Happy Monday Future Funders Family!

With America’s pastime in full swing, we wanted to say happy birthday to The Captain, who was born today in 1974.

Okay, let’s get to it!

💬 Quote Of The Week

🍽️ The Main Course

Headlines That Matter

Investing

What’s Going On With The Stock Market?

🚀 The quick version: The S&P 500 is sitting just under 4400 (up +13% year to date). This performance so far defies virtually all outlooks at the start of the year (most experts expected the market to finish 2023 around 4000).

The gains thus far have also caught professional investors by surprise costing short sellers (people betting against the market) over $120 billion year to date according to the Wall Street Journal.

We hear doom and gloom everyday from traditional media, but when it comes to the market this year, there are largely three main positive factors responsible for the strong performance:

• Signs that inflation and prices are starting to come down (we talked about this last week).

• The Fed looks to be done or nearing the end of interest rate hikes.

• Companies that have reported earnings for the most part have spoken to a better environment than people expected.

👪 How it affects your family: Investing is a tricky business and ultimately what all of this continues to confirm is that you should never blindly believe “the experts.”

In general we would recommend that families try to think more about the long game vs. a specific six month move in markets. That said there are some tools you can use to inform your own investment decisions (we promise no annoying finance jargon).

• How do you know when to buy or sell stocks? This is not as difficult a question to answer as most people think. We list 5 quick rules of thumb you can follow. While our view is the market is pretty fairly valued at the moment (i.e. not a ton more upside), it’s also worth noting that looking back to 1950 the stock market had been up +10% at this exact point in the year 23 times (it is currently up +13%). 19 of those 23 times it finished the year higher than it is today with an average of 8% upside.

• How to invest in a stock. Curious how professional investors look at individual stocks? They typically go through these 6 steps.

• Stock market basics for kids (and parents). Want to understand some of the talking heads on TV better? Here is a quick breakdown of key investing terms (we would also advise that you are honestly better off not listening to the talking heads at all).

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Education

They Bombed It

🚀 The quick version: Math and reading scores among America’s 13-year-olds fell to their lowest levels in decades, with math scores plunging by the largest margin ever recorded, according to the results of a federal test known as the Nation’s Report Card.

The exam, formally called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is designed to measure basic skills in math and reading.

Students are asked to read passages and identify the main idea or locate certain information. In math, they are asked to perform simple multiplication and tackle basic geometry, calculating, for example, the area of a square. Most questions are multiple choice.

Separately, asked about their reading habits this past week, fewer students than ever say they’re reading for fun every day. Just 14% reported daily reading for pleasure — which has been tied to better social and academic outcomes — down from 27% in 2012. Almost a third of students said they never or hardly ever read for fun, up from 22% in 2012.

👪 How it affects your family:  All of us care deeply about giving our kids access to a great education (as parents, this ranks near the top of our priority list). But bottom line, results matter.

While the headlines this past week are disappointing, parents need to focus on what they can do right now. Here are some actionable steps you can take to assess your school’s performance:

• Evaluate Schools. Whether you are looking or just want to check up on your kids current school, useful online sources include GreatSchools, Public School Review, Niche, and SchoolDigger can help you evaluate them.

• Look Beyond The Numbers. Data points won’t tell the whole story. Look over websites of individual schools as well as the websites of a school’s parent and teacher organizations. If you go on a school tour here are some questions you can ask.

• Ask Your Kids. You know your own kids better than anyone else in the world, and because of that you know what is best for their learning. Here are some helpful tips on getting them to open up about school. 

• Financial Resources. Regardless of where you want to send your kids to school, it should be your choice. If financial resources are an issue, here is a helpful list of all the states with school voucher programs. If you need some tips on saving for higher education, check out a Private 529 Plan or a Traditional 529 Plan.

🥘 The Side Dishes

A few things to know…

💸 Save money with timing. July 4th sales are coming (we have some highlights we found below). We found a great article to help you save by explaining what categories will be on sale and when.

🍨 Free ice cream. We love ice cream in this household, and if you do too here is a helpful list we found of 9 ways to get it for free.

📚 Reading is FUNdamental. To help instill a love for reading, we found this helpful article on 13 places to get free books.  

🚸 Tips to help the kids succeed. Prequel is the newsletter for parents who want their kids to succeed. Get free weekly insights on how your children can get ahead in school and life.*

🏖️ Want a beach house? You may want to take a look at the top 10 cheapest places to buy one first.   

☕ One thing we are reading. There's a reason over 2.6 million people start their day with Morning Brew— the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn't have to be dry and dense...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Check it out!*  

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🗓️ The Week Ahead

June 28th

Today is National Insurance Awareness Day (yea we rolled our eyes too). In all seriousness though, if you have been thinking about whether or not life insurance may be right for you, we have some thoughts.

June 30th

Today we will get the Personal Consumption Expenditure data for May. This data is similar to the CPI data we already got last week (just measured differently) and is used as another way to gauge inflation (the FED watches it). Most expect it to continue to reveal signs of prices easing.

July 1st

As Q2 comes to a close, National Finance Freedom Day is a great time to check in with yourself and your progress in achieving financial freedom (however that may look) to live the life you want to live.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Deals For Families

Based on initial feedback, we wanted to switch up this section of our newsletter to highlight products and services that save families money. We currently make no commission of of these but may in the future. If you think we should keep this section please let us know by rating this email below.

Here are this week’s recs to help your family save some money…

🛏️ Casper is offering 20% off mattresses through July 4th. We have TWO and love them both.

💻 Microsoft is offering 80% off a lifetime license for their Windows Microsoft Office Professional suite for a limited time.

👗 Abercrombie Kids is offering 50% off everything through June 26th.

🐘 Monica + Andy warehouse sale right now offering up to 80% off children’s clothing.

Dinner Discussion ❓