How to AI-proof your child

Reading = Investing

Earlier this week, in his annual letter to Blackrock Investors, CEO Larry Fink wrote about his optimism in long-term thinking and his belief that financial investment presents a symbiotic relationship between people and nation:

At its best, long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle. When people invest their savings—over decades, not days—the capital markets put that money to work, financing companies, infrastructure, and jobs. And when that cycle happens in your own country, your future and your nation’s future become linked. You help finance its growth. It helps finance yours.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Later on in the letter he comments, inevitably, on AI. Again, he’s broadly optimistic:

AI will create significant economic value. Ensuring that participation in that growth expands alongside it is both the challenge and the opportunity.

Challenge and opportunity. Throughout my career¹, it’s clear that the times when I faced challenges (mergers, short on staff, new strategies, restructuring) there is usually an opportunity waiting somewhere in the wings.

If you’re raising children, you have my permission to be concerned about the future they are facing. Even if you’re an optimist (like Larry and me) the potential challenges of this Brave New World are many. Life may look quite different in just five or ten years time, so how can a parent use long-term thinking or an investment mindset to prepare their children for the unknown?

I’m glad you asked.

Reading = investing

This Substack is called The Reading Edge for a reason: I believe a love of reading is the single most beneficial learning tool that we can give a child.

The parallels between reading and long-term financial investment are numerous:

1. The earlier you start, the better (the benefits compound over time)

2. Both require patience (long-term horizons)

3. Both have a learning curve at the start

4. Choosing well requires research and care (both stock selection and book selection)

5. Consistency is key to long-term growth (you have to ignore the world and keep investing whether the markets are up or down).

Here’s the world famous investor, Warren Buffet, conveniently backing me up:

If you are investing in your education and you are learning, you should do that as early as you possibly can, because then it will have time to compound over the longest period.

And that the things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself.

So instead of learning something that might become obsolete tomorrow, like some particular type of software (that no one even uses two years later), choose things that will make you smarter in 10 or 20 years.

Great points, Wazzy B! And while he’s writing about education and learning in general, reading specifically is the ultimate tool in the box for building knowledge.

If there’s one single way to give your kids the ability to learn for themselves in future, then invest in reading. It’s the slow, plodding, daily grind that becomes more rewarding over time. It’s the key to unlocking spheres of expert knowledge — whatever they become interested in later in life.

Reading won’t become obsolete in the new world. In fact, the children who grow up to love reading will have an unfair advantage: they will have access to the best toolset for learning, thinking, and adapting in increasingly uncertain times.

And similar to Larry Fink’s symbiotic benefits of investing (for people and nation) we can also say that raising readers will become beneficial on a wider scale. These readers will be the next generation of thinkers: scientists, politicians, lawmakers, writers, theologians, journalists, ethicists… the list goes on.

So whatever happens next—whether it’s an upmarket or downmarket—investing consistently will help us to ride the wave.

1. It’s not over yet, no matter what they say (although subscribing to this Substack would really help).