Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 07:33     Subject: Re:What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
As soon as they have an income from a verifiable source, they can start a Roth. Mine started at 14, when they got their first part time job.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 07:31     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Anonymous wrote:It's less about the age and more about earned income. Roth is not a miracle account. The success of it depends what you buy inside of it.
If possible, max it out every year. If you don't, you are missing out money growing tax free forever.
Do not pick 401k match over Roth.
Vanguard should be your last choice. Fidelity and Schwab are 100x better. I opened it with Robinhood and got with the match. My other ones is with Fidelity and Vanguard one is languishing. Vanguard makes it very hard to buy and sell stocks. They suggest you buy and hold their funds forever while they collect fees.
For those who really wanted to start their kids off early, could have opened one for yourself left it for your child. Our kid inherited one. Imagine if it had had any money in it. Now I need to buy and sell to grow it til the kid is 18 and can get it.


I disagree with a lot of the above:
Don't really agree with the 401k match is not better than a Roth, which is essentially free money from your employer. Get that before you fund a Roth.
Also don't agree that Vanguard is bad, their fees are usually around a 10th of 1%, not exactly huge, plus I don't put individual stocks in the Roth, just Total Market Funds or other things that I buy and hold.
You don't need to buy and sell to grow your accounts, period. That is straight up bad advice.
Anonymous
Post 07/17/2025 07:26     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I just opened one for DC 19yo, rising college sophomore.

I’m opening it at vanguard and funding it with $1k in a low cost, vanguard total stock market fund.

Once they get a real job, they can contribute more, but I made them set up the account and link it to their savings/debt account for future use.

Setting up the account is the hard part for them.

We don’t have a spare $7k max to put in there, otherwise I would give more.


You can’t just “give” him money. He needs to have earned income. He is working right?


Yes, I thought that was understood. He has a summer job with a W2.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 22:20     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
She needs earned income, but it doesn't have to be her income that goes in the IRA.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 22:07     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Opened a Roth for our son at 14 when he started working at the pool. Put in the full amount he made from our own money. He maxed it out the last two summers lifeguarding and will again this summer with a college internship. He has just shy of $40k at age 20. Even if he never adds to it after graduating college, it will be a nice chunk of change at retirement.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 21:53     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
She needs her own earned money to start it.
Then I think it is $1,000.

After that , the earlier the better. (Assuming Congress does not change tax laws …)
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 21:08     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Opened one for each of the kids as soon as they had any old job (umpiring, etc--age 13 for one and 16 for the other). We used our money to fund it up to 8000$ total, but only equal to what they earned each year of course. DD first year had 350$ in umpiring money. Now DS made 10K last summer and funded his himself partially and partially Grandma donated some. Grandma had a deal to gift any summer money earned during college to each of the grandkids to fund their Roths.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 19:53     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
It's less about the age and more about earned income. Roth is not a miracle account. The success of it depends what you buy inside of it.
If possible, max it out every year. If you don't, you are missing out money growing tax free forever.
Do not pick 401k match over Roth.
Vanguard should be your last choice. Fidelity and Schwab are 100x better. I opened it with Robinhood and got with the match. My other ones is with Fidelity and Vanguard one is languishing. Vanguard makes it very hard to buy and sell stocks. They suggest you buy and hold their funds forever while they collect fees.
For those who really wanted to start their kids off early, could have opened one for yourself left it for your child. Our kid inherited one. Imagine if it had had any money in it. Now I need to buy and sell to grow it til the kid is 18 and can get it.

Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 19:48     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Anonymous wrote:oh please. pay for college, then let her fund her own roth


This. My son puts a few thousand in his each year from his summer job. He keeps some for spending money at school.
Anonymous
Post 07/16/2025 19:18     Subject: What age to start Roth/ retirement plan for teen daughter?
Anonymous wrote:I just opened one for DC 19yo, rising college sophomore.

I’m opening it at vanguard and funding it with $1k in a low cost, vanguard total stock market fund.

Once they get a real job, they can contribute more, but I made them set up the account and link it to their savings/debt account for future use.

Setting up the account is the hard part for them.

We don’t have a spare $7k max to put in there, otherwise I would give more.


You can’t just “give” him money. He needs to have earned income. He is working right?