Advisor Advice Part 2

09/04/23 • 12 min

Want some advice? You'll find it in this episode where we interview Financial Advisor Jon Cunningham on best practices to teach kids financial skills and tips to start investing early. Don't miss out! This episode is especially great for parents and kids to listen together. This is a two part series so stay tuned!

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Previous Episode

Advisor Advice Part 1

Transcript

Advisor Advice Part 1

Welcome back to another episode of the Cash Kid Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit our site at cashkidpodcast.com for more resources and links to past episodes. Follow us on Instagram as well. We are so excited to continue to see this audience grow. It’s my belief we can help build a generation of cash kids that’s know how to manage, invest, and grow their money. And our guest today, will give us some tips to help get us there.

The Cash Kid Podcast is underway.

(music)

Intro tease:

So you’ve got some cash. Maybe from an allowance, or that money your grandma gave you for your 7th birthday (Here you go sweetie.) Thanks grandma.

Whatever it is, what are you going to do with it? Spend it, hide it away... or maybe invest it? Let’s start learning how to make that money grow.

Time to learn how to be a cash kid. (cash register)

My guest joining me today is Mr. Jon Cunningham with Cunningham Financial Group. Mr. Cunningham, or Mr. Jon, as I like to call him, is a financial advisor and considers his clients, partners in creating financial success. He has also been super helpful in answering some of my questions about the stock market and finances. So we're going to cover a few topics with him about how kids can prepare to invest later and be smart investors.

Cash Kid - Mr. Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon - Thanks for having me.

Cash Kid - First off, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jon - Sure. Well, first, just personally, my name is Jon Cunningham, and I'm married to my wife, Ann. And we have three kids, Wes, Grant, and Charlotte, and actually one on the way that's due sometime in October. Professionally, I'm the managing member of the Cunningham Financial Group. We began in August 1st of 2011 and have grown the practice ever since.

We have locations in Birmingham, Alabama, and in Florence, Alabama, and just outside of Nashville and the town Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and presently have about a little over 2000 clients throughout the country. And we're licensed in about 29 different states. So it's a great practice.

Cash Kid - That's great. So what led you to having a career as a financial advisor?

Jon - Yeah, you know, it's something that I always had an interest in, whether it be everything from just earning money to saving it to investing. And I always had an interest in the stock market. And actually what's interesting, I entered in college hoping to be an accountant and was an accounting major initially and quickly realized that was not the area of finance that I really wanted to focus.

You know what's funny? It took a class with a a professor, he’s my favorite professor. His name is Dr. Moron, actually, but a fantastic teacher and and taught me to really love and understand numbers. And so from there I wanted to focus on finance and so quickly took on multiple internships with multiple firms and in different areas of focus and quickly began actually growing the client base as an intern with the company in my junior year of college.

Cash Kid - What do you think is the biggest misconception for adults in managing finances?

Jon - Yeah, that's a great question. What I kind of find with working with prospective clients and really adults is they look at their 401K as similar to what's called a pension plan. And so people like my parents worked for companies and then their parents worked for companies and they worked at companies like Alabama Power for ten, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

And that generation of client an employee had what's called a pension plan. And what that basically means is if you're going to work for a company for your entire career and when you retire, you have a pool of money and a pension that's going to pay you an income for the rest of your life no matter how long you live.

And that gave retirees a lot of peace of mind. Well, those plans aren't necessarily available or not as often available to people that your parents age or even my parents age. And they have what's called a 401k, which is an investment account that's provided by by most employers. And it's just a employer sponsored plan that provides an avenue for an employee to save and invest money for for retirement purposes.

And often people look at that and they think, hey, this could be like my pension. I'm going to put money in this plan and I'm going to save money my entire career. And whatever's there is going to last the entirety of my life. But oftentimes t...

Next Episode

Advisor Advice Part 2

Transcript

Advisor Advice Part 2

Welcome back to another episode of the Cash Kid Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit our website at cashkidpodcast.com for more resources and links to past episodes. Follow us on Instagram as well. Today, is part 2 of our “Advisor Advice” interview with financial advisor Mr. Jon Cunningham. If you missed the first part of my interview with him, definitely go back and listen to it first. So much great advice... and he’s got more to share.

The Cash Kid Podcast is underway.

(music)

Intro tease:

So you’ve got some cash. Maybe from an allowance, or that money your grandma gave you for your 7th birthday (Here you go sweetie.) Thanks grandma.

Whatever it is, what are you going to do with it? Spend it, hide it away... or maybe invest it? Let’s start learning how to make that money grow.

Time to learn how to be a cash kid. (cash register)

Alright, let’s jump right back into part 2 of our interview with Mr. Jon Cunningham.

(music)

Cash Kid - So what are some ways that kids can learn about personal finance in the stock market?

Jon - Yeah, another great question. You know, I think it's very important someone once told me to always preserve precious capital. And so as you're working as a young person and you're working hard and you're sweating outside maybe mowing grass or doing chores for your parents, the last thing you want to do is earn that money and then lose it.

So it's important that you really understand how investments and how the stock market works before you just put money in an account and buy a stock and hope for the best, right?

Cash Kid - Definitely.

Jon - You know, even when I was in high school, we had a stock market simulation game. And so there are programs out there that will basically give you plain money. So it's not real money. You're not subjecting your own money to risk, but you're buying stocks with this, you know, fake money and not real stocks. But it's a way to simulate how stocks work in the buying and the selling of stocks and researching them without putting money at risk. So that's an easy and safe way for a young person to really understand and learn the market without actually subjecting their money to risk of loss.

Cash Kid- Yeah. In our previous episode we've talked about what is the stock market game. And so we talked with one of my teachers that introduced that to me.

Jon - Oh cool.

Cash Kid - That's how I learned about the stock market. And so that's what our previous episode was about.

What are some ways kids can start earning, saving and investing their money?

Jon - Yeah, this is going to require a little bit of involvement from from Mom and Dad. But until you reach the age of adulthood, you really can't open an investment account without the involvement of a parent or guardian. So their accounts called up UTMAs Uniformed Transfer of Minors Accounts, and these are accounts that are owned by a guardian or a parent for your benefit.

And money can go into these investment accounts and certainly can be invested for your benefit. However, the parent owns this account, so the funds have to be used for you and for your benefit and someday would have to be transferred to you when you became an adult. So this would be a safe way. I'd say safe. This could be a way to open an account with parental oversight that you can invest some of your money in the market that eventually could be for your benefit.

Cash Kid - Yeah. Do you think there are any, like, jobs out there that kids could do?

Jon - Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have three kids. I love it when they work for me. And I think I think oftentimes kids try to find creative ways of forming a business early, whether it be mowing grass or everything from that to pressure washing, things like that. And oftentimes it's tough to find prospects. It's tough to find customers. It takes time and energy and money and overhead to to make that income. When oftentimes you can find things in your own backyard that you can do for your parents that they would really appreciate and also be willing to pay you some money to do it. And so certainly, I think it's a good thing for kids to have chores and allowances, but then also to work for for that money.

So that could be something you talk to your parents about and say, hey, I want to make, you know, $25 a month, you know, what can I do around the house to make that kind of money? And I'm sure, you know, most parent...