No. Not i am jim cramer, host of mad money, squawk on the street. That plus an avatar and 140 characters sums up everyone these days. I want to you know more than that. Although it did take me two years to learn an avatar wasnt a movie and a hash tag wasnt a number sign. What i want to do tonight in an extremely special and personal show even by my own whacky standards is trace the arc that brought me to mad money, not for an ego trip but to give you some money making lesson from the phases of my various careers and how you can profit from them. Remember in the end this is cramerica. In short im going to give you the best of cramer guide book. So i can help you become better than i have ever been or ever will be and thats the ultimate goal of mad money. Lets start real early back in the time machine. My love of stocks didnt begin after law school or college or high school. My love for stacks started back in fourth grade. See my dad would bring home the philadelphia bulletin. At that point one of the largest newspapers in the country. Great afternoon paper. Thats when he returned from work every night. I wanted it from comics and sports. I was a phillies fan back then. 89 miles south of new york. No one would choose to affiliate themselves with a team with the most amount of losses in all of history. Curiosity has been a blessing and a curse of mine. Anyway, there was always this solid chunk of the paper impenetrable to me, called the business section. It had these giant list of names and agate type that went on forever. The other tables. Different from the batting average tables and box scores i would scrutinize. When you read them from left to right it made no sense. Open. Range. Close. What open . What range . What close . What were these strange things . Why did they matter . I asked my dad. I would hear him get mad when he would hear prices mentioned on the radio. In particular he always seemed angry when i heard something called National Video. And how National Video went out. I didnt know what National Video did and why it went out. It made him furious. I wanted to find out more. So he sat me down and explained each of these lines represented the line of the stock. The range was how low and how high it traded and the close was how much it was worth when trading finished at the closing bell. It fascinated me. How could there be so Many Companies and why the heck did they trade in ranges and what did it mean to close . He described to me that people tried very hard to figure out each day which stocks would go up at the close and buy them so they could make money from the increase during that range from the open to close. Frankly this struck me as down right silly. I told him when i looked at the baseball tables i was trying to figure out who was hot, who would go up in average and who would go down and what it meant for the teams i liked. He said it was the same for stocks. Some players were doing okay. Some were as hot as a pistol. Some were dudes. I wanted to know if i could learn something from just following the ranges, reading the tables. He said why dont you try. It seemed in my house the radio was always on until pop put on the tv on. We watched the news while we ate dinner. Most of the news was about the war. Meaning the war in vietnam. It was frightful and scary. Fortunately the war was winding down at the time i got to my draft number and it was a high one. Right after the world news on the radio or tv they mentioned the Dow Jones Industrials average and they either talked or showed the most active stocks. Then the ones that had done the best or the worst. National video was often on the worst list i discovered. Hence the anger. So what i did was write the names down that i heard and i tracked them. Kept them in, believe it or not, this ledger that i still have. Here it is. What a terrific game. I was trying to figure out the next move of the stock. Even as all i knew was the name, polaroid, xerox, National Video, pan am, united. Most were defense stocks and they went up a lot. In tandem with the war. Hey, so i followed a lot of those. A bunch of others. Look at that. Conair. Eastern. National rca. Admiral. I decided this was as cool a game as imaginable. I wanted to introduce this to my fifth grade class. I showed them my ledger. Inviting everybody to play. I have to admit not everyone was into it as i was. My dads company at the time was called National Box Company represented the 3m corporation. Then the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in the philadelphia area, selling tape and a fancy ribbon that bowed easily. We were talking satin ribbon. Had to make the bows. Triple m was innovating, coming up with new product lines. It still does. Which is why favor it. Pop came home with a new line of 3m he was selling, games. They got into 3m book shelf games. He said perhaps i might want to learn more about how the stock market really worked and the company had created two games about business. Acquire about takeovers and stocks and bonds of which i am fortunate enough to have gotten a copyright here. Courtesy of george who is producing mad money who gave to it me for the holidays. I almost cried when george gave to it me. I loved that game so much. I asked the ceo of 3m to bring the games back. The point of mentioning all of this from my own makeshift game to stocks and bonds which george bought off of ebay stocks are fascinating enough to get your kids started in them right now. Its easier than ever. Pick some stocks. Maybe not of Defense Companies although they are performing in an odd and positive way. But companies that are familiar to your kids and have them track them and guess which will do better over time. Not the Growth Corporation of america, not the pioneer mutual fund. Stocks that are real. Heres the bottom line of my childhood stock market obsession. Get started early. And they may play for life. Because the stock market is a long term contest and one i think the earlier you get in the more you can win. Im going to mickey in new york. Mickey. Caller hey jim i want to thank you for all you do. Ive been investing since ive been