When children are small, parents make every call...
From what is for dinner to where the family lives to how its money gets spent. The whole arc of parenting, though, bends toward handing that control over a little at a time, so that children grow steadily more capable on their own. By the time they walk out the door, the hope is that they can make smart, informed decisions with no one hovering nearby.
Money sits close to the center of that independence. If a teenager never has to think about earning, budgeting, or saving, it is a tall order to expect them to manage it well the moment they are out on their own. The encouraging part is that the high school years are full of natural chances to practice, while the stakes are still forgiving and you are right there to help. Across this series, the responsibility has been shifting steadily, from jars, to real accounts, and now to real earning and investing. These are the final few steps before graduation, and here are the ones that make the biggest difference.
Put them to work
The foundation of all of it is earning. A part-time job, whether a formal position or steady paid work around the house, moves money out of the realm of theory and into their own hands. Schoolwork, sports, and family commitments will all shape what is realistic, and the expectation to earn something still matters a great deal. When no one is required to bring in their own income, it becomes easy to assume someone else will always cover the bill. A paycheck quietly retires that assumption and marks the real handoff of responsibility.
Picture the math. Say your son or daughter takes a job at the grocery store for $16 an hour and commits to 10 hours a week. That comes to roughly $640 a month, and the lessons begin immediately. First comes payroll tax, which is an education all its own. Then come time management and a real feel for the value of a dollar. What does a full week of work actually buy? Many teens develop a fresh appreciation for everything you provide once they start running the numbers, along with a clearer sense of what life genuinely costs. For a few, it even lights a spark of ambition or an entrepreneurial itch. And because a paycheck is earned income, it quietly unlocks something we will come back to shortly: the ability to open a Roth IRA.
Build a real budget
Now that your teen can see what actually lands in their account after taxes, budgeting becomes the natural next conversation. Consider walking them through part or all of the family budget, so they can see for themselves what the lifestyle they have always known really costs. It tends to be an eye-opening moment, and a natural way to explain why a few expenses are about to become theirs. Show them that every budget holds fixed items and discretionary ones, the bills that arrive whether you like it or not alongside the spending you can flex. With that in view, it is worth handing them responsibility for at least one fixed cost, perhaps their gas or a car payment.
From there, help them claim their discretionary spending too, the nights out with friends and the coffee-shop runs. Encourage them to hold their income up against what they want to spend. Do they need more hours, or a better-paying job? Remind them that the bigger purchases and experiences call for saving ahead, so the budget should always leave room to set aside a share of each month's income. If the jars became checking and savings accounts a few years ago, this is simply that same habit growing up.
Set goals side by side
Once they know roughly what they earn, which costs are theirs, and what is left to save or invest, you can begin setting goals together. Saving patiently and delaying gratification rarely come naturally, so help them picture their future self and the things that self will want, then lay out a real path to get there. A down payment on a first car, a senior-year spring break trip, or their agreed share of college costs all make for concrete, motivating targets.
Work out together how much they need to set aside each month to reach the goal, and be honest that falling short carries real consequences. The more you offer guidance rather than bailouts, the more seriously they will take it. When they fall behind, or life throws something unexpected their way, sit down and help them problem-solve a route back on track. And a quiet word for parents: the accountability runs both ways. If you agreed a cost was theirs, resist the urge to quietly cover it when they come up short.
Show them the magic of time, then put it to work
Set goals far enough out and the conversation naturally turns to the long game. Unless your teen takes a business elective, high school may never introduce them to investing at all. Yet so many of the families we work with at OnePoint BFG trace their own investing habits back to a single afternoon when a parent sat them down and walked them through stocks or compound interest. You can be that mentor, and a few clear illustrations go a long way.
The headline idea is how richly compounding rewards an early start. As a hypothetical example, imagine investing $200 a month beginning at age 15 and earning a 7% average annual return. By age 65, that could grow to roughly $1.1 million, even though the actual contributions totaled only $120,000.1 The growth is the star of the show, and it shows up quietly, asking for no extra work at all.
