Question:
❓ You want to open a Roth IRA for your teenager. What’s the one thing they actually need first?
A) They have to be at least 18
B) Earned income from a job
C) At least $1,000 to open it
D) You, the parent, already have a Roth IRA of your own
✅ Answer: B)
Earned income from a job
Here’s why:
A teen needs earned income—money they made from actual work—before a Roth IRA can exist for them. That’s the only real requirement. There’s no minimum age to own one, so a 15-year-old with a summer job qualifies just as much as a 40-year-old does.
A parent opens and manages it as a custodial Roth IRA, which is all a Roth IRA for kids really is: a regular Roth with an adult holding the keys until the child is grown. That’s the whole setup. No age gate, no special permission, just proof that the money going in was earned.
And "earned" is the word that matters. A W-2 job counts. So does self-employment, the babysitting, the pet-sitting, the lawn-mowing a kid does on their own. What doesn’t count is allowance, birthday money, or any gift, because none of that was worked for. The contribution can never be more than the lesser of what the child earned or the annual limit, which is $7,500 in 2026. So a teen who earns $2,000 mowing lawns over the summer can put in up to $2,000—not a dollar more.
And the child doesn’t even have to deposit their own paycheck. A parent, a grandparent, anyone, can put the money into the account on the child’s behalf, up to the amount the child actually earned. So your teen keeps their summer cash to spend, and the Roth still gets funded to the full $2,000. The IRS only cares that the earnings exist somewhere—not whose hand the deposit came from.
Now look at what that head start can do. A teen who puts in $2,000 each summer for four years contributes $8,000 total, and then never adds another dollar. Left alone at a 7% average return—an assumption, not a guarantee—that $8,000 could grow to around $213,500 by age 65, all of it tax-free. The four summers do the heavy lifting; the decades do the rest.
Why the others are not correct:
A) "They have to be at least 18" is the most common belief, and it’s an understandable one—a retirement account in the name of a 15-year-old sounds like something that shouldn’t be allowed. But the IRS sets no minimum age at all. The only gate is earned income, and until the child becomes an adult, a parent simply holds the account as custodian.
C) "At least $1,000 to open it" feels right because so many accounts come with minimums and starting balances. A Roth IRA doesn’t. Most major brokerages will open a custodial Roth with $0, so there’s no dollar floor standing between a working teen and an open account. What limits the contribution is how much the child earned that year, not how much is sitting in the account on day one.
D) "You, the parent, already have a Roth IRA of your own" sounds like it should be a rule—a kid’s account hanging off a parent’s. It isn’t. The child’s eligibility rides entirely on their own earned income. You could own no Roth IRA yourself, never have opened one in your life, and still open a custodial Roth for your working teen tomorrow.
Takeaway:
A Roth IRA isn’t an adults-only account. The moment a kid earns a real paycheck, they can start the single most powerful retirement account there is—decades earlier than most adults ever got the chance to. A working teen with four funded summers can end up ahead of someone who didn’t start until their forties.
If you want to set one up the right way, and match the savings vehicle to the goal instead of guessing, that’s exactly the kind of thing we walk through together.
