Today I met one of the most money-savvy people I have ever known, and he is only ten years old.  His parents don’t make much money, but his grandma pays him to do odd jobs around her house, and she’s been doing this for about 3 years now.  He makes .50 a job, and might do 10 jobs in a given day. so he’s earning about $20 a week. 

He uses $5 a week to buy things for himself, and puts the other $15 into a money market account that he shares with his grandma (he didn’t want his parents on the account).  It used to be a savings account, but when he got an inheritance from an aunt for $10,000 he decided to “do a bit more with my finances, this is retirement money after all.”

So let’s do a little math.

He’s 10 years old, and will be saving for 50 years.

If he stopped saving today, and earned a typical return on investment of 10% a year, when he retires that 10,000 will be $1,173,908.52, and $1,891,797 if he continued to do his $15 a week.  Something tells me that he will be doing slightly better than $15 a week in contributions…

Now if only I could convince him to bank where I work :)

I just get a kick out of him opening accounts with his grandma so that his parents can’t touch his “nest egg.”  But this raises a good question, how young is too young to start saving for retirement?