The second idea is that this growth is anything but a straight line. In that same example, 25 years in, the $60,000 contributed had grown to about $163,000, and from there the curve bends sharply upward, because investing rewards a long horizon and picks up speed the longer it runs. The flip side is the cost of waiting. Begin 10 years later, at 25, and reaching that same finish line would take about $400 a month, double the original. Wait until 35 and it climbs to roughly $900. Time, in other words, does the heavy lifting, and your teenager has more of it than almost anyone.
One more idea earns a place in the conversation, and it is the honest one. Markets rise and fall. Pull up a long-term chart of the S&P 500 and the upward march across the decades is unmistakable, and so are the stretches where investments dropped 20%, 30%, even 50% along the way.2 That is precisely why diversification and a steady temperament matter so much. Investing is a wonderful way to build wealth over time, and it can be an emotional ride, so the aim is to match the investments to the time horizon and automate the plan, keeping a rough day in the market from ever hijacking a long-term goal.
When those ideas start to land, give them somewhere to put them, and help your teen open a brokerage account. It might be a taxable account or, thanks to that earned income from the job, a Roth IRA, and which one fits comes back to the goals you set together. Start small, build a simple system, and tend to it side by side. Few moments in this whole effort are as satisfying as watching their face the first time they see their own money begin to grow.
This is the last stretch of a long and rewarding handoff. The pace will differ from one teenager to the next, and as always, steady progress matters more than fast progress. The one approach we would gently warn against is holding the reins tightly until eighteen and then letting go of everything at once. Handled with patience across these high school years, your child can walk across that graduation stage genuinely ready to run their own life on their own terms.
That is the whole aim of this series, and it is one we love being part of. Whenever you would like to shape a plan built around your own kids, from their very first jar to their first brokerage account, we would be glad to set up time with one of our advisors.
Notes
1. Hypothetical illustration for educational purposes only; not a projection, promise, or guarantee of any particular investment result. All figures assume a fixed contribution invested at the start of each month, a constant 7% nominal annual return compounded monthly, and no taxes, fees, or inflation. Actual returns vary and are negative in some periods. On these assumptions: $200 per month from age 15 to 65 (600 contributions totaling $120,000) grows to approximately $1.09 million; at 25 years (age 40; $60,000 contributed) the balance is approximately $163,000; matching the same age-65 balance requires approximately $415 per month (about double the $200) if begun at age 25, and approximately $900 per month if begun at age 35. Figures are rounded and were confirmed using the standard future-value-of-an-annuity calculation.
2. Peak-to-trough declines of the S&P 500 Index on a closing-price basis. Representative episodes: the 2000-2002 dot-com bear market, a decline of approximately 49%; the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, approximately 57%; the 2020 COVID-19 decline, approximately 34%; and the 2022 bear market, approximately 25%. Sources: index levels published by S&P Dow Jones Indices, with peak and trough dates and magnitudes as compiled by Yardeni Research ("S&P 500 Bear Markets and Corrections"). Index performance is historical and price-only, does not reflect dividends, and is not indicative of future results; the index is unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly.
Investment advisory and financial planning services offered through Bleakley Financial Group, LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser, doing business as OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners (herein referred to as "OnePoint BFG"). For more information regarding OnePoint BFG including important disclosures, please visit adviserinfo.sec.gov.
The third-party information contained herein is provided for informational and discussion purposes only. OnePoint BFG does not represent this third-party information as its own. While OnePoint BFG has gathered this information from sources deemed to be reliable, OnePoint BFG has not reviewed or verified any information input by your financial professional or that of the third-party source, nor can OnePoint BFG guarantee the completeness or accuracy of this data.
OnePoint BFG does not offer legal or tax advice. This document is not a substitute for the advice of a qualified attorney or tax professional. You should not take any action based solely on the information provided on this report without seeking legal counsel from a licensed attorney or tax professional in your jurisdiction. No attorney-client relationship is formed by your use of this document. This communication has been provided for general informational and discussion purposes only, and should not be considered as investment, legal or tax advice or as a recommendation. Circular 230 notice: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, this notice is to inform you that any tax advice included in this communication, including any attachments, is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalty or promoting, marketing, or recommending to another party any transaction or matter.
OnePoint BFG often uses Artificial Intelligence ("AI") in the generation of marketing and advertising and has established policies to ensure all AI generated material goes through human review prior to dissemination.
OP 26-0817
