Resources

Teens grow up swimming in financial misinformation. TikTok, YouTube, and friends at lunch pass around “money advice” that sounds smart but usually isn’t. The problem isn’t that teens are dumb, but it’s that they’re hearing loud voices with zero context. As a parent, your job isn’t to lecture them, but it’s to quietly debunk myths with facts and examples that stick.

Everyone wants to “get rich quickly,” but here’s the truth: most people don’t invest. They gamble and call it investing. If you learn to spot the difference early, you’ll save yourself a lot of stress, regret, and lost money. Let's make smart investments together.

An index fund is simple. It buys a tiny slice of every company in a market index, then holds them all. No guessing. No "super-star" manager. If the index is the S&P 500, you own all 500 companies in one shot. That single decision gives you instant diversification, low cost, and tracking of the market’s return. Most people do not need anything fancier.

The more investors trade, the worse they tend to do. Not my opinion. It's just how investing plays out. A Journal of Finance study looked at 66,465 brokerage accounts. The most active traders earned about 11.4 percent a year while the market returned roughly 17.9 percent. That gap is not a rounding error. It's important to acknowledge when developing a trading strategy.

Here’s the truth. You don't need to be the next Warren Buffett or a Wall Street prodigy to make money investing. You just need one thing most teens have more of than adults. Time.

Two of the best ways to start investing early are Roth and Traditional IRAs. Let’s break these down so you know exactly what they mean and why you should care right now.