• Nicole Chan Loeb is a 38-year-old photographer, videographer, and a mother-of-two.
• She and her husband prioritize experiences over gifts, so they invest for their kids in lieu of toys.
• They want to teach their children financial literacy and set them up for a secure financial future.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicole Chan Loeb, a photographer and videographer from Boston. It's been edited for length and clarity.

My kids are 1.5 and 4 years old, and I've never bought them any physical presents for birthdays and holidays.

For birthdays, I'll make a cake, and instead of buying toys and clothing, I invest money for them to set them up for a more secure financial future. Plastic toys and knickknacks are temporary fun, but they cause clutter and landfill waste.

My mom taught me about stocks when I was growing up

Growing up, my mom used to tell me about the stocks or funds she invested in for me. Every week, we'd take the figures in the newspaper, chart them on graph paper, and stick them on the fridge. We mostly invested in mutual funds. That was fun, and I especially loved the special time my mom and I spent together. I similarly want to teach my kids financial responsibility and literacy.

My husband and I met in college in 2004. We both worked in the finance and accounting industry — I was in management consulting, and he was in internal audits — before deciding it wasn't for us. I quit in 2010, and he quit shortly afterward, and we both became entrepreneurs. I'm a photographer and videographer, and he owns an escape room company.

It was a considerable risk and I was absolutely terrified. But since my parents taught me financial literacy, I've learned how to save to be comfortable no matter what. Plus, the flexibility and fulfillment this lifestyle provides is very worth it.

We gift our kids investments instead of physical gifts

My husband and I don't exchange gifts in general. If we want something, we'll just purchase it for ourselves — after all, our money is pooled — so I find gift-giving challenging. Instead, we share and enjoy dinners, experiences, shows, and vacations. We give each other cards — it's more about the sentiment.

This year, my husband and I maxed out our kids' custodial Roth IRAs and deposited $7,000 each. My kids have been models for children's clothing lines, toy companies, and hospitality campaigns in my work as a commercial and advertising photographer, so the money is considered their earned income.

We decided to start investing for the kids last year because, from conversations with friends, we realized that we all wished topics like taxes, saving for retirement, and smart investing were taught in high school or earlier. We decided not to wait and agreed to start teaching these concepts as soon as our kids could grasp the basics.

Also, both my husband and I were lucky to leave school without a massive amount of debt because of our parents. These investments will allow our kids to graduate from college without an insurmountable amount of debt.

We're focused on Roth IRAs for now, but we plan to open investment accounts for them within the following year. If they don't have earned income in future years, we will set up a custodial brokerage account and invest for them that way. Because we both own our businesses, our salaries and incomes fluctuate, so we look at our finances each year and decide how much to invest.

Our kids are happy with spending time together

My kids are young, so the concept of expecting gifts has yet to solidify. And they don't really need anything. We're lucky to live in a great neighborhood where the parents pass on toys when their kids have outgrown them. I rarely purchase large toys or gifts, but I don't hold back from ad hoc purchases of crayons, markers, kids' card games, and board games.

Our children are happiest when we spend time together, doing things like lunch dates, playing board games, and baking. Happiness comes from experiences and relationships, and fewer material things promote creativity.

They spend a lot of time outside making up their own games, and we often play with things like sticks, stones, water, acorns, and pinecones. We want contented, balanced kids who aren't overwhelmed with things and toys and chasing the next new shiny object.

My husband and I find a lot of interest and joy in investments, and we hope our kids will as well. My four-year-old is very bright, and in the next year or so, he'll understand that you can put money in specific vehicles to grow, learning the concept of delayed gratification.

I'm hopeful that our kids will start making their own side income in high school and start to learn to invest for themselves as teenagers, just as I did while growing up.

If you have a unique way of teaching your children financial literacy and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• Brennan Schlagbaum and his wife became millionaires in 2022 after paying off debt and investing.
• They set up 529, brokerage, and Roth IRA accounts for each daughter, which they contribute to monthly.
• Their goal is to leave each daughter with over $1 million by the time they are 30.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brennan Schlagbaum, a 32-year-old CPA and founder of Budgetdog, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife and I reached our goal of becoming millionaires in 2022, after five years of paying off over $330,000 in debt — including our house, cars, engagement rings, and student loans — and investing our money, largely in index funds.

