like, what you're looking at.

But if they start asking questions, that's usually when it's a good time to

respond. So younger kids who are in

kindergarten, they can actually understand, like, when we tell

them that, you know, sometimes we can have money that

grows and money that makes money

babies, which would be the interest on our investments.

So if they ask you, like, hey, mom, what you're

doing, what is it that you're doing on the computer? You could just say, like,

mommy is like, looking at my money and making sure that my money is

growing and that it's also giving me money babies.

That's one of the easiest ways to explain it.

Gotcha. I love the money babies concept. It just

makes me giggle every time you say it. But it's so

true. It puts it in a way where they could kind of

grasp, because, you know, if they play with dolls and things like that, they're like,

oh, baby, baby. And so it's like, oh, my money

has money babies. That's right. It keeps growing. There's more of

it, right? I love it. All right, so let's say,

for instance, we have someone listening. They have an eight or nine year old, so

they're a little more advanced. How can they start the

conversation about investing and actually get them into it?

Yeah. So at that age, there are a few things that they can

do. Sometimes kids, when they get money for their birthdays or

special occasions, like, let's say Christmas, that's the money that

I, what I did with my kids is that I would actually let them

spend half, but the other half needed to be put into savings

account when they were around eight years

old. I would actually show them on the computer. I would, on the computer

screen, I would show them the statement from their savings account and tell them,

this money is just sitting there. It's not really growing. It's not

giving them money babies. So we could put it into a

certificate of deposit. We could buy a certificate of deposit. And

that's a big word for them. So they don't know what that is. But, you

know, it's just one way to get some money babies. And you may

not get a lot, but, you know, it could be

one thing that we do with them first, which is what I did with my

son and then with that, like, because he realized with just

a regular savings account, I think he made, was it

like fifteen cents a month or something like that. This is, you know,

we're talking years ago when the interest rates were a lot lower on savings

accounts. And then he realized that he could be making more money.

So we purchased a certificate of deposit, and then I think he got like

$60 at the end of the year. And then I said to him, I'm like,

well, you know, you could be making even more money if we invested into stock.

And I just try to normalize that. Stocks are

basically companies that we're investing in, we're investing in that

business. So I would tell them that

instead of being a consumer, and I'm just going to use Apple as an example

here, it doesn't mean everybody should be investing in Apple, but a lot of kids

have iPads, they have phones. So instead of being the consumer of

Apple, you could be owner of Apple. You could be one of many owners

by purchasing their shares of stock. So

at that point in time that we started slowly focusing on purchasing these

shares of stock of companies they knew. But

I kind of took them after that time period, I took them to the next

level, which was introducing them to ETF's and index funds, which are my

absolutely favorite investment vehicles, because then

I would tell them that instead of just investing in one or two companies because

that's all they had money for when they invested in ETF's and index fund,

they were investing in a lot more companies. It could be like

500 largest american companies. So it's almost like

there's this, there are these different steps that we can take to teach our

kids about investing. Okay, so first start off by

just explaining what a stock is like. It's a little piece of a company.

And you mentioned something about certificate of deposits, just in case we have people

listening that have no idea what that is. What are those?

So a certificate of deposit is

basically an investment product that you can actually

purchase. And it's very safe, meaning

that, you know, there's a very, very low risk of you

losing your money. And in return, you

actually get a certain, certain amount of money back

by investing in that product. And a lot of times

your money is locked in for a period of time. And that

means you cannot take your money out, you cannot withdraw it. And that's

one of the reasons why, you know, it's kind of

guaranteed because somebody else, usually the

bank, is using that money to invest into something else. So,

you know, those kind of investment products are good for people

that want to make sure that they get their

money back and that are very risk averse.

They are just really scared of investing in stocks. And also, it could

be because you are going to need that money in a short period of

time for something else and you want to make sure that the amount of money

that you've invested doesn't deem decrease at all because

you know you're going to need that money. So instead of just having it sit

in a savings account and not really earning you as much money. It could be

better to put it in maybe a certificate of deposit. We have cds,

we have stocks explaining to kids what stocks are and letting

them pick one that they may already be using. So, like you

said, you know, if they have an iPad or iPhone, maybe they want to invest

in Apple, if they play Xbox, maybe Microsoft, so on and so

forth. And then the next step is, once they do

individual stocks, just to get their feet wet, is to invest

them.

Then the next step is to introduce them to ETF's

and mutual funds. Now, once we get to the ETF's and

mutual funds, how are you, like, are you explaining

to them the details? Like, as far as, like, oh, these are expense

ratios, you know, all of that, or how are you introducing that

topic? I actually, I don't really, I haven't explained the ratios

to my kids just because they don't seem very interested. I mean, I have a

17 and a 15 year old, so I.

And they invest in ETF's and index funds. But

the way I explained to them is that I said, you know, I kind

of compared it to what they did before. And I said, okay, you

had, I forget how much. It was, like $200 or

whatever, and you were only able to purchase, like, one share of,

let's say, apple. And, you know, at the time. But

now, you know, for just a little bit more

money, you could be purchasing shares of, let's say, 500

largest companies. If you invest in, let's say, Voo,

ETF, and ETF is basically exchange traded fund.

