[quote=norvsucks]Yes, I have Roth IRAs for my young children. I think it is a pretty savvy financial move due to the time the money can grow. Started at age 8. Used T. Rowe Price, but several others will do them. Catch is that the child must have earned income and the pay must be reasonable for the work. The challenge is to find legitimate jobs for earned income. The tax laws generally don’t allow paying them for household chores, nor many other jobs at age 7 or less. I own a small business, so it is relativity easy to find paperwork type jobs to create the earned income. “Modeling” jobs are also a possibility for some.

If you can swing it, it is the best money move you can do for your kids, IMO. Most of the tax pros suggest maxing your your own retirement accounts before doing the kiddie Roth IRA.

The Roth IRA does not count against you or your child for college FAFSA applications, but it may have to be reported on the CSS Profile. From what I understand, some private schools will also count it as an asset on their additional forms.

I have not told me kids about the accounts. I hope I can teach them about the compounding of interest over time, so that they don’t tap the savings until they are very old. Then, they can retire well and donate to causes they believe in.[/quote]

Thanks for the input! That’s exactly the sort of thing I wanted to here. I can’t contribute to a roth IRA nor traditional IRA…So beyond that, I was trying to figure out how else to pass this along.

Quick question.. I don’t mean to the bearer of dome…But….Ownership of the Roth IRA would be completely with the kid, is that correct? I’m looking at it from the perspective of hypothetical situation that something should happen to the kid, it is part of their estate, subject to their will and/or living trust. It’s not possible to open an account with joint title from what I can tell…