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Early Learning: How to Teach Important Business Concepts to Your Child

It can be difficult trying to teach our children how business works, but it’s a necessary eye-opening experience that your child needs to understand. It will help them make decisions in the future, and they’ll learn to appreciate how the economy works which can be a great boon to their learning ability in the future.

Here are some of the most important concepts to teach your child, and examples of fun activities to help them understand it. These shouldn’t be aimed at children who are too young. Ideally, you’ll want your child to have a basic understand of maths first because there are a lot of numbers involved in business. You also want to have a couple of toys or video games laying around to use as “products” to demonstrate these concepts.

You’ll also need some sticky labels (that can easily be removed) and a pencil, better yet some colored pencils and paper to write things down.

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Supply and Demand

To teach your child this simple concept, bring out a bunch of their favourite toys or video games and grab a couple they don’t use anymore or don’t want. Set them out like a shop, and then give your child some fake money (such as monopoly money) and offer them to your child. Set a price for each one, making sure that your child’s favourite toys are more expensive, then offer to “sell” them back to your child.

To teach them supply and demand, tell your child that their favourite toy is in high demand and that the price has increased from what the label says. Then, tell them that their other toys are cheaper because they aren’t in demand. They’ll start to understand that products that are highly sought after will cost more because they are in demand, but because there isn’t much demand for their other toys, your child can “buy” them back from you for a cheaper price.

Trading

You can teach your child to learn forex trading which will give them an insight into the trading industry and also how foreign currencies interact with home currencies. A simple way to do this is to use online programs and trial accounts. If those programs are too advanced for your child, then a simpler method is to set out a bunch of toys or games that they like to play, much like the supply and demand example. Play a simple game of trading with them. The objective is to tie in supply and demand with the toys that you have set out.

Give your child a couple of toys and set values on them. Next, tell your child which toys are in high demand (use your imagination here!) and give them reasons. For example, perhaps the latest Pokemon game came out and, as a result, Pokemon toys that your child owns have gone “up” in value, so they can be sold back to you for more money because they are now high in demand. Teach them to read how the market is going so they can buy and sell products to gain profits.

Why Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Never Work: Lessons For Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs

People are drawn to the idea that it’s possible to get rich quickly, especially kids. It’s a basic mammalian instinct: we want to get the most resources for the least expenditure of energy possible.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of get-rich-quick schemes don’t work, and our grand plans end up falling through. There are some good reasons for this.

Getting Rich Quick Means Being In The Right Place At The Right Time

News reporting on successful people has a tendency to bias our perspectives on how to generate wealth. The news only reports on the small cadre of individuals who made a fortune overnight, giving us the impression that building wealth is something that can happen in a matter of months. What we don’t see, however, are the millions of people who didn’t get rich quick and are working in regular businesses for regular incomes.

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Pixabay

Often, the people who get super rich, like Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg, did so because they were in the right place at the right time. Larry Page was perfectly positioned in the late 1990s to launch his search engine, Google. He had the right skills, and technology had just reached the stage where internet search was possible. The same goes for Zuckerberg: he just happened to have the right skills at the right time to implement his social media technology. These were freak events, but they’re the ones we hear about all the time in the press.

Success Takes A Long Time

There’s a joke floating around that says it take 15 years to be an overnight success. And even some of the biggest names in the business community agree with this. Many of them, including Twitter CEO, say that they had overnight success – it just took them a decade of work beforehand.

This makes a lot of sense. To build anything substantial takes a lot of time and dedication. Nothing that was complex or truly useful to other people was built over a weekend – especially in the modern world. Instead, new products and services require a long ramp up and even then they may not be accepted by the market.

Success Is Never Risk-Free

Success often means going into debt or taking on unsecured personal loans to finance a business venture. In other words, there’s an element of risk involved. The more risk, the fewer people who are likely to want to undertake the project. This is one of the reasons why we see so many people setting up their own accounting businesses (because the risks are relatively small) compared to people creating their own space companies (because the risks are much larger).

Get-rich-quick schemes like to pretend that they are risk-free: a sure bet to make money. But if they claim this, then it almost certainly isn’t true. Entrepreneurs are constantly looking for the lowest risk enterprises to sink their money into. The chances that somebody else has found one of those opportunities and wants to share it with you is next to nothing.

Investing? It May Be The Key To Unlocking Your Future

The future’s a scary place isn’t it. Human beings have an inquisitive nature and need to know the facts; they need the knowledge to ground them. Unfortunately, we can’t predict the future, and that’s a terrifying concept for most.

Especially when money is concerned.

Everyone wants to know that their finances will improve in the future. Everyone wants to know that their hard-earned cash is safe. There’s no straight and clear answer here, but there’s a number of things you can do to take a peek and see what the future holds.

Chief among them, is investing your money. An investment is something you put your cash into in the hope that there will be a profitable return. Simply putting cash into a savings account is an investment. Other investments are bonds, shares, and property. Running a set of investments is called a portfolio.

