My 7 year old son has made some money on voice overs for the last 3 years. He has made 9-18k per year.
ROTH- I have maxed out his IRA the last few years and am wondering if I should do that again this year.
529- I have some money in a 529, but I sort of lost faith in those after some time. Just seems like college tuitions are a joke and the degrees seem to be less valuable now a days.
REAL ESTATE- I used some of his money for a down payment on an investment property and I have an IOU for him. He is getting all my investment properties anyway. I could however write off my debt and just say he owns X % of a particular property.
STOCK MARKET- Obviously there is always stocks/mutual funds.
I could do more than one obviously, but I am just not sure what is the best use of his earned income.
I think you should keep it simple; Some in the Roth and some in a savings account. You could do CDs, too.
I wouldn’t mess with using his money for real estate. If he wants his money when he’s 18 you’ll need to buy him out if he doesn’t want it invested in real estate. I think this could get messy.
Depending on what he wants to do in life a college degree may or may not make sense. If he wants to be an engineer, or a Dr., or some other professional, then he needs a degree. It is valuable. If he wants to go to college just “because” and get a general ed degree, then that may not be worth it.
Keep it simple and don’t worry about trying to maximize the return.
Make sure you don’t add his name to the title of your real estate. Just let him inherit it and get the step up in basis. No reason to give our incompetent government any more money…