Suze Orman: Parents, Get Roth IRAs for Your Kids So They Can Retire Millionaires

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Want to make your kids millionaires? A Roth IRA might be all that they need. At least, that’s the suggestion of famous financial personality Suze Orman, who dedicated a blog post to this specific idea.

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Why a Roth IRA, which doesn’t even provide a tax deduction on contributions? Because one million tax-free dollars in a Roth could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars more than $1 million in a traditional IRA, in which distributions are fully taxable. How could this all work? Read on to learn the specifics of Orman’s suggestions.

The Mathematics of Roth IRAs

Your children have one of the greatest assets in the entire investment world — time. Even modest investment returns, over a long enough time, can provide large account balances, thanks to the power of compound interest. As Orman explains it, if a teen or young adult manages to save $2,500 per year for 50 years, earning a 7% return on an annualized basis, they would end up with more than $1 million in their account.

Perhaps a more likely scenario, as explained by Orman, is that your kid saves only $1,000 for the first five years but is then able to bump up that annual contribution to $5,000. Another bump to $6,500 for the following 40 years would translate to more than $1.8 million in savings after the same 50-year time period.

The true beauty of having your kid invest in a Roth IRA, of course, is the tax-free nature of qualifying distributions. Any amount they manage to build in the account will come to them free and clear in their retirement. This can be a big help not just when they receive the money but also throughout their lifelong retirement planning.

Ways To Keep Your Kids Engaged and Contributing

One of the best ways to keep your kids along for the ride when it comes to opening and maintaining a Roth IRA is to “show them the money.”

Flashing the figure of $1 million in front of any kid is likely to at least open their eyes, and showing them how they can get there — and what that would exactly mean for their futures — is a great first step. Of course, framing your presentation in terms of simple math might not be enough to do the trick. Instead, focus on how they can reach this mythical level with a relatively minimum amount of effort, and have them envision just what living like a millionaire would be like.

But Orman has more suggestions than that. The financial personality recommended that you offer your kids a matching contribution on what they put in, much like corporations typically offer 401(k) matches to their employees. If your kids are just starting out, you might have to tilt the scales a bit in their favor.

For example, Orman suggested that for every $1 your kids contribute, you perhaps add $10. This will help your kids ramp up their balances more quickly and perhaps even give them more incentive to contribute. Just bear in mind that while you’re free to add to your kid’s Roth IRA, your combined contributions can’t exceed the child’s earned compensation.

Orman also recommended that you use this opportunity to teach your kids about investing in general and try to get them interested in it at a young age. While they likely can’t have a real grasp on what lifelong investing means, getting them familiar with terms, concepts and how investments work will serve them well. Try to think in terms of things that appeal to their day-to-day minds, such as how investing in Apple means they own a portion of the company that produces their favorite electronic gadgets, for example.

How Should Your Kids Invest Their Roth IRAs?

Orman recommended you don’t get too fancy when it comes to picking investments for your child’s Roth IRA. She suggested you tilt the balance toward stocks, as they may not be accessing the money for 50 years or more, but that you’ll have to explain the phenomenon of bear markets to them. In terms of specific investments, total stock market indexes, via either mutual funds or ETFs, are Orman’s recommendation. But you can also supplement these types of investments with fractional shares of some of your kid’s favorite companies, such as Apple or Tesla.

Of course, every investment account, even a child’s Roth IRA, should be tailored to the individual needs and risk tolerance of the account holder. But as your kid is likely too young to make those decisions, you’ll start out being the one making those determinations. As Orman suggests, with such a long runway until they retire, your kids can likely afford to be more aggressive with their accounts. But if you teach them along the way what “investment objectives” and “risk tolerance” really mean, they’ll be in a good position to make those judgments themselves when they reach the age of majority.

The Bottom Line

While many people think that earning a huge salary is the best way to build a big retirement account — and it certainly doesn’t hurt — nothing beats starting early and leveraging the power of compound interest. As Orman outlines in her examples, even very modest sums invested at a not-unrealistic rate of return can easily push a Roth IRA balance to over $1 million over a multidecade period. If you can get your kids interested and engaged while they’re still young, you’ll be setting them up for a comfortable retirement.

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