The Best Gift You Can Give Is STOCK....
Feb. 4, 2015 4:22 AM ET Seeking Alpha
•The best gift you can give to the next generation is stock in solid companies.
•From a young age I was blessed to be given shares of companies which drove my interest for investing and the stock market.
•The knowledge I learned through these gifts as well as the financial foundation it created developed my appreciation as the best gifts I've ever been given.
•I will demonstrate just how this practice plays out with real world data and money from my personal portfolio.
•I highly recommend this practice of giving stocks to those of the next generation while still near infancy to allow time for the investments to mature.
I believe in this practice 100%, and I still think to this day "If Only" someone would have done this for me, forget the bicycle, I'll get one...tb
the rest of the story:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2881836-the-best-gift-you-can-give-is-stock?ifp=0
Comments
Would be nice if they made it easier to gift stock, but I doubt that will happen.
This message brought to you in memory of Unca Lou Rukeyeser who detailed the plan in one of his newsletters
best, hawk
Lifetime learning is best done by doing and not by classroom listening. That’s why successful educators insist on a student completing daily essay and mathematics assignments. It’s a jump start to the continual learning process.
This is not a new discovery. It’s very, very old stuff. Aristotle said: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”.
And that’s precisely why I have practiced an investing education by a gifting securities policy for almost three decades with extended family members. My gifts have not been cash nor have they been typically unwanted trivia. My gifts have been consistently Vanguard mutual fund shares to both adults and children alike.
My gifting takes the form of a 5-gift plan. The real goal is to get family members familiar with the investment process, its benefits, and its risks. Given my anecdotal outcomes, the plan has been mostly, but not completely, a success. As a minor side-bar, a few of Vanguard’s clients are my doing.
My 5-gift plan is simplicity itself. My gifts for various occasions started at the 100 dollar level. I gifted low fee passive Index funds using a specific product ordering. In sequential events (birthdays, Christmas) I gifted the Vanguard 500 Index fund, a Vanguard International fund, and a Vanguard total bond fund. These served as a low cost, diversification lesson.
The fourth gift is a Vanguard small cap value Index product. At that time I make an effort to explain the research that supports this portfolio component as a likely annual returns augmenter.
My fifth gift is a test. It is cash accompanied with a question about how it will be spent. In most instances the answer is that the money will be added to the Vanguard account. I measure this outcome as success.
I believe my gifting program both has contributed to the overall family wealth, and has encouraged family members to become more proactive in learning the ins-and-outs of investing. I continue my plan to this day. It seems to work well.
Best Wishes.
How did you go about gifting in terms of literally giving the shares? Did you have the guardians open an account for the shares to go into, did you put an account in their name, etc? Thanks.
I don't recall specific details because it changed depending on age, the family relationship, and time period. For our kids, my wife opened the accounts. With relatives, it often took the form of cash with specific instructions. The instructions were uniformly executed. I always added an increment to cover execution costs which in the past were high. Luckily, we also enjoy high trust levels within our family. That makes life relatively easy.
Thank you for your question. Sorry I don't have a detailed answer, but in our case, a single answer doesn't exist.
My very best regards, especially for your detailed and excellent replies to the many MFOer's complex questions. The scope of your knowledge base in truly impressive.
MJG, your family will appreciate you more & more as they reach retirement and realize what you did for them (much more than a bicycle).....priceless...tb