Compounding Snowballs

Many grandparents are quick to send a check to their grandchildren as a present in hopes that they will use it responsibly, but recently I heard from two grandparents (and Early Bird readers) Barbara and Bob Baute and they have a next level idea. They have a combined total of nine grandchildren, with ages ranging from 12 to 20 years old. Their idea was plain and simple, give their grandchildren directions to follow (my book, Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young ), money to invest, and a contract to sign. They call it “The Investment Challenge”. On Christmas each grandchild received an envelope containing a contract for them to sign and a copy of Early Bird. The contract stated that they had to read Early Bird, and use the ideas in there to pick a stock to invest in. As long as they followed up and ran the analysis on the stocks, the grandparents would give them a certain amount of money every year for five years for investing purposes only. The deal was sealed when the grand...

The importance of saving is a concept many people struggle with, but the struggle of saving is more prevalent in teenagers of our society. About 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, with the average amount of money in a checking account being $4,436. Most teenagers don’t even have anywhere near that kind of money, but they have enough to visit the vending machine one to two times a day. This post is meant to open one’s eyes to the power of compounding. Let’s talk about my friend Ryan. Ryan visits the vending machine about once a day. With a range of snacks from a Coca-Cola to a Hershey chocolate bars with a low initial cost of $0.75 to $1.50, the vending machines are quite hard to resist. On an average day, Ryan will spend $2.25 on a bag of gummy bears ($1.25) and a Diet Snapple ($1.00). For a midday snack, it isn’t a bad price, but over time it can add up. If Ryan spent $2.25 everyday for two months of school days (40 days) it totals to $90.00. That ...

A few months ago, I wrote a post on my investing process called: Why Do I Invest? . In section 4, I talk about connecting the story of a company (recent news, patterns in performance, products, predictable faults, etc.) to the numbers (debt, P/E, ROE, etc.).  I do feel it necessary for me to reiterate the importance of this because of a quote from a recent article. “I picked Pepsi because I love Sun Chips. Cheddar Sun Chips are my favorite — that’s how I pick most of my stocks.” Yes, I did buy Pepsi in part because of their products. But I picked it for more than just my growing love of the products, I picked it because a majority of our population buys Pepsi products. It started because I like their products, but it did not end there. I did more research than just open up a bag of chips and fall in love. Just as Aunt Ginny did, I looked at the company and tried their products, along with checking the numbers and learning more than just the calorie count of 12 servings of...

More than just Starbucks ’ addicting drinks, or Unilever’s cleansing soap they are both very focused on socially responsible practices, and they both take great pride in making a positive impact. Both of these companies track and report on what they’re doing to be socially responsible. Starbucks and Unilever are very different companies, but they find their own ways to impact the world for better. For those of you who don’t know (LOL), Starbucks is coffee shop known for their Pumpkin Spice Lattes (PSL) and their modern experimental drinks. Unilever, on the other hand, controls a variety of brands from a scent teenage boys love to drench themselves in, Axe Body Spray, to the delicious chocolate coated Magnum ice cream bars to Dove Soap, Lipton tea, and many more. Looking at both of their Sustainable Living or Social Impact tabs these companies have a range of things they are trying to improve. Here's some fun math to think about: If you haven’t already, go check out my ...

I'm so excited to announce that my book, Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young ,  is published! It has been a long five months. The publishing process ended with me listening to "Closing Time" by Semisonic on repeat until I was confident it was truly closing time for the book. I hope you all like it! Currently, it's available on Amazon  as a paperback, and it'll soon be on Kindle and local bookstores!

I knew Sam Davidson for such a short amount of time, and yet he made one of the largest impacts on my life. I met him during the summer of 2017 over email. Sam encouraged me to become more involved with the Motley Fool and their new program, Fool School. From then on, I got the chance to have weekly meetings with him and some colleagues about the plan for this program.  He was always a light-hearted person with a ton of energy. Sam always found a way to bring smiles to everyone's faces, and make a room of investors giggle.  Sam always made sure to push and help out others. He would always try to play to everyone's strengths. Sam always knew how to include everyone and made sure their opinions were heard. Sam was simply, a caring, thoughtful, easy going, intelligent man. I am very lucky to have known him, and I'm glad he's in a better place. Sam was a strong leader with a kind heart. He had a great mind for investing and could explain it backward, forwards, and...

Bill Mann is the Director of Small Cap Research at the Motley Fool. Prior to that, he was the founding Chief Investment Officer for Motley Fool’s investing arm, Motley Fool Asset Management, where he oversaw 3 mutual funds and 7 separately managed account strategies with nearly $2 billion in assets under management. Mr. Mann has an insightful take on the fun (and power) of investing internationally. I have very minimal experience with international investments, so I’m very excited to learn more! How do you look for competitive advantage in companies outside of the U.S. versus internal, US focused companies? So believe it or not the process is very much the same, except that in many countries there are additional types of competitive advantages that aren’t available in the US. In the US there are very strong rules that prevent commingling of public and private interests, but in many countries, there are companies that are provided additional protection from competitors. For e...