My Son's First ProxyVote

Helping my oldest son understand the public markets a little bit

A bit of a different post today. I actually wrote this about 4 months ago and was a little embarrassed to share it. For some reason I had the courage today so here goes.

This past week I spent some time with my oldest son (12) going over a proxy vote for Royal Bank. We looking at two of the board members, the role of the board and aligning interests of management with shareholders. We also looked at Sedar and how awful it was to navigate but I digress. He said that Sedar looked older than the video games they used “way back then”, which means when I would play the Double Dragon on the Sega Master System.

Every few months we spend some time looking at two or three different companies and I buy 1 or 2 shares for him in a savings account through my discount brokerage. He picked Royal Bank over the others, mostly because he said he sees lots of people going into the branches and that he knows several parents who bank at RBC. I’m less concerned about him picking stocks and more focused on being a critical thinker who has a mind of his own.

He already has the deck stacked in his favor being a white male born into a western country. We have many conversations about the privilege that we enjoy that most are not lucky enough to have. I make it clear that he doesn’t have to be intersted in the market like me, but I also don’t want him to be afraid or intimidated by it. I was not given any education into the stock market, the economy, cycles, businesses etc and want to empower him that things are not beyond his comprehension if he applies himself. Although I do find it difficult to explain on his terms given that I didn’t have such lessons modeled for me from my parents. I can remember how daunting it was to get a basic understanding of such things as someone in his early 20s.

As a parent, you want to set your kids up for success as much as possible. Sometimes you just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. He seemed interested in a couple of things, so there is a thread or two to pull on in the future.

Anyone else have suggestions to help your kids understand some important parts of our economy and how businesses operate?

Dean