> I explained to my kids that investing is like having a magic box that generates more money over time.

That is wildly misleading. Investing is super important, but it shouldn't be described in this fairy-tale way. Young people might be misled into trusting investment advisors/counselors/brokers, whose real goal is to enrich themselves at your expense. In fact, there are adults who haven't yet learned this.

An article about investing that doesn't mention the WSJ dartboard contest isn't worth reading -- essentially, over 14 years, random stock picks produced returns equal to those of stockbrokers, before the stockbroker's fees and other costs were subtracted.

An investment counselor's primary goal is to make you think you need his services. His secondary goes is to keep you from performing your own research to discover that is false.