And for those of you who are listening, is

essentially, by buying one share of ETF, let's say,

voo, you are investing in 500 largest

companies in us that are based on

the index called S and P 500. And in order to be

listed on this index, the companies have to be performing really well.

And if they're not, that company is taken off the index

and it's replaced by a different company. So it's kind of like a self

cleansing process. And then, but,

you know, that's automatically done for you. When you, when

you purchase this ETF, it's almost like whatever is part of your

investment portfolio, it's taken care of, because these

companies are, you know, they're at one point in time, like, they're part

of the index, the S and P 500 index. And at some point,

maybe they're not because they're not a well performing company. So all that's being

done for you. And the beautiful thing about ETF's, which is what I always tell

my kids, is that the fees, the management fees are a lot lower

than I know. You mentioned mutual funds, like mutual funds have

higher management fees because there is actually a person that's

managing what is included as part of

that mutual fund. You know, what stocks make it up and

what bonds make it up. But here, it's like, it's very different with ETF's

and index funds. It's just self cleansing process,

and the fees are very low. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Now I want to, because you have a book out, and it's

called from piggy banks to stocks, the ultimate guide for a young

investor. And when we had met at Finkan, you gave me a copy, and I

love it because it's like a little word book, and it has pretty pictures and

things like that. But if you can let our audience know just some of the

things that they would get with the book, how that can help their children,

so on and so forth. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for bringing that up.

So the book is actually, when I wrote this book, I wrote it for the

younger me, because I just want everybody to understand I didn't grow up with this

stuff. I'm a first generation immigrant who actually immigrated from a communist country, so

there was no stock market there, and my parents couldn't even teach me

this even if they wanted to. So I had to learn this on

my own. And I'm a CPA. And a lot of times people say, oh, you

are CPA, you just. You learned this. But I didn't learn this in

school. I had to learn it on my own. And the beautiful thing about

stock market, what I realized after learning it, is

learning about it on my own, is that it's not as complicated

as we're led to believe. There's a lot of complex

jargon that just makes it sound like it's this complex thing, and you need

to be a genius. It's really not. Even the famous

investor, Peter lynch, said, like, you just have to finish grade four

math in order to be able to invest. So the

book is actually written in a language that a ten year old can understand. And

when I was writing it, I had all these families test

it. So it was parents and kids that were going through it and giving me

feedback so that I can make it more user friendly. And it was

actually the parents that were telling me that they were learning so much from the

book that they wish they had a book like this when they were younger. So

the reason why the book has a lot of pictures, and it's written in

a ten year old language is because it's really meant to be non

intimidating. And I like this is literally investing

101. It explains the basics of investing

and in such a way that anybody can understand it. And

I feel like because we didn't learn this when we were

younger, as adults, we need to learn it now. And

it's okay to learn it in a, you know, in a book that's full of

pictures and colors. And it's okay because we didn't learn it when we should have.

So let's learn it now and make it easy because it's really not that

complex. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Thank you so much for that.

So you would say the book is for,

let's say, eight, nine and up. I

usually say, like, ages ten and up, but I did have people message me

on instagram. You know, there was a grammar

who told me he purchased this for his grandson who's five years

old. And it was actually like

his daughter sent him pictures and said, oh, you know, it's

whatever the book you sent him, whatever my son is learning, it's actually

clearly paying off because the little kid was.

I forget what it is. Again, I posted this on my instagram. It's one of

the highlights. But the kid was like a five year old was talking

about investing and about asking about his stocks. And it was marvelous

because you would never expect somebody that young to talk about the

stock market and, you know, investments.

Yes. That is so awesome. And like I said, I have the book.

I might actually go ahead and get my youngest son started on it

now because he's about to turn ten in June. So it's like perfect

timing. So, yeah, I love it. I thought it was so cute when

you showed me. I was like, I gotta get you on the podcast to talk

about this. So I appreciate you coming on and giving us

a tips about getting our kids started with investing. Now, if

people wanted to learn more about you or find out more about your book,

how could they find you? So the book is available on Amazon and

any bookstore on, on their website.

And it's called from piggy banks to stocks. The ultimate guide for a young

investor. And I'm usually hanging out a lot on

Instagram. My handle is teach kids dot

money, and I usually post a lot of free

tips on how to teach kids about money. And I'm happy to answer any

of your questions. Feel free to message me there. Gotcha. And

I'll make sure I have all of those links in the show notes. So if

you didn't catch anything, just check the show notes. It'll be there. Thank you so

much, Maya, for coming on the show today. I truly appreciate all the gems that

you dropped. And like I said, y'all, that book is so cute. I'm

definitely kidding, but I appreciate you coming

on and letting us know about how to talk to kids about investing.

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Tiffany. Bye.

Thank you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money Talk with TIFF

podcast this week. You can check Tiff out every Thursday for a

new Money talk podcast, but if you just can't wait until next week,

you can listen to previous podcast

episodes@moneytalkwitht.com or

follow tiffany on all social media platforms at Moneytalk

with t. Until next time, spend wise by

spending less than you make a word to the money wise is always

sufficient.