A Financial Mentor Request
I saw a coworker the other day
She made an unexpected financial mentor request to help her son get started with investing.
I don't usually come out from my lair at work. I'm too busy controlling the world with my privilege most days but on this day I had a visitor. She's around my same age and has my same position in our Union Manufacturing Factory. I'm pretty friendly with most people around this joint and especially the ones I've worked closely with in the past.
A few years ago I had to train this woman to replace me in my job so we worked a lot of 12 hour shifts together. You tend to learn about your coworkers working those long hours and if you don't work life can be a series of very long days without some chatting.
Kathy had initially stopped by to ask a question about some union business but that turned out to be nothing and we were just bullshitting and talking about life and family for a few minutes. I was asking about her family and I knew her son was a relatively recent high school graduate who wasn't on the college track, at least right away. She told me he was working and the job was pretty good. At the same time I was slapping together some stats for a blog post about the Smidlap Misguided Portfolio of Individual Stocks. The ticker symbol is SMPIS. Don't you think that's funny? I could barely contain myself when I typed that humorous sarcasm! I happened to mention that if she ever wanted to know about any of this stuff I do a lot of finance related reading and writing as a hobby. I think she knew because she came to me last year with some questions about changing state tax withholding or some such.
She had mentioned her boy had this new job that was pretty good with benefits and everything and he was still living at home. It sounds like the kid is just starting to figure out life a little bit and they don't mind him living at home for now. What she really was interested in was motivating him to save and invest for his future. I could have easily just pointed her to the Malevolent Missy Series and called it a day. Those are a series of posts about a young person just starting out and making their own money for the 1st time and some sound financial moves I wished I had made at that age. It's pretty basic personal finance stuff but I'm always surprised by how many people have never heard even the basics. Then she surprised me when she said "maybe you could talk to him, Freddy?" It took me a second to shake off that surprising suggestion/request. I told her that I would be happy to do so.
I'm thinking of showing him something like this one: Financial Independence From Working in a Factory? That was the one that illustrates the difference between Raging Reginald who eschewed college and started working right out of high school and Lucky Lucinda who got the fancy degree and the student loans and is smug at parties with all her fancy words like "actually" and "amazing." I'm think of something along the lines of a compound interest chart showing the growth of even $100/month if he never taps that money in a Roth IRA and how much that can grow over 20 years or more. I really want to emphasize consistency and just getting started for now. If the kid is anything like the average person he'll realize how well the simple system can work and will want to up the contributions as he matures and probably makes more money as time passes. We'll review his 401k options and make sure he's getting a match if that is available. That should be sufficient for now as a favor to a friend, don't you think?
Why did she ask me in particular? I think it's just because kids don't like to listen to their parents but an outside voice and lay out the same information and maybe get better results. I sure hope she follows up on this as it turns out I get pretty enthusiastic to help someone with something so simple. Anything else you think I should add? Has anyone ever asked you about help with relatively simple financial moves?
Oh, and I don't want to take any kind of pontificating tone. I think it's best to leave the bread crumbs as clues and let the person think they figured out what you wanted them to learn on their own! Have you ever had a financial mentor request to help out?
Would you let this fool talk to your kid about money?