Don’t gamble on your future: Smart ways to invest while you’re young

March 15, 2026 — 2:00am

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Real Money, a free weekly newsletter giving expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money, is sent every Sunday. You’re reading an excerpt − sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.

In the US currently, amid all the other ... stuff they’ve got going on, a new form of “investing” has quickly taken root among the country’s younger cohort. Prediction markets such as Polymarket or Kalshi allow people to bet on real-world events, such as the next Federal Reserve rates decision, what film will win the Oscar for best picture (currently tipped to be One Battle After Another) or if I’ll make a great joke by the end of this newsletter (almost a sure thing).

A recent survey found nearly a third of Gen Z in the US between the ages of 18 and 29 were putting money into prediction markets. If you’re wondering how this is considered investing, it’s basically not, and thankfully the Australian government was wise enough to ban them from taking root locally, classifying them as illegal gambling.

But you can bet your bottom dollar (odds currently at 5:1) that if prediction markets were legal here, young people would be all over them, considering roughly half of them gamble........

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