Arborbridge wrote:MrFoolish wrote:Itsallaguess wrote:
I come from a background where absolutely no-one, either in my home-life or my work-life, discussed financial matters in those days, even of a basic kind - never mind in terms of such lofty ideas as 'stock market investment'...
Whilst I can't comment on your experience, I find this rather odd. We are only talking 20 years ago, not the stone age. I remember back in Mrs Thatcher's day, people around me were dabbling in privatision shares (tell Sid!) and unit trusts, etc. All the share prices were listed in the newspapers as well.
The key word was "background" - this may not be a mere 20-30 years ago. Assuming IAAG is past the first flush of youth, or similar in age to me, I would say my
background would mean my parents' generation and that's way before the Thatcher kids. So, I would have say my experience is the same: I am probably the first to become interested in the stock market from 1986 onwards. There must, however, have been some sort of ideas floating around.
I remember me Dad talking about making your money work for you, and myself playing about with compound interest. But he never had any shares, of that I'm sure, and he never discussed finances. Except that after he retired I became aware that he was still making mortgage payments which came out of his state pension. I went to pay it off, and it turned out the balance was only £109! - around 1972.
I'm a bit younger that you Arb, but with a similar experience in terms of the complete absence of positive financial discussions during my youth.
I say the word 'positive' because those are the types of discussions I initially became aware of through
The Motley Fool, where for the first time I was able to digest how ordinary people could make money work
for them, and how we could start to personally take control of our long-term financial health. Suddenly financial topics felt accessible, and what had previously felt covered in an air of mystique, with an additional layer of class-dislocation to be quite honest, began to feel accessible and actionable.
That's opposed to the 'negative' aspects of finances that I'd only ever been exposed to up to that point, where parental-generation issues were completely dominated by the
lack of finances, and the all-too-regular poor outcomes of such a situation, rather than anything
positive at all, for most of my younger days.
I'm making sure that my own son has a much better understanding and appreciation of these things than I did at his age, and have set up a Junior ISA to allow him to see and understand the long-term implications of being able to incorporate good financial health from an early age.
When he's a bit older, and hopefully appreciates what we're trying to build for him now, I'll no doubt mention Pyad to him, and tell him about that fork in the road that will have hopefully so positively influenced
both of our long term financial futures at that point.
Cheers,
Itsallaguess