Posted: 12/23/2025 1:11:50 PM EDT
| I’m gifting my 15 year old $5K to start a custodial account. Hoping the investment gurus here can suggest some stocks/mutual funds/etf’s to get my child on their way to a nice nest egg. Any recommendations are welcome. |
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Most here will suggest an S&P 500 index fund. (SPY, VOO, etc). And that is not a bad answer. IMO, much will depend on the personality of the 15 year old in question, (hard to answer, as 15 year olds are a work in progress). Might take a look at ADX if you think that index funds don’t suit them. Lots of other choices would be good, too. |
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Save them tons of grief in the future and get them started with a simple 2 to 4 fund portfolio based on index funds that he can leave unmolested for life other than adding to it and occasional rebalancing. There is almost zero reason for an average Joe to have anything more complicated. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Two-fund_portfolio https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio |
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I'd go with a SP500 or total market for actually making money. Maybe let them pick a couple single stocks for some companies they know to get them more interested in it, but dont put a ton of money into those. Back when I was in middle school, the teacher had us doing a stock exercise like this. Picking single stocks based on whatever factors we wanted. We looked them up in the stocks section of the paper every week and calculated how much we were doing. I got lucky on that one. I picked something like IT Tech. It just so happened they were on a run and split. I ended up making the most virtual money in the class. But it was just dumb luck. Looking back, I wondered if the teacher was using the kids in the gifted class to pick her stocks for her to build her real life portfolio.  But anywho, buy him some SP500 and let him dabble a bit in nickalodeon or apple or something. |
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I agree with funds and ETFs that you screen for the majority but my kids were able to pick some stocks from a list I screened, and they will tell you that owning a few shares of Coke, Campbell's Soup, or Caterpillar helped keep them interested from grade school on. One of my daughters is about to graduate from Purdue with a finance degree so you never know. You still have to stay on top of those picks. Of the companies above, only CAT and Coke remain in a portfolio. Keep them in the loop and explain compound interest, dividends and other terms as soon as they can understand them. The book, "How to Invest $50-$5,000 got me started early on. Then Liars Poker when you start discussing bonds. D |
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Originally Posted By woodsie: Save them tons of grief in the future and get them started with a simple 2 to 4 fund portfolio based on index funds that he can leave unmolested for life other than adding to it and occasional rebalancing. There is almost zero reason for an average Joe to have anything more complicated. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Two-fund_portfolio https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio We played the stock market game in school and my team got absolutely murdered on a fluke event that tanked our stocks. This is pretty much what I do now and I'm not sweating it at all. |
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I let my kids pick their funds. I feel like it makes them feel more connected to it all. Both asked for my advice, and I recommended VTI. One day when they were 10 or early 11, they came home from school and told me they wanted to buy some bitcoin, so we did. So they are 90% VTI, and 10% FBTC. I like that the kids in 5th and 6th grade were talking about investing, even if it was BTC. |
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I think you should look for an investment vehicle that lets them easily buy the 500 or so biggest, best, and most profitable companies in the world and rebalances itself with new, outstanding companies each year. Go look up an S&P 500 performance chart and zoom it out until your birth. Then calculate how much a $5000 investment made then would be worth today.https://www.ar15.com/forums/manageReply.html?b=1&f=133&t=2827010&tl=recommended-investments-for-custodial-accounts&r=115606926&page=1# |
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Originally Posted By Sujumanji: Go look up an S&P 500 performance chart and zoom it out until your birth. Then calculate how much a $5000 investment made then would be worth today. https://dqydj.com/sp-500-periodic-reinvestment-calculator-dividends/ A $5000 investment at my birth would be over 1.5 million dollars today, with an average annualized rate of return at 11.1%. |