The co-authors, Tom and David Gardner, who are brothers, founded the Motley Fool, an investment information service based in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993. It has since grown to include a popular online site, www.fool.com, as well as a host of best-selling investment guides. Selena Maranjian is a senior writer at The Motley Fool.
When it comes to investing, as the authors aptly state, “The more years you have, the better.” If there is one thing a teen has, other than angst, it is time. There has rarely been a better time to be or to have a teenage investor: Stock prices are at their lowest in years.
As the book describes, there is a growing array of educational Individual Retirement Accounts available to teens and their parents as well as adult-oriented retirement funds such as a Roth IRA that a teen could take advantage of in youth. There are also a host of low-fee mutual funds targeted at the young investors that, along with the authors’ favored index funds, offer relatively hassle-free, long-term growth prospects.
The 243-page book explains, in straightforward teen-speak, everything from bank accounts to single-stock equities, bonds, mutual funds, index funds, certificates of deposit and retirement accounts.
The book’s authors, all of whom are in their thirties, rather shrewdly hook their readers in by first appealing to their material desires as well as their need for financial independence. Not only does financial independence mean that “you can provide for yourself and those you love,” according to the authors, but it means “being able to fly off to wander the coves and beaches of the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. It means being able to buy a great mountain bike…”