Considering the fact that the commenter's father lost or wasted all of it, he'd have probably been better had it sat in a checking account for the intervening years. Or under a mattress in wadded up dollar bills. Even if you're completely clueless about investing and you just walk into your bank and ask to talk to someone about what to do with it, you'd still come out ahead even if they push you towards mutual funds with excessive fees. Pretty much anything would have been better.
I'm not a parent, but I have trouble imagining how I'd ever feel comfortable directly managing my (hypothetical) kid's earnings like that. It just seems like, no matter what you do, you're creating a dynamic that could undermine or outright destroy your relationship. Especially if some of those investments go poorly.
I was raised to believe that the entire reason I existed was to take care of my parents. Pops really didn't have a division between "his property" and "my property."
One of the last things he did was sell me the land I'd built my house on. With a personal loan from one of his banker buddies with a 25% APR.
The moral, if you want one, is that if you're going to "protect" your kid "for their own good" instead of letting them have a say in it than you damn well better not fuck up.
A 17 year old who screws up can learn some lessons. A 17 year old who was screwed by their father? Less so.
Not sure if they wouldn't. The sort of companies 17yr's hear about and are excited about in the past 20 years have all done extremely well. Perhaps that's a quirk of the past 20 years, but I wouldn't dismiss 17yr olds investment strategies out of hand.
They would do a lot better than what sounds like shady angel investments and sports team sponsorships.
To be fair, 20 years ago low cost index funds were much less common and knowledge of them was also not as widespread. But bond is always a good option.
is the morale here that nobody should have "invested" it anywhere?