The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of

This book definitely deserves a 5-star rating. Sure, some may claim that the guide is aimed at young teens by the style of writing the authors chose, but that does not take away from the information the book provides. At 19 years old, this is the first investment book that I have read. It reviewed some common knowledge of saving, compound interest, and stock market principles. However, it also introduced me to a wide variety of investment opportunities - possibly the best, the Roth IRA. It may sound silly, but I was never introduced to any of these opportunities to stash some cash for the future, but this book has certainly done that and convinced me to get started immediately. If I were a high school personal finance teacher, I would make sure this is on my required book list. It's a simple, yet important read that all teenagers can benefit from. I would highly recommend it to anyone who desires to be financially fit. This book will help you become a winner in the big game we all play: life.

This is an amazing book for teaching kids about personal finance. Some have criticized some of the dated examples. In my opinion that doesn't matter as the principles taught are timeless. We have two teenage boys and review a chapter a week. They have been interested and are learning about the time value of money and the importance of not over spending. This should be required reading in every high school.

As the author of The Teen's Guide to Becoming a Millionaire , and a frequent follower of the Motley Fool, I was very interested to see what David Gardner had to say about investing for teens. The promise of the book is very grand: eight steps to having more money than your parents ever dreamed of. I wanted to see how well the book lived up to its promise. Overall, I would say that this book does a good job in several areas. In each of these cases, Gardner takes a complex topic and distills it down to the basics in a form that teens can understand. The eight steps themselves are very solid, and a person can reliably follow them and be far better off than someone who doesn't follow them. The eight steps begin with helping teens set goals and make plans. They help teens have an understanding of how they can earn money (which becomes the seed of their investments) and to begin saving the amount that is needed to start investing. They then move on to teaching teens the basics of the financial system, including banks, credit unions, brokerage firms, insurance, etc. Then, the eight steps moves on to understanding how the stock market works, and finally to an understanding of mutual funds. Finally, they describe how teens would need to go about setting up a brokerage account and start investing. Much of this seemed very basic to me, personally. But, as I talked with my own teens about this, it was quickly clear that teens don't get this information from a high school education. One of the reasons it seemed so basic to me is that I've been working with this for the last twenty years. But it is all a necessary foundation for someone who has not been taught this in school. The second half of the book was dedicated to investing in shares of individual companies. This included finding great companies, tracking them to determine their performance over time, understanding how financials of companies work, and crunching the numbers. It also covers how teens can set up an investment club. There was only one area where I felt that I still wanted additional information. I said a minute ago that the book took a complex subject and simplified it down. In certain areas, it seemed to stay too simple. There were a couple of areas where I could see that a teen would need additional information in order to move forward. While the simplified explanations were good, teens could benefit from being directed to additional resources, in order to expand their understanding. Other than that, the content of the information was very good. Teens who are interested in investing will benefit from reading The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens.

I found this book bery useful and enjoyable to read I can only recommend it to everyone who wants to gez into investing

This was a Christmas gift, along with a whole boxload of books, for my 12 year old grandson. He loves to read anything and everything! In the box along with this book were novels and nonfiction as well. I got all of them on Amazon, nice prices, they arrived in wonderful condition and in plenty of time for the holiday. He started reading this one as soon as he took it out of the box. One of the novels he already had, but said, he loved it so much that he was happy to have his own copy!

highly recommend this book to those of you who are in high school or before, im currently in college right now and had i read this book and made the time and investment into learning and attaining the insightful information this book has to give, i probably could of saved a whole lot of money in high school and into college. there are a lot of young americans out there who just dont "know" (whether its because their parents didnt have the time or knowledge to properly show their kids) on how to save and spend wisely. this book puts into perspective a very important life skill many individuals must have, in order to be financially savvy growing up. anyways if your a rookie at banks and money savings i highly recommend this book.

I read through this book before sharing with my teen and I have to say although it does a good job of spelling out the foundational items such as setting goals, reviewing compounding and how to potentially earn money there are several things in the book that make it very dated. Already with the Introduction, the fact that U2's latest "CD" is referenced already made me groan that I was going to lose my teen on reading this before he even started. Additionally, it doesn't take into account the various tech savvy avenues that teens could potentially succeed or fail tremendously which need to be taken into account.

Great source for teens to have. I wish this was around when I was a teen.