Early Life Investments
A Family Financial Head Start
“The best time to build lifelong money habits is when you are young. The second-best time is today.”
“The best time to build lifelong money habits is when you are young. The second-best time is today.”
For Teens & Parents — App Comparison
Two real brokerages for a 13-year-old, and two apps that are not. Which comparison you need depends on the lesson your teen needs next.
On This Page
Fidelity and Schwab teach investing, and both are free. Acorns Early automates saving. Greenlight teaches spending. Pick by the lesson your teen needs next — not by the app store rating.
| Fidelity Youth | Schwab Teen Investor | Acorns Early | Greenlight | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | FREE — no fees, no minimums | FREE — no subscription, no maintenance fee, no minimum deposit | $12/mo on Acorns Gold, which is the plan that includes Early Invest; the debit-card app alone sits on a cheaper tier | From $5.99/family (up to 5 kids); higher tiers to $19.98 |
| Ages | 13–17 | 13–17 | Any age | Any age |
| Who owns it | The teen — their own brokerage account | Joint — teen and parent are both owners | Parent-managed; Early Invest is a UTMA/UGMA held for the child | Parent-managed debit account |
| Investing | Stocks, ETFs, fractional shares — teen-directed | Stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, fractional shares from $5. No options, margin, or futures | Automated round-ups into diversified portfolios; 1% match on Early Invest deposits | Parent-approved trades, on the higher tiers |
| Parent visibility | Monitoring and alerts; parent must hold their own Fidelity account | Full authority as joint owner — trade alerts, controls the debit card, can close the account | Full control | Full controls and real-time alerts |
| Best for | Teens ready to invest and own the decisions | Families who want the teen investing with a parent on the account | Hands-off families who want automation | Allowance, chores, spending controls, ages 8–14 |
Pricing and features captured 31 July 2026 from each provider’s own site.[1][2][3][4] All four change plan names, tiers, and prices regularly — Acorns restructured its subscriptions and Greenlight has renamed tiers more than once — so confirm current terms directly with the provider before you open anything. Early Life Investments has no affiliation with, and receives no compensation from, any company on this page.
The Fidelity Youth Account is the one that actually changes a teenager’s trajectory: a no-fee, no-minimum brokerage account the teen owns at 13–17, with fractional-share trading, a free debit card, and parent monitoring (a parent must have their own Fidelity account).[2] It is not a custodial account — the teen makes the decisions, which is exactly the point: real ownership, real stakes, small dollars. This is the account we compare in depth against custodial alternatives in our teen accounts comparison. One caution: it is a spending card too, so set the expectations about invest-versus-spend before the card arrives.
ELI Suggestion: A Fidelity account is where you will be setting up your child’s life-long link to building wealth. The custodial IRA or UTMA account you set up at Fidelity will directly pass to their account when they turn the age of majority in your state (usually 18 yrs). The Teen application is built to be user friendly for your child, providing them a direct link to investment research and learning tools. Everything passes with them and it will become what is familiar to them as they grow, allowing them to gain confidence in how to invest for their future.
Schwab’s answer to the Fidelity Youth Account arrived in March 2026, and it is close to Fidelity on nearly everything that matters: no subscription fee, no maintenance fee, no minimum deposit, commission-free online stock and ETF trades, fractional shares from $5, and a debit card only a parent can turn on or cancel.[4] Same age window, 13 to 17. Same premise — put a real brokerage in a teenager’s hands and let the stakes do the teaching.
The one real difference is ownership, and it cuts both ways. The Fidelity Youth Account belongs to the teen alone. The Schwab Teen Investor account is a joint account: the teen invests and moves money, but the parent is a full co-owner with visibility into every transaction, alerts on trades and transfers, control of the debit card, and the ability to close the account. Schwab also fences off the instruments that ruin beginners — no options, no margin, no futures, no leveraged or inverse ETFs, no over-the-counter stocks.
Which is better depends entirely on the teenager in front of you. Sole ownership teaches faster, because the consequences are undiluted and nobody is standing between the decision and the result. A joint account teaches more safely — and for a thirteen-year-old, or for a parent who would otherwise open nothing at all, the safer account is the one that actually gets opened.
Two practical notes. At 18 the teen can open a full individual brokerage account and move the assets across; the joint account can also stay open until 21, at which point it locks until the new terms are signed. And Schwab pays a $50 bonus — $10 each into the five largest S&P 500 stocks — for finishing its Quick Start to Stock Investing course within 45 days of opening. A small thing, but it makes the account’s first act learning rather than buying, which is the right order.
ELI Suggestion: Choose Schwab over Fidelity if you want your name on the account beside your child’s, or if your family already banks at Schwab and one login is what will make you actually keep up with it. The cost is the same, the investment options are close enough not to matter at this size, so decide on the ownership question and on where the rest of your money already lives. If what you want is for your teen to feel the full weight of the decisions being theirs, Fidelity is the stronger teacher. Either way you are far ahead of anyone paying a monthly subscription.
Acorns Early (which absorbed GoHenry) pairs a kids’ debit card with automated investing — round-ups, recurring deposits, and a 1% match on Early Invest contributions under the Gold plan.[3] Early Invest is the investing half of the product: a UTMA/UGMA custodial account opened for the child and run on the same automated portfolios as the adult accounts. Acorns adds 1% of what you deposit, up to $7,000 a year per child — but the match has strings: the money has to stay put for four years (or until the child reaches the transfer age), and Acorns can claw the match back if you withdraw early or drop to a cheaper plan. It is the best fit for families who know themselves: if the honest answer is “we will never manually move money,” automation beats intention. The trade-off is the least hands-on learning of the four — the robot does the investing, so the teen watches rather than decides.
ELI Suggestion: Acorns is a way in for parents who are hesitant to give their child direct access to a brokerage, or who do not feel they have much investment knowledge of their own yet. Fidelity or Schwab are still the better option for long-term wealth generation, and they are free. What Acorns buys you is the ability to start putting tools in front of your child at a younger age while you develop your own financial skills before bringing them into the fold.
Greenlight is a debit card and money app built around parental controls: automated allowance, chore lists, store-level spending limits, and instant transfers. As a money management teacher for the 8–14 window it is excellent — it is the digital version of the three jars.
The trade-offs: it costs $72–$240 a year depending on tier, and investing sits behind the higher-priced plans with the parent approving every trade. Nothing wrong with that — but understand you are paying a subscription mostly for spending controls, not for wealth-building.[1]
ELI Suggestion: Use Greenlight when you need help pushing money and chores away from the parent a little. It helps your teenager identify what they can do to receive more money, and the parent does not need to keep inventing new tasks since you can define and price them up front. Be aware that if your teen stops using it, you should cancel the subscription and move to another approach. Do not use Greenlight as a way to build wealth for your child — transfer any large savings balance to an account that is free and capable of holding a broad set of investments.
The app is the wrapper; the habit is the product. Whichever you pick, the sequence that matters is the one in Money Lessons by Age: visible money, then earned money, then invested money. An app that automates all three teaches none of them — so keep your teen’s hands on the controls, whatever logo is on the card.