The young man at left appears to be studying for a test. In reality, he is considering which mutual fund should be entrusted with his Roth IRA. Which would probably explain why he's in summer school.

I kid the kid, but the kid and others like him might be wise (or their parents might be, you know full well they're not going to do it themselves) to set up a Roth IRA now. It'll start building the retirement nest egg, but here are two things I didn't know that make it even more compelling, courtesy of Newsweek:

• Kids can withdraw their initial contributions at any time, tax free, to pay for college.


• After just 5 years, they can use up to $10,000 of the earnings to make a down payment on a house.

Not all mutual funds allow minors to set up Roth IRAs, but there are enough that do (Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, others) that you won't have trouble picking something good.

Luckily, most kids today are so totally thinking about retirement and don't have any interest in pimping their rides or sending 1000s of text messages via their cell phones, so getting them started with a Roth should be a piece of cake.