So, your most recent IG post got me thinking. My 11 and almost 13 year old daughters both do “jobs” around the house to earn a little cash (ex: mow Grandma and Grandpa’s lawn $10-20, wash the car for $5, clean the bathroom $5, mop the kitchen $3, entertain their 3 little brothers outside so mom can enjoy an hour of peace and quiet inside $5,etc.). They both have heard me talk about investing (as I’m learning) and have shown an interest in investing their own savings. What is the best option for their situation? Obviously, they don’t pay taxes since it is just money from family but both have a few hundred dollars saved up (in an Ally Bank account).
Hey @Alma!
Well, there are some tax advantaged accounts you could look into (529, UGMA, etc), but honestly since we’re talking just about a few hundred bucks and it’s not really about building massive wealth at this point, rather about learning to invest, I might suggest just a regular brokerage account for each of them. Note that you can’t open one until you’re 18, so it would have to be a “joint” brokerage account between you and them. You’ll probably be on the hook for any tax implications, but it would be a very small amount of money… and only taxed on the gains (so you could charge them to show them how that tax works).
But you could go to Fidelity, open up a joint brokerage account, have them invest $100 of their money in an index fund like FZROX, then they can come back and check if it went up or down a few days/weeks later. You can explain the concepts about how there’s short term volatility, but long term it will go up, and they just need to add more money over the years so they can reach financial independence! 
Basically everything I teach here and on my IG can be discussed with 11 and 13 year olds!
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Thanks! I was thinking we could do a match plus add a little sibling competition in it too. Whoever saves/invests the most in a year gets an extra $100 thrown in on top of the match.
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