I grew up under the impression that Thanksgiving Day always existed, and that this holiday was as old as the earth. I also believed that this holiday was a world-wide event, a time when everyone happily gorged themselves on turkey and dressing. My daughter knows better about this holiday and turkeys (among other myths and matters), but her lessons weren't learned from any history book in a classroom setting. Public school history lessons are often filled with omissions, and changes in this situation seem to happen very slowly in this setting.

While we could debate for days about the reasons and possible solutions for this omission problem, I'd rather talk about how we - as parents - can fill this void on our own time and in our own ways. In fact, I'll show you how I stay young (or at least feel young) in the role as my daughter's tutor on stock market topics. Believe me, feeling young is one of my higher priorities, and I'm very grateful to the stock market for its function as my fountain of youth.

If you want to know how brain activity keeps us young, just type "anti-aging activities" into any search engine. You'll find a cornucopia of information about how we can stay young when we continue to learn new things. Learning new perspectives that challenge traditional concepts is one way to meet this objective. The stock market is another way to maintain our youth, because this topic continues to provide new lessons and new ways to learn them.

Additionally, the stock market maintains a very low priority rating as a school subject, and this topic is as important as learning different perspectives about Thanksgiving, in my opinion.* While economics classes can help our children understand how American and world economies work or not, they only touch on how the stock markets create impacts on our commercial world(s). Alternately, as investors, we also create an impact on the market, because without investors the stock market wouldn't exist.

So how do we - as parents - learn enough about any given topic to feel the confidence we need to teach our children? How, especially, do we ever learn enough about the stock market to feel adequate about our skills? The first lesson begins with three easy steps:

1. Learn the difference in cost between hiring a broker to purchase our stocks and the self-investment route.
2. Learn how easy it is to open an account to purchase these stocks.
3. Decide which stocks we want to purchase and how much we want to invest.

While this list seems simplistic, these three items are all we need to know to teach our children about how the stock market works. And, our participation in this project is how we learn, because our under-age children can't accomplish this task on their own. It's just like sports in a way - while we may know all the rules about football, we don't really know the game until we've played a season or two. In that spirit, we'll tackle #1 today, and then we can go stuff that tofu turkey with organic veggies?

Stock market brokers make a living either through salaries or through commissions or both. These salaries, etc., are paid by companies that make a profit by recommending stocks to clients, purchasing stocks for clients, and by maintaining their clients' portfolios - all through their broker agents. These services are supported by broker, transaction, opening account, and monthly or yearly maintenance fees. Who pays the price? We do, if we're clients. And, these fees can eat away at any profits we might see from the stock market.

For example, if we make a $400 profit in the stock market one year, and our equities are bought and sold through a broker, we might find this $400 eaten up by the following: a $50 opening fee, a $150 transaction fee for each equity bought and sold (one equity bought and sold one time equals $300), and a broker's fee that might entail a percentage of the profit before fees are deducted. Additionally, we'll probably pay a monthly maintenance fee on this account. By the time everything's said and done, our investment may show about a $75 deficit, not a $400 profit.

I didn't pull these figures out of a hat. My brother actually paid these costs over two years ago for one transaction through a broker. I don't know how much or whether these costs have changed over two years; however, I do know that brokers and their companies are competitive, so all we need to do is call one or two brokers to discover their current fees. Then, we can use these prices as a foundation to compare other portfolio possibilities.

We know that we must pay fees for these services, because we wouldn't have an avenue to purchase our stocks otherwise. But, I already know that I can manage my own account for much less than most brokers charge, so I won't even waste my time looking at other options. You can find a sampling of my fees on a public web page at BUYandHOLD's investor options. In comparison to what my brother paid over two years ago, these prices are a bargain. Click here for the BUYandHOLD fee schedule.

When you open an account at BUYandHOLD, you accomplish #2 on the list above. Then you can begin to work on #3, which is an ongoing process. While we don't create more brain wrinkles when we learn new things (and who likes wrinkles, anyway?), we can at least make our brain's synapses snap in our roles as stock market tutors for our kids.

Cora and I do wish you a great weekend. Hopefully, you'll get a few extra days off work and you can create some warm and fuzzy moments for yourself or for your friends and family.

Until Next Week,
Linda Goin

* President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday on October 3, 1863, near the end of the Civil War. Was this an attempt at national "togetherness" and a focus on gratitude in the midst of national strife? That's a question left unanswered for the moment; however, here are some interesting perspectives about the Origins of Thanksgiving that you can share and discuss with your children over the weekend.