To get my teen 17 year old a Financial Advisor?

[Ischial]

I want to DS to know how money works and to help him set up a plan. I am hopeless and I want him to learn whilst he is young.

I am a bit nervous about how to find legitimate Financial Advisors.

I personally don't think this is unreasonable.

It's nice that you want to learn about things he is interested in.

I'd generally suggest scepticism about lots of people who are investment "gurus" or "experts".
It genuinely is really, really hard to beat the market over any length of time.
An "star" investment manager can have some brilliant years and then some dreadful ones. Almost no one beats the market forever (by which I mean consistently outperforms what you would earn if you simply put money in a simple index tracking fund).

Lots of people out there who want to sell investment secrets and strategies and techniques, lots of investment funds that charge high fees to manage your money.
They prey on your dreams that you might be the lucky one and make your millions and get out of your ordinary life...

You should both watch Dumb Money - was out in cinemas last year so prob on Netflix soon. A look at lots of people who put their money into GameStop because of what they read on the Internet.
A few of them made money....but a lot more did not.

A lot of the time, simple is good. In many things including investing your savings.

@MojoMoon I totally agree with you. That is why I have avoided it all together, because I do not trust those types. However like you say there is a simpler way with index funds that many have suggested here, which seems the most sensible approach.

I think he is sensible enough to avoid those guru types, but I would like to guide him towards what others have suggested here and not do what I did and let the gurus types put me off the whole thing.

@Animalfromthemuppets22 Brilliant! I'll look at that too. He's doing Business Studies, so it's good to see that teachers though it was a good addition to their studies.

OMG how can you not love Eoin McGee!

Just the type I'm looking for 😍

Ramit Sethi's playbook it so useful 😍

Very much true. My ds is only 8 and they are introducing bugdeting, profit and loss and even the concept of interest. They have had a lot of Talks and presentations from people from the big banks coming in to introduce the ideas. A lot of the parents are in banking/financial industry too, including dh and myself who are happy to go in and speak to the kids.

I'm a little confused as to why it's the schools responsibility and failure that he is ignorant about financial issues OP? Haven't you been his parent all that time?

Well done OP, it's nice to hear you're enjoying some of the suggested resources from other posters! :)

I do think education in the UK is quite remiss in this aspect compared to in other countries... Most British people I knew from (a top Russell Group so very middle class) uni in London regard/regarded investing as a big scary thing. At least with the Internet, info is a lot more accessible now!

Came here to mention Ramit - plus there’s the emails and podcasts too.
Which are really interesting from a psychology point of view too.

Maybe a private tutor might be more helpful than a financial advisor.

And it’s so much quicker to learn by doing - so maybe give him some tools to experiment with. Bit of money to invest.
Credit card. Get him to speck up a house he likes the look of on rightmove? Idk. That might be a bit too easy for him.

My kids have just left a private large London day school and never got that! I need a refund!

@Youthinkyoureuniqueyourejustastatistic he can start with paper trading, that's a bit safer... :)

@cheesehouse @Youthinkyoureuniqueyourejustastatistic

I'm writing a list of all the books and podcasts mentioned here.

He's got money to start with and I think now is the time to create the habits that Remit and Eoin suggested. Also I'm going to get books and look into the lemon group or whatever it was called.

Thank you so much everyone, this was exactly the type of advice I was looking for. The non guru get rich quick charlatans.