Hi BossMom4life,
Love the name and ambition.
It's unlikely you'd be able to invest in start-ups in your kids' names directly. Many private financings, like investing in a start-up, require the investor to be an accredited investor - have a net worth of at least $1,000,000, excluding the value of one's primary residence, or have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 combined income if married) and have the expectation to make the same amount this year.
But if you created a trust for them, that's definitely an idea.
AngelList (angel.co) and MicroVentures (microventures.com) are two good places to start.
But you can still invest in loads of other things:
- Peer-to-Peer loans have grown in popularity in the last decade. Prosper.com and LendingClub.com are two popular ones. You choose who to lend money to and at what terms. Then you collect the interest - through the company of course. You can open custodial accounts for your kids and even show them why you chose to lend money - They're literally playing banker!
- Crypto-currencies, like BitCoin, are obviously hot right now. I don't know too much about those.
- There's municipal bonds and Treasury bonds, although the rates are pretty low at the moment.
- Then there's stocks, mutual funds, etc. which are their own ball of wax.
- You could even invest in natural resource exploration and see if you can find the next Comstock Lode. Sprott Global is good for that.
- Gold and precious metals - You can literally walk into a coin store and buy bars of gold or silver and then watch the price fluctuate on kitco.com.
Each has it's own risks and rewards. Usually the higher the risk, the higher the reward... if it works out.
My biggest recommendations though are always to invest in:
- Your education (or your kids' education, in this case),
and - Things you know - you don't have to invest in stocks, bonds, or anything Wall Street related. Investing is just putting money into something in hopes of getting more money back at a later date. It doesn't have to be years down the road. It could be weeks or months.
If you know something is undervalued and you could sell it for more elsewhere (or later), go for it! Be creative.
And if you won't take it from me, here's some classic advice from the world's greatest investor, Warren Buffet.
