Let's open up my unborn baby's first investing account!

Let's open up my unborn baby's first investing account! Let me walk you through what I'm gonna do. Both of my daughters already have a 529 account through New York's 529 College Savings Program. For the sake of keeping it simple, I'm just gonna open it up through them. But please do your research before you decide on a 529 account. It could be that the state you live in offers some kind of tax incentive. The state of Texas where I live doesn't, which is why I have a New York account instead of a Texas account. I'm going to log into the account. You can see both of my kids' accounts there. We're gonna go down to enroll. Who are you saving for? Because she doesn't have a Social Security number yet. Account opening requires the social security number of the beneficiary, so you can do one of two things: Start saving now by opening the account naming yourself as beneficiary. When the beneficiary's SSN is available you can open an account for the beneficiary and transfer your balance. Remember to come back when a SSN has been issued. Continue. Important Legal Information. My child, My grandchild, A niece/nephew, Myself, Someone else. So I'm gonna open it for myself. All my info. And now it's saying, How would you like to contribute to this account? I already have everything set up from my other kids. But obviously if you don't yet, then you just add whatever checking account you want the money to come from. Now I'm curious to see what the lowest amount I can contribute as my first contribution. Let's see if it'll let me do $5. It looks like it does! So if you have $5 to start your kid's 529 account, do it. One of the perks of a 529 account is the fact that you can roll it over to a Roth IRA up to $35,000. One of the requirements is that the account has to have been open for 15 years. So even if you feel like you can't contribute much at the beginning, at least you got the account open and that 15-year clock started. The next part is, would you like to contribute to Lizbet's account on a regular basis? I can put not right now. Then the next option is, how would you like to invest? Either a target enrollment portfolio or build your own. I would say do the target enrollment portfolio and once you familiarize yourself more with investments, you can always go back and readjust. So for year of enrollment portfolio, it's asking you, how long from now will you need the money? If we're basing it off my baby being born in 2026 and we need that money, say 18 years from now. Blame it on pregnancy brain, but we're just gonna use a calculator. That would be for 2044. So we can do that. Confirm portfolio selection. Method of document, all electronic. That's fine with me. And open account. The account itself was probably opened in five minutes or less. I think the hardest part is going to be actually choosing your investments. Start with a target date fund. And then do further research to see what options they have. And see if you wanna change it to different investments. The point is to get the account open to get that 15-year clock started. And remember that your investments come first! If you're not investing for yourself, for retirement, then we need to hold off a little bit until you get yourself situated first, and then move on to your kids. I definitely didn't open my first two daughters' accounts until they were a little bit older. But now we're in a much better financial position to be able to open up her account a lot sooner.