Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest

Posted by roberdam 10/30/2025

Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest(roberdam.com)

247 points | 437 commentspage 5

ho_schi 10/30/2025|

At the point with investment I was lost. Children should learn to be patient (saving money) and prepare for bad situations (saving money). That’s enough.

When older we can teach them what capitalism considers as investment. Capitalism is a longer word for greed. Money doesn’t work. Employees do. Customers pay. Both suffer to make greedy persons rich.

Give them a piggy bank. Teaches the concept of preparation.

kmijyiyxfbklao 10/30/2025||

Even saving can be seen as greed. Someone can focus too much on accumulating for themselves. Both investing and saving can be seen as preparation.

To avoid things becoming evil, you just need to make sure that your interactions with other are cooperative and not zero sum, and not all investments are zero sum.

kccqzy 10/30/2025|||

You say "when older we can teach them what capitalism considers as investment" but you never specify the age. What exactly counts as older? My mom started telling me about how the new home we just moved into was both a place to live and also an investment at age 8. My dad started telling me about his brokerage account when I was 7. My dad also explained to me why the new car we just bought was not an investment when I was 6.

That's to say, I strongly disagree. It's almost never too early to teach this to children. As soon as children know money could be spent on exchange for things, they should begin to think about how money is made.

nxor 10/30/2025|||

I mostly agree but greed is a part of human nature is it not?

array_key_first 10/31/2025|||

I don't know, is it? It seems natural - after all, animals are selfish and will put themselves first to survive.

... but then again, animals also rape and murder each other. Is rape a part of human nature? I don't know, but I know we don't want it.

Jaxan 10/30/2025||||

People keep repeating this. But why is it people’s nature. Maybe it is learned, because everyone keeps repeating this phrase!

ho_schi 10/30/2025|||

Capitalism itself is a rather modern idea around 1800. And greed is maybe rooted in human nature, within the need to keep a buffer of food.

But we’ve brains and are social entities. I don’t think greed is necessity. But greed of other harm our needs. And we need to get greedy to get enough?

Examples: I want a nice bicycle. I need small house or nice flat. I enjoy good food from time to. I’m rather sure I don’t need a super-yacht, no swimming pool and no villa. I think stuff which I cannot keep myself clean is too much. If I cannot keep it clean myself it was greed?

But we’ve big dreams?

For the big dreams I would probably consider a cooperative society. These airliners are so expensive and suffer from not being used. Sharing them would be nice? Like…like owning airline stocks. Without the enforcement to gain money. Maybe some people enjoy flying it around, other maintaining it and others care about safety and passengers. Others maybe want fly to the moon. And others enjoy ships. Maybe sharing them deliberately makes sense?

triceratops 10/31/2025||

> Money doesn’t work. Employees do. Customers pay. Both suffer to make greedy persons rich.

I don't want to work until I'm dead. If that makes me greedy, so be it.

mtrimpe 10/30/2025||

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brazukadev 10/30/2025||

That's quite interesting. When do they start to understand that saving is better, if they do? I can imagine kids never wanting to save for later, but also I remember that I enjoyed saving more than spending coins when I was a kid.

thelastgallon 10/30/2025||

Brilliant idea!

Do you deduct short term and long term capital gains taxes?

ajay_as 10/30/2025||

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fdjsaoifjew89 10/30/2025||

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lala_ 10/30/2025||

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yed 10/30/2025|

> One thing that school doesn’t teach you (not even high school) is how to manage your personal finances.

Can we stop with this myth? Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate. The reason it feels like it isn't happening is because it's boring and most just don't pay attention or absorb the lessons.

tianreyma 10/30/2025||

> Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate.

Prior to 2020 only 8 states required a standalone financial literacy class. So a good percentage of people from the US on here probably didn't have to.

There were also states that had it integrated with another course but I'd question if they were any good. My state was like that and all we did was a 2 week project where we pretended to trade stocks starting with $1k. Which didn't even include things like dividends, short vs long term capital gains tax, etc...

We weren't taught basic things like budgeting, planning for emergencies, how loans and interest work, how taxes work, how credit scores work and affect you, etc...

alias_neo 10/30/2025|||

> Most states require financial literacy courses to graduate

What's a state? Pretty sure we don't have those here.

Even if it was true for America (probably not), it certainly isn't true for the entire rest of the world.

Maybe they should be teaching Geography.

yed 10/30/2025||

My mistake, it's just such a common trope in the US I didn't realize it was a universal complaint. It is true for US incidentally, people generally don't remember it because a) the learning and real world practice are too far removed b) people often are poor with finances regardless of knowledge.

alias_neo 10/30/2025|||

All good.

I think it's common everywhere to be honest.

Here in the UK there's never been financial literacy taught at a national scale that I'm aware, there certainly wasn't when I was in school, albeit that was some decades ago now, and from what I've seen of my nephews/nieces it still isn't.

My children are still too young to worry about the minutiae, but we're already trying to teach them about income/outgoings and saving even at their middle single-digit ages.

Investing is something I can't say I'm extremely comfortable with the details of even at my advanced age besides the simple things like "I have a pension" and "I have a LISA".

I definitely think there's room for some self-service tools to aid in teaching these things to our kids from an early age.

anonymous908213 10/30/2025||||

Have you considered that "people generally don't remember it" because most of them graduated before 2020? People are going to reflect on their own experiences at school, which will often be from decades ago. If they aren't a teacher, they probably aren't going to find out about any changes to the curriculum. Maybe if they have a child, but that potentially takes an 18 year delay between implementation and learning about it if it's about a high school, if the teenager bothers to report that they had a boring finance class to their parent.

nxor 10/30/2025|||

It's not true for the US.

rkomorn 10/30/2025||

https://www.ngpf.org/blog/advocacy/how-many-states-require-s...

It's apparently now 30 states.

nxor 10/30/2025||

Are you from the US? I went to a good high school and even that class was awful. No one wants to teach it and genuinely, you learn more about money in history, english, science, and math. Additionally, you can take it online and over the summer, which kids do so they can take nicer looking classes. Granted, students with a work ethic tend to learn these things on their own.

rkomorn 10/30/2025||

I graduated high school almost 30 years ago so whether I'm from the US or not isn't particularly relevant. I did live in the US for 25 years though, and up to however many minutes ago, I didn't know these classes were a requirement in any state (let alone 30).

But going from "it's not a requirement" to "the class is awful" would kinda be moving goalposts, no?

a96 11/3/2025||

The goalposts were that "school doesn’t teach you (not even high school) is how to manage your personal finances." is a myth. It doesn't matter if there's no class or the class is useless, the statement is almost as true in either case. Students don't learn personal finance in school. They particularly don't learn practical investment as a way to manage their savings.

And for many of us, financial education, if there was any, was probably from boomers going "debt bad! credit bad! get a job and make money!".

rkomorn 11/4/2025||

I guess that depends on how you read up the thread.

Seems pretty clear to me that the comment I was originally replying to was about whether there was a requirement for financial classes in the US, not about the quality of the classes.

So we clearly weren't looking at the same goalposts.

gricha2380 10/30/2025||

Your point is true in the USA, but the author appears to be from Paraguay.