Opening a phone. Going to an app. One simple click, and money can enter or leave a bank account. Money online can be easily invested, easily gambled, and is accessible to anyone – including high school students.
UPrep students are navigating methods of investing and betting in a digital world. While some choose to invest their money for long-term gain, others engage in various methods of gambling for a more instant gratification.
Charlie Frischer, a private investor and former parent advisor of Uprep’s Investing Club, has noticed a general shift in how high school students think about money and how they manage it.
Regardless of what students choose to do with their money, Frischer believes that the students’ involvement in personal financial management stems from the accessibility of online funds.
“The kids are at a whole different level of having electronic money,” Frischer said. “Their phone kind of is their credit card and their wallet at the same time.”
Despite sports wagering being illegal in Washington State, people use an app called Kalshi, a loophole, to participate, where sports betting and gambling is branded as a predictive market. Washington State Attorney General, Nick Brown, finds fault with Kalshi, with him suing the platform for “sneaking around Washington’s gambling laws” and “clearly fall[ing] under the definition of illegal gambling in Washington.”
Gambling is only legal in Washington State in licensed casinos on Indian Reservations, and participants must be 18 or older. One student, an 18-year-old, chooses to gamble some of their money and will be referred to as Student one to protect their identity.
“I spend my money on a lot of different things, but when it comes to my money specifically, I like to really invest it, and occasionally I’ll go gamble it,” Student one said.
A 17-year-old student, referred to as Student Two, uses Kalshi despite it being illegal, as users must be 18 or older.
“It deepens your knowledge into sports. It really makes you get into it… it’s like immersing yourself and enjoying it more,” Student two said. “It’s a fun thing that you can enhance your entertainment for.”
Student two uses Kalshi for betting on NFL games, with their highest bet being about $200. They warn about the dopamine boosts that come with sports betting and gambling. This is “the biggest problem,” according to the student. They prefer sports betting over traditional gambling.
“You fare a little bit better in sports betting,” Student two said. “I could be like, ‘I know that this matchup is favorable.’ That could help you versus, throwing a ball into a roulette wheel. You can’t know anything.”
Frischer, describes the stock market, sports betting and gambling as “a giant casino,” where some people engaging are aggressive as it’s “terribly addictive”.
“The gambling companies, ultimately they win,” Frischer said. “Nobody’s winning at gambling, no matter what anybody says. Everybody’s losing because the gambling companies have to make money, and they make money because the odds are in their favor.”
This built-in disadvantage becomes even more significant when considering brain development. The frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until age 25, making younger individuals more susceptible to risk-taking behaviors, according to Neurobiology teacher Thanh Beedle.
“Teens, who start young, are more likely to develop an addiction because their brain is so malleable when it’s still trying to form all these pathways,” Beedle said. “They are cementing a really strong pathway for their ‘drug’ of choice, or whatever it is.”
According to Beedle, human brains are wired to think positively in various situations. She claims that addiction, in any form, is a disease, and those who suffer need support.
“In these situations of addictive behavior, we’re actually losing power,” Beedle said. “These brain chemicals being sent are telling us, ‘This feels really good, and when I don’t have it, I feel really bad’, and you’re constantly trying to chase that.”
Breahna Wilson (‘08), an assistant wealth manager at Laird Norton Witherby, describes sports betting, gambling and investing as “behavioral economics.”
“If you’re budgeting for sports gambling, then okay, you lose 100 bucks. You budgeted for that. That’s your fun money,” Wilson said. “But there has to be some disposable income for a high schooler to even want to risk that type of money.”
Student one hosts gambling nights at their house. On one particular night, about 10 UPrep students attended, with Texas hold-em being set on a pool table. According to Washington State Gambling Commission Public Information Officer, Troy Kirby, this is legal, as they don’t profit from hosting the games and they are of legal age, 18. But, it is also illegal because some of the participants they host are underage, hence Student one’s anonymity. They enjoy gambling because of their chances to make money, and they don’t mind the risks.
“You have to have the right mindset when you approach these things and not think it’s just an easy way to get money,” Student one said. “Because if there’s an easy way to get money, everybody would do it.”
Student one would like to dismantle the stigma around gambling.
“Gambling is a big buzzword. I could frame investing as gambling, and it would sound bad, but investing is a really good thing,” Student one said. “They have to realize the fundamental principle of gambling and investing is that nothing is ever guaranteed. You can lose money really easily.”
March Madness, the men’s basketball tournament of 68 Division I teams, is a time when an anonymous student, who will be referred to as Student three, competes in bracket competitions amongst his peers for money. They are anonymous because this is considered sports betting, which is illegal. However, bracket making is popular around the country.
“You never win, but if you do win, you’ll make a lot of money,” Student three said. “It’s the most unpredictable sporting event in the world, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bet on it, but it’s still a lot of fun.”
Though sports betting is currently illegal, “The Legislature has approved a bill that would allow Washington residents to bet at tribal casinos on the state’s college sports teams,” according to the Seattle Times.