quite young. What kind of changes to my investment process should i make as i get older. When youre in your 50s 50 bonds, no more. Interest rates are way too low. Find some conservative stocks that give you good yield and shift over time and you can pick up some income. Rick in arizona. Rick . Caller hello, mr. Cramer. How are you . Real good. How about you . Caller im doing great, sir. My question four i have a couple of young children, trying to get them started in investing. The question i have is what advice and what are the most essential items or ideas on investing concepts do people need to know when they start learning the market. First thing they need to know is what they own and the idea behind that is to own things like disney. Dominos pizza. Mcdonalds. Go to the mall. Go to costco. Go to places youre familiar with. Read the annual. Buy a share. One share. Get him or her involved. Get them started early. Teach your kids about the market. It is a very valuable lesson. And there are many more coming up on this special edition of mad money. Well be right back. Announcer dont miss a second of mad money. Follow jimcramer on twitter. Have a question, tweet cram cramer madtweets. Or give us a call at 1800743cnbc. Miss something . Head to mad money. Cnbc. Coadmone. Welcome back to a bizarrely special mad money where im trying to teach you life lessons in investing from my life. While i am not a dollar sign represented by a man or a stock symbol for that matter, ticker jim, i have stumbled around the stock market long enough in life to learn a thing or two and tonight youre getting that wisdom from the school of hard knocks. Dont you love it at the beginning of a pro Football Game the player says his name and the name of the school and school of hard knocks. Youre getting the on tv version right here right now. We covered how i first got involved, my fourth grade obsession of keeping a ledger to track stocks and then ultimately to learn how they trade through the greatest game on earth. No, it wasnt monopoly. It was stocks and bonds. But with its little certificates and its game boards, and its cards, it tells you about news and how that sends a stock higher or lower. Thats what this was all about. I left the stock market games behind me by time i got to middle school. Which was then called junior high. My obsession was sports. I ran track of course. The other thing i cared about was girls whose moments were more elusive than any of this stuff. They were more elusive than the ranges of stocks. That was a random walk down springfield high main street. I couldnt win for losing. Thats the subject for a different show. However my father did ingrain in me the desire to save. Early on i learned even in high school you got to save. I saved as i bussed tables at the old block and cleaver. I told first cold soda, ice cold and then ultimately graduated into selling ice cream. Very quickly at that job i learned the value of market power. Specifically cornering the market and i paid people to give them the exclusive right to sell ice cream. On the 600 and 700 level of the mets stadium. Can you imagine how much money can be made if you had the only franchise in the whole upper deck even for a team as horrible as the phillies. By paying those guys not to sell ice cream against me i made fortunes. Maybe the other time when steve carl would pitch. Got players out so fast i would get stuck with unsold ice cream had to buy the ice cream from the company before selling it. I would take a genuine beating, talk about learning how business worked. The shelf life of ice cream on a hot july night is short. I moiight jest with your name. I loved bizarre false intimacy. Made a ton of money. I opened an account at fidelity with the magellan fund. It was the Top Performing fund. Peter lynch wrote two investment books one on wall street and beating the street. I didnt save enough when i got to college. The money paid was work study and went toward my tuition and room and board. When i got out of college an after a lot of attempts to get a job in the Nuclear Weapon business rejected by more than 50 papers i have every single rejection letter in the trunk. I ran a position as a general assignment reporter. It was hard when i got started. How poor i was. Nevertheless, poor, 156. I contributed even then. I put a few dollars away when i could. Not long after i applied to and got a job at the Los Angeles Herald examiner. Making 179 a week. It was about four times as expensive of living in tallahassee. I found an apartment in the fairfax district. Pretty sketchy. Nicer now. Around the corner from Pioneer Chicken which was way too expensive for me to go to. Few weeks later i was stalked and broken into repeatedly. Something the cops were helpless to stop. At the time i was assigned at san diego a Horrible School shooting. When i returned everything was gone. Everything i had. So it began. Mitre bill but thrilling six months of living in my car basically trying to get by, the only upside being when you might have met a women, pretty easy to figure out the night inquiry, your place or mine. As much as i knew my ultimate goal was to save enough to get an apartment, people would take me in now and then so i could get a shower, change, gate good nights sleep. I still never quit saving. I remember cashing my paycheck every other week and writing a check to Fidelity Magellan Fund. You only had gas, food and insurance if you were living in your car. How poor was i yet still putting money away . When i got sick and jaundiced liver, i had no health care. The hmo that my paper belonged to had no branch. So i had to go to migrant farm workers clinic. I was making weekly trips to the doctor. Up shot, given money to the best stock picker of all time i manage through all the years, 35 years later to put enough money away to take advantage of the great bull markets of our time. Not to brag but to teach. That money ultimately amounted to a fund well into the six figures. Not because of my capital additions. I stopped putting money away in that fund years ago but because of the power of compounding with amazing investor