harley
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Back in 1990, when DD was 5 or 6, I put $5K in an investment account as part of her college fund. Not knowing what I was doing, I put it in my name. I then performed brilliantly in the stock market (mostly by it being the 90s), and by the time we figured out she wasn't going to go to college it had grown to $75K+, even after the 2002 recession. I couldn't just gift it to her, both because of tax reasons and because she wasn't mature enough to handle it. So I started gifting the max amount allowed into a Roth IRA for her. I've been doing that for about 10+ years, and at age 31 she's got quite a healthy Roth. The best thing is that the investment fund still has almost $65K in it, due to lucky/good investments in AAPL and BRK.B. I anticipate being able to do this for many more years, and since she's become quite a capable money manager herself I'm hoping she will also be able to FIRE someday (if she wants to). She should at least be FI, anyway. I feel like that has been a great way to help her get a good start while allowing her to make her own way in the day to day world and learn her own lessons without us cushioning her too much.