Investing and Saving For Young Adults

Yes, that was me asking the question on Thursday’s podcast.

We have a group of 18 and older guys and girls who come to Hawaii to do a workstay/homestay on farms here (mostly coffee farms but also produce, tea, chocolate, etc). This is similar to the WWOOF groups around the world. Many are just out of college and want to see part of the world. What they get here is they work x hours for room and board. Then if they work longer they get paid and or if they give tours they share in the tips. They might work at one farm for 3 months then go to another nearby to learn something else, or perhaps go to another state or country. One girl came to Hawaii for a few months then went to Australia.

When I am on the that farm I chat with these ‘youngsters’ and have mentioned Clark Howard and am always spouting off on deals and scams, etc. One guy who must have been about 20 asked a bunch of questions about saving money and I also suggested he start saving for retirement. When I started mentioning stocks, dollar cost averaging and compound interest, he really get interested. It seems that they may go into statistics and such in school, but perhaps not with the slant towards personal finance. That may be why so many college kids get those shiny new credit cards and get into debt quickly.

In any event, when he was headed off to his next adventure he caught me and thanked me for getting him to start saving. That is why I thought that I could introduce a whole bunch of young kids to start saving.

I took Clarks advice and will send them to Youtube and the other places to listen to the podcasts and videos. However, I also found his Living Large books on discount at Ebay and was able to buy 2 and get 1 free, all total of $7 and free shipping.