Unfortunately, investment isn’t risk-free. Banks can fail, and markets can fall through. That has happened and may happen again. It’s not a blind gamble, though; there is an entire archive of information available to you about investing. There’s always going to be risk, though. That’s where the portfolio comes in.

Spreading your investments across different subjects is going to not only increase your chances of success, it’s going to stabilise your income so you don’t suffer when one aspect is under performing.

Firstly, you’re going to need some starting capital to invest. Ideally, this should be around $3,500. This is so you can access the basic Vanguard funds to provide you with more options. You will need to scrimp and save to build your starting fund, and this will be hard work, but the benefits will be worth it.

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Whilst you can put your money into funds, you can also put your money into real, tangible assets. You can purchase gold bullion, which will be stored in a vault for you or you can purchase a property. Either way, they are an investment and options for diversification.

If you would like to find about more about investing in gold take a look at Gold IRA Strategy, Tips, & Rules (The Ultimate Guide) by Sarah Smith

A property investment might be a great option for you. Not only will you hold the deed to a location and a real thing, but it can constantly earn money from you. You can rent this out to commercial or residential tenants and the rent they pay back to you goes to paying off the mortgage on the site. Not only that, but the surplus is your profit. It’s a big responsibility, though, as you’ve got to keep your tenants happy, less they move to a better site and leave you empty handed. Property is huge and diverse and could see you investing into ranches and farms one year before moving over to something like a 1031Gateway property the next.

Investing is a huge world and something that never ends. Although you can’t predict where your cash will end up, it can allow you to peek behind the curtain of your financial future and allow you to have slight control over your future. Do your research and let investing give you a secure future.

Frustrating Finances: Three Reasons That You Might Be Having Money Problems

 

Picture From Flickrmoney problems - cutting up dollar bills image

It’s pretty common to worry about money. In fact, it might be the most common cause of worry and anxiety that there is. People’s financial situation is constantly hanging over their heads, causing them to fret over even the simplest decision. If things get really bad, it can stop people from feeling able even to open their mail a lot of the time. Once things have reached that point, then it’s become pretty clear that things can’t go on as they have been and something has to be done. The problem is that it’s very difficult to know where to start. The answer is actually rather straightforward and obvious. Before you can solve any of your financial problems, you’ve got to be able to identify exactly what it is that’s causing them. Of course, there are plenty of potential reasons that you might have some money troubles. Here are just a few and how you can deal with them to get yourself back on track.

Out of control spending

This is by far the most common cause of a lot of people’s financial woes. In reality, most of us don’t actually realise how much money we’re spending on a day to day basis. You might think that a small purchase here and there won’t make any difference at all. After all, what are a few dollars count for in the grand scheme of things? While this might be true, the problem is that those few dollars start to add up over time. The only way to get this under control is to start budgeting more carefully. If you are able to keep track of your money, then you’ll probably discover that over time, those little purchases add up to a pretty significant sum of money that you could be using much more sensibly.

Debt

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Image From Flickr

Debt can have awful effects on you beyond just your bank balance. It can have some serious, long-lasting psychological implications as well. After a certain point, dealing with large amounts of debt can make it feel impossible ever to get yourself out the financial situation that you’re in. Not only that but debt has catastrophic effects on your credit score. A lot of people tend not to think about their credit score, but a bad one can set you back pretty badly. This includes making it harder to get approved for a loan as well as discouraging landlords from accepting you as a tenant. Check out yourcreditblog.com for more details on how to check up on and improve your credit score.

Household bills

A lot of people don’t realize just how much less they could be paying for their household bills. By making just a few simple changes to your lifestyle, you can cut your energy bills by as much as half! Far too many people waste huge amounts of heat and electricity that basically counts as money down the drain. Look into ways to save energy and you will find that your general monthly outgoings go down significantly.

Buying A New Property? Not So Fast

There are a few things that you’ll need to consider before you head onto the property market in search of a new home for your family. If you don’t think about these issues now, you might run into problems further down the road. Let’s look at some of the problems that you might have to deal with.

Raising The Cash

Do you have enough money to buy the home you want? You can usually buy a home with roughly five percent of the asking value. But you should really aim for roughly twenty-five percent of the asking value to put down as a deposit. This will give you access to some of the best mortgage deals on the market. That will ultimately cut the cost of buying your home in the long term.

Paying The Repayments

Next, you need to think about the cost of the repayments. Don’t forget, these can end up being a lot more than what the house was worth. Particularly, if you have to deal with nasty levels of interest. That’s why you need to check your mortgage deal carefully before you buy. A lot of people run into financial issues because they didn’t understand how much they would owe for the home.

Checking The Home

You do need to perform an extensive check on the home before you even think about buying. There can be a lot of issues, particularly with a home that isn’t brand new. The following infographic has all the problem areas that you might need to watch out for.

 


Infographic Designed By SPI Property Inspections