Tuesday, July 19, 2011

When in Highschool - Reasons Why You Can't Invest While You're Under 18

There's nothing like high school life. If ever I would be given the chance to live back to a certain point in my life, it would be the time in high school when everything seems to be simpler, happier and perhaps easier.

High school life, high school life when everything seems to be easier and happier 

 
We were all so excited to graduate only to look back a few years after wishing we could go back to those moments again..one more time.

 
 A few years after...and we're still carefree..or we seem like

 Now that we're a bit more mature, or at least I'd like to believe we are 

 Yes, we have a serious and erm, mature photos too

Everyday we would group ourselves after school and ride the tricycle together with our barkada. Whenever the driver would ask us as to where we are going, we felt like the time would wait for us and our addresses changes everyday that we can't seem to decide right there and then where exactly do we want to go. We felt that being boisterous was fun and that everyone around us and their opinions don't really matter. Lunch time was the best part of the high school life because that's the time when we would take a break from our classes, talk about our crushes - whether he said hi or not earlier in the day, share our baon (packed lunch) and laugh about simple, random and sometimes stupid things. That's high school.

The inevitable reunion. Well, it looks like nothing has changed :) 

So all in all - except for the research projects - high school is fun. And boisterous. And disastrous. And gorgeous. ;)

But the thing about high school students is that if you're not one of them, they can be pretty annoying. The other day I went to a fastfood chain and a group of high school students really took their time thinking about what should they order - what size, color, flavor like it's a multiple choice kind of test and as if no one's behind them queuing. It is during that time when I learned and understood why it is not advisable and not even legal to invest when you're in highs school - under 18, that is.

You Cannot Invest in the Stock Market When You're Under 18

1. When you're in your teenage years, you're often confused.
From freshmen year till I reached the senior year, our teacher in values class (yes, during my time we still had that in our curriculum), our teacher always tells us how she understand that we're in the stage of our lives when we're easily confused and we often make wavering decisions. When you're investing, you cannot make confused decisions as this will lead to losing your money. Real, hard-earned money, baby!

2. Easy Go Lucky. Easy Let Go of Money
High school students are notorious for having easy-go-lucky attitude when compared to college students. Perhaps it has got to do with the fact assurance that parents are still there to watch over and iron out whatever trouble or issues a high school student would have or because peers are there to comfort and influence. When a person seems to be easy to lucky, there's a higher tendency of not taking finance matters seriously.

3. More interested in gossip than news
I remember so vividly when we would spend the whole afternoon talking about random things when our teacher is absent or late. We would take on every opportunity to fix ourselves in front of the mirror that all classrooms have one installed so every girl could freshen up and fix herself after every subject break. Oh life just revolved around our assignments, crushes, snacks and gossip time then. While a high school student may be interested in news about a particular person, an investor needs to be vigilant and aware about political and world news that affect businesses and economy in general.

While I enjoy my high school life immensely, I understand now why one has to be at the legal age of 18 before he could invest or perform acts and decisions that would have a great impact in one's life. Investing needs careful researching, planning and decision making and it is something that should not be taken lightly. While I often refer to the act of investing as playing in the stock market, it's not like your usual high school tagu taguan or patitentero game wherein you could just say rush home when you lose and go back again when you want to. There's real hard-earned money involved when investing in the stock market and the easy-go-lucky, carefree high school attitude just won't work. 

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