at the helm. I think the takeaway here is i want to you save no matter what. Obviously the earlier the better. When cnbc has those allstar managers on. Send the money in as little or as much as can you. If i could still send those checks to Fidelity Magellan Fund when i was living in my car, sick as a dog and saved by a pistol by my side the most down and out you can be, you can put some money too. After the break ill try to make you some more money. Announcer in the never ending battle for Realtime Data news and the american way, it is time for super mobile cnbc. Realtime quotes. Breaking news, of course. But theres more. Now, access live, cnbc tv with your bare hands. On your iran pad, iphone. Its an app, its video, its cnbc tv live and on demand. Online. The ocean gets warmer. The peruvian anchovy harvest suffers. It raises the price of fishmeal, cattle feed and beef. Bny mellon turns insights like these into powerful investment strategies. For a university endowment. It funds a marine biologist. Who studies the peruvian anchovy. Invested in the world. Bny mellon. The energy in one gallon of gas is also enough to keep your smartphone running for how long . 30 days . 300 days . 3,000 days . The answer is. 3,000 days. Because of gasolines high energy density, your car doesnt have to carry as much fuel compared to other energy sources. Take the energy quiz. Energy lives here. [ male announcer ] this december, experience the gift of exacting precision and some of the best offers of the year at the lexus december to remember sales event. This is the pursuit of perfection. I needed a new laptop for my premed classes, something that runs office and has a keyboard. But i wanted a tablet for me, for stuff like twitter and xbox, so my downtime can be more like uptime. Thats why i got a windows 2 in 1 which does both works as a laptop and a tablet. So i can manage my crazy life, and also have a life. [ beep ] gotta go. Were riding the delicious magical money mystery tour tonight and im giving you the life lessons i learned the hard way. I told you first how to get your kids started early. In this told you about how nothing should ever stop you from investing. Listen, if i can do it living in a 1977 Ford Fairmont you can put money away too. Right now i want to tell you how i got started in individual stock picking. Even after seemingly interminable periods of chaos. Yes, its the reason i believe you watch, certainly your inclination. Thats much like the funny outfits. The outrageous sound board courtesy of when i used to have a radio show. The mad money called real money. If youre picking stocks, playing with real money not just with a ledger, or with a game of stocks and bonds. You need to open an account. I got started in 1979 there was no such things as an online account. I had an account with fidelity. When i first started i didnt know where to look for ideas so i turned to forbes. People at forbes dont take this personally but i read a nifty article about an orange grower in florida. It was very compelling. I bought first thing ten shares for nine bucks. A week later a frost hit and wiped out the whole crop. My investment was more than cut in half. I was completely devastated. But not defeated. I sold it and took the capital and went back to forbes and bought seven shares of bobbie brooks. And my money was halved again. Fortunately i had a decent job at a magazine. I was making 20 gs and living in less thanning a swank studio. The cheap 40 a month rent with the sofa bed, twice the rent for a beautiful apartment in tallahassee. After a particularly hard night on the town i fell in love with the breakfast at bob evans farm. Finding out it was publicly traded when i went back home i visited the huge fabulous midtown manhattan new york conglomerate. I devoured everything i could about bob evans farm. They had magazines with articles, microfiche, a four month old financials and write ups that allowed me to compare it with other companies in the industry. I knew i had a good one. I bought 20 shares. The stock went up immediately. And a stock split. I figured out the first component of investing, know what you own. What did i know about oranges or womens fashion. But eggs and sausages . A company i found, long tradition of good service. Notice that was for me. Next up, Standard Press steel. Well no that became sps technologies. From my old home town. They made screws for airplanes. Why sps . Because a buddy of mine from high school told me they were hiring like mad. Wondered if i was looking for a job, paying good money. I had a job. Back to the library for more research. Solid company. No doubt. Nothing in print about its hiring push. Ripe for a trade, right . No one had that skinny. You know it doubled long after and by that i caught the bug for good. 23 years later acquired by precision cast parts. So now i figured it out best investment ideas come from what you know meld with information from public sources even if they are as late and hard to source as taking a trip to the New York Public Library when i was supposed to be working. I didnt like the random way i was making money through this. A friend from home lucky call about a job. A hearty breakfast at bob evans restaurant. Theres got to be a more methodical way, right . Look around at work. At the time i was covering mergers and acquisition, profiling some, following the deals. It seemed like every other deal was in the oil patch one after another after another small to midsize Oil Companies were being acquired. All i was doing was standing around and writing about it. So i went back to the library, took out some editions of value line a Stock Research magazine and checked out the pages. I cross referenced them to other research to find out which one could be acquired without problems. I settled on an oil company in indonesia. I didnt have to wait long before they were bought. Another lesson learned. If you want to play takeovers. Buy companies that would do well on their own bund under managed which is the consensus i found about reading articles about the oil enterprise. Another oil company with big engineer scale coul