One of UPrep’s many student-led groups is the Investing Club, run by senior Gavin Angeloff and junior Dev Parikh. As of two years ago, the club manages a $100,000 fund provided by the UPrep Board of Trustees. The idea of providing the club with a fund to invest came from UPrep parent Charlie Frischer, a Private Investor and former advisor of Investing Club.
“I spoke to the board, and made a two-page proposal, and they said yes, we’ll be happy to have students manage $100,000 of the endowment,” Frischer said.
UPrep’s overall endowment is a little more than $20 million, according to Frischer. In order to manage the $100,000 fund the club leaders first focus on educating the students on foundational aspects of investing.
“To get our members up to speed, usually we start the year covering the very basics of investing and economics in the market,” Angeloff said.
Once the club members are equipped with a basic understanding of how investing works, they will research companies they are interested in and decide whether or not they want the club to invest in them.
“Eventually, what our end goal is, is we have people make pitches to the club, and we all vote on if we think that stock should be invested in that 100k fund,” Angeloff said.
The club has a limit of $3,300 to invest in each individual stock, but no restrictions on what stocks members can buy.
“The kids, in two years, have bought about six or seven [stock] positions, but we’ve only invested about $25,000 so far,” Frischer said.
A stock position is how many shares of a company you currently own. The main goal of the club is not to make money in a short period of time, but instead to focus on the research and logic behind financial decisions.
“Essentially, we’re trying to learn how to evaluate a business, and then we put that into practice,” Angeloff said.
In addition to teaching members about how to invest this school-provided fund, the club leaders also work to educate students on how to manage their own money.
“We try to tell people about personal investing as well,” Angeloff said. “This is for a fund, but a lot of the stuff you learn about business analysis is really applicable to personal investing.”
Angeloff believes that this kind of education is important because it teaches students the best ways to approach investing and how to do it in a smart way.
“If you get into investing and you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re just going based off of hype, you’re bound to lose money,” Angeloff said.
Investing Club co-leader Dev Parikh manages some of his personal money by investing it.
“I invest in mostly individual stocks,” Parikh said. “One of my biggest holdings is Align Technologies, which makes Invisalign.”
An individual stock is a piece of ownership of a single company. Parikh does this kind of investing because he enjoys learning about it, not with the primary goal of making money.
“The much better long-term strategy, and the one I will probably transition some of my money to once I have expenses…would be investing more in the total stock market and ETFs,” Parikh said.
ETFs, or an Exchange-Traded Fund,s contain many investments like stocks or bonds and are generally organized around a theme or strategy. They can be traded like stocks, and are used to easily create a diverse investment portfolio, according to Fidelity Investments.
Angeloff urges students to get involved in investing as a way to prepare for the future.
“One of the most important things for our generation as Gen Z is really being able to save for the future with Roth IRAs, or 401ks when you’re working a job,” Angeloff said. “Just understanding that when you’re saving now, you’re really helping your future self.”
Not all UPrep students focus on investing or gambling; some choose a more traditional route of working a job and saving their earnings for later in life.
Frischer has noticed a general shift in how high school students think about money and how they manage it. Regardless of what students choose to do with their money, Frischer believes that students’ involvement in personal financial management stems from the accessibility of online funds.
“The kids are at a whole different level of having electronic money,” Frischer said. “Their phone kind of is their credit card and their wallet at the same time.”
Senior Larissa Rosenthal works three jobs: in her family’s restaurant during the summer, as a lifeguard at her local swim and tennis club and as a babysitter year-round. She chooses to save the majority of her earnings for college.
“All the money I make goes directly into my savings, except if it’s from babysitting, then that goes into my checking,” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal’s spending is geared more toward experiences than material belongings.
“I don’t really spend it on new clothes. Most of my money that I spend goes toward food, or concert tickets or traveling,” Rosenthal said.
From his own observations, Frischer has noticed that many UPrep students choose to restrict their personal spending.
“One thing is interesting: in general, even the kids who may be a little bit more well off, all the kids seem to be pretty cheap with the money they spend,” Frischer said. “They’re pretty cautious with how they spend money, even if their parents aren’t really limiting them on how much they spend.”
One example is how Rosenthal chooses to dedicate the earnings from her jobs toward her future, instead of spending more at present.
“I really prefer saving my money. My dream is to do a lot of traveling when I’m older,” Rosenthal said. “That’s a lot of the reason why I work and why I have a drive to work is because I really want to be saving for my future.”
Wilson commends investing, and advises students to find ways to balance saving, giving and spending.
“In wealth management we say that saving and investing can coincide… you’ve got to do both,” Wilson said. “You want your money making money for you, and it has to be invested in order to do that, in order for your savings to compound year over year.”
Electives like Microeconomics and Math Finance, neither of which are required for students, explore the topic of money management.
“I really wish that UPrep had a more structured curriculum around it,” Student 1 said. “Because as high schoolers, you’re getting to this age where you can gamble, you can invest, and it’s a really good thing to learn.”
