Neil Edmond: MoneyTime co-founder and CEO on David Seymour's idea to give students the opportunity to learn to invest

The CEO of a financial literacy programme for kids believes David Seymour’s youth investment idea has promise.  

The ACT Leader's floating the idea of giving every Year 11 student $500 to learn to invest and be tested on how they're doing. 

The financial literacy course would cover term deposits and risk funds, and any returns could potentially be given back to the students.  

MoneyTime co-founder Neil Edmond told Mike Hosking from a student perspective, it’s an excellent opportunity to get some hands-on experience in investing. 

He says many kids don’t have role models in that area or money to invest, so giving them a bit of a heads up and a head start is a positive thing.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Interesting idea. David Seymour wants to give a year eleven
kids five hundred each on basically learn how to use money,
how to invest. They'll be assessed can potentially keep the upside.
Neil Edmund is the boss co founder of money Time,
which is a financial literacy program in schools, and he's
with us morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Neil, good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Risk the reward from a politician's point of view handing
out money to kids, what's the risk? VI? The reward
potentially from your point of view, and they learn lots.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, I'm not sure about it from a political point
of view, but from the student's point of view, I
think it's an excellent opportunity to get some hands on
experience and how investing works. There's so many kids do
not have seeing that sort of thing happening in their families.
They have no role models, and so they don't necessarily
have the money to invest, and so I think just

(00:50):
giving them a little bit of a head start and
a heads up on how investing works, I think that's
a positive thing.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I would see it. I think it'd be good because
it's real. I mean, in theory, that's one thing, but
actually giving them real money. Suddenly you got skin in
the game, haven't you.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Absolutely. I mean, the Ministry of Education has done a
great thing by making financial literacy mandatory in schools from
next year, and so students from years one to ten
are going to be learning that the basics of personal
finance and the basics of investing. But then the next
logical step is to give them hands on real life experience.

(01:25):
And I think just even just with five hundred dollars,
you can learn an awful lot just by having that
practical hands on experience.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
The kids at school do a little bit of it.
They ran market days and they did certain things and
sold to others. So there's a bit of that going
on already in the school, isn't there.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yes, there is. There's a lot of that sort of
entrepreneurial type experience where they have the bake stalls and
the school fairs and they sell products and things like that.
That's a business focused type activity, which is fantastic and
it's really good that they do that. But what Seymour's
suggesting or composing is giving them experience around investing, which

(02:07):
is a different type of creating wealth. And I think
you know, so many kids don't get that sort of opportunity,
certainly not early on. And the earlier they start and investing, obviously,
the better off they're going to be later on.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
You'd have to put a lot of rules around it.
I mean, you know, what's to stop the kid taking
the five hundred going down to the dairy. What's to
stop the kid taking the five hundred going home giving
it to mum and dad for the power bill. And
then you've got the kid who gets into a bit
of crypto, comes back with one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and what do you do with it? So you've
got a lot of you got it, you have to
have some rules around it, But I actually like the ideas.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
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Speaker 1 (02:43):
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