There's an awful lot of negativity here, but as someone who's 55 and has earned a good wage since I was 17, I really wish I had taken investing more seriously from the very beginning. While I knew of compound interest, I really didn't understand it until like a decade ago. If I'd started putting 5% of my money into a target retirement plan from 17, I'd be retired now. As it is I'm not doing badly, but I really wish I'd started earlier.

So I say: Good on you.

Somewhat related: I just got my son set up with a custodial account and put his "kid retirement" plan into it, and let him pick a couple stocks to put some money into, and put the majority of it into target retirement and a few stocks and EFTs, so he can get some ideas of how they perform, make it a little fun with picking things he's into, and also follow ups and downs of the market, all of which I think is good education.

Investing for retirement at 17 is a bad idea! At 17 you should still be thinking about investing in education - the right education investment today will pay back far more than any other monitory investment. There are of course bad education investments, and some are not willing to study even more (or not able to pass a good education course), in that case retirement might be the best investment you can make, but it should not be your first choice.

A different reply said they waited until 26 to start - that is probably about the right time to start saving for retirement. Maybe a little late, but close enough. Before about that age you are still getting started and so you have little spare cash. You need to pay off school loans (if you took any). You need to save for down payment on a house, and buy a lot of those will last a lifetime household items everyone needs. You should be thinking about marriage and saving for it (even if you don't get legally married most people will live with someone else and should be planning on how to make that life work).

Most important: you don't know how long you will live. Save for the future, but not everything - you have no guarantee you will live to tomorrow - if you are under 60 odds are strongly in favor of it, but people die young all the time. You should have a little play money as well in your budget. Go climb Mt Fuji while your body is young and healthy enough to do so (I picked a random activity here, you should decide what you care about, not rush to Japan)

Sometimes I feel like I started investing late at 26. Already, six years into the best decade for compounding in your life. But such was the power of compounding that I had reached a substantial net worth by age 35. So even just nine years can make such a tremendous difference even into later ages. It's never too late to sock money away.

I started my daughter investing with a custodial account at 13. She put a few hundred dollars of her money in and I convinced her by matching her investment and told her if the amount ever went below the original investment I would backstop any loss.

Investing is all about that long term gain and slow growth. Having 10 years of experience after finishing college will do so much more than Robinhood for refrigerators.

You say that now but as a young person with a decent income and no family or many responsibilities it's hard to even know where to start.

And I'm not even talking about what to invest in, I'm already confused at which platform/bank/whatever to do it through. The "meta", if you will. I just want to invest the 70% of my salary I don't need every month and not think about it for 40 years but how? Maybe an important detail, I'm from Switzerland, perhaps it's easier in the US with things like Vanguard.

Same. But is same for most people. Average American retirement savings is like $200k. I've done better that that but not by orders of magnitude.

About six years ago I was hired to make an investment simulator. I wish someone had show the results to me when I was a teen. I did show it to my daughter at the time (she was in college), and used it to explain the power of compounding interest.

I found they still an old preview online (sorry not https)

http://simulators.gibsoncapital.com/new-preview-for-total-si...

That's why you shouldn't leave it up to a kid with very little money who quite literally cannot understand the long term impacts of their decisions to invest or not. Instead, put aside something for them. You can even start well before they are 17.

> There's an awful lot of negativity here, but as someone who's 55 and has earned a good wage since I was 17, I really wish I had taken investing more seriously from the very beginning. While I knew of compound interest, I really didn't understand it until like a decade ago. If I'd started putting 5% of my money into a target retirement plan from 17, I'd be retired now. As it is I'm not doing badly, but I really wish I'd started earlier.

I'm 55, too. If I'd started studying HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and Rust at 17, I'd be retired now. Waitaminnit....

Sarcasm aside, target retirement plans wouldn't come along for decades. Investing was very, very different when we were 17. And many of the people who were 55 when we were 17 had just lost a terrifying amount of their life's savings in a stock market crash that made Taleb rich because he'd bet against the market.

It seems extraordinarily unlikely that a 17-year-old today should do exactly what we wish we could have done when we were 17. About the best they can do is follow advice that's now centuries old: make friends, learn skills, live below their means, and, maybe, earn credentials.

Thanks for your encouragement!. I started investing in my mid-30s, and compound interest really works wonders after a while. I hope my kids do better than me, though.

Please share https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started with your son.

> and let him pick a couple stocks to put some money into

And yet we complain that corps today are too focused on their market valuation over everything else; customer experience, longevity, worker conditions, R&D are all being neglected in order to make the needle go up.

'Investing' in stocks in order to flip them when the price goes up is feeding this insanity. Teaching kids that this is perfectly rational seems selfish and short-sighted.

Our children should be encouraged to invest into something like bonds which actually help promote economic growth.

Actively invested retirement funds throughout 30+ years can also catch more concentrated moves if you are educated on a sector. For example, choosing the mag7 in the early 2010s vs just the SPY. Following the market could also let you pull out during serious world events.

There is definitely money left on the table when you ignore the market, even in a retirement fund.

And be the richest man in the cemetery?

Retirement is not mentioned in the post