We have two daughters — Logan is 3 years old, and Ellie is 1 — and when each of them was born, we set up three accounts which we put money into each month. Assuming 8% interest, their accounts should leave them each with $1,000,000 by the time they're 30. Compound interest is honestly the eighth wonder of the world; time is money.

Our goal with our investments for our daughters is to position them for success and give them opportunities that we may not have had growing up.

I don't want my kids to have a scarcity mindset

My wife and I both grew up middle class. In 2008, my family lost our house and cars, and I saw my parents change mentally. We still had food on the table and access to education, but I could tell things were tight and I felt a sense of scarcity that has stuck with me.

I don't want my kids to feel that way about money. I grew up being told that if I did a chore, I'd make X dollars. Then, I'd have to put, say, $2 toward saving, $1 toward charity, and could have $2 for spending. It was a good lesson, but it also fed into my scarcity mindset.

I want my daughters to realize that value creation is more important than trading time for money — I learned this when I moved from my 9-to-5 at Deloitte to being an entrepreneur — so I try to get away from the hourly or shift work structure with them and think about how I can help them have an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset.

I want my kids to be trust fund babies who see money as a tool

I'm not of the belief that you should just hand your kids money. I think that creates what most people view as a "trust fund baby" who wastes their family's money, and that's not what I want.

But I do want a trust fund baby in a different way — in the sense that they understand the principles and responsibility that come with money and what they can do with it, treating it as a tool rather than as a god. How someone chooses to use money shows who they are as a person, so we feel that grounding our daughters' characters is essential. We think charity is really important, for example, and we want that to all be included in our daughters' understanding of money.

I think it's a really good idea for my kids to understand how much I make and how much we spend. They're young right now, so they don't understand the technical elements, but I think it's worth explaining things to them so they can adopt our culture around money.

If Logan came to me and said, "Hey, my friends are going to the park. Can I have 10 bucks?", I'd have a conversation with her about what she needs the money for and teach her not to spend it recklessly. I'd ask her to think about whether she values what she's spending it on.

Here are the three accounts we have for our daughters

We typically put a total of around $500 a month into each child's accounts and plan to increase our monthly contributions to $1,333 a month for each child when they turn 7 as we pay them more for helping with my business.

529 plan

The 529 plan is for their education. My wife and I want to contribute 60% of the cost of a four-year public in-state college and to have them take accountability and cover the other 40%, whether it be through scholarships, working, or other methods. Using Vanguard's college cost calculator, we decided to put $250 a month into each of the girls' 529 accounts.

But we also don't want them to get a college degree just because we saved up money for them. I went to college totally clueless because my parents told me to, and I don't want my children to repeat that same cycle. We want them to ask themselves, What do I want to get out of life?

Also, our older daughter was diagnosed with Dravet syndrome when she was five months old, so we don't know whether college will be on the table for her. Because of that, we decided to switch to putting all $500 a month into her brokerage account until we better understand what her future will look like.

Taxable brokerage account

The second type of account we have for both of our daughters is a taxable brokerage account. They're both in my wife's and my names, but we'll be able to give the money to our kids when the opportunities arise.

According to the IRS's gift tax law for 2025, we're allowed to gift up to $19,000 per spouse per kid without paying taxes, so we could technically give them each $38,000 a year from this investment account. Currently, we put $250 a month for Ellie and $500 for Logan. If they receive money from grandparents or family for holidays, I typically deposit that amount as a lump sum into their brokerage accounts as well.

We want to let the money that's being invested for them grow for quite some time, so they probably won't touch the brokerage account money until they're 22 and fully in the adult world.

Roth IRA

The Roth IRA is for retirement purposes and requires earned income. Our daughters are young and don't have much income, but I pay them for the photoshoots they do for my business. It's nothing crazy — maybe $200 to $400 a year. Logan has $1,200 in her Roth IRA at the age of three and Ellie has $200.

Many parents think, "Well, my kids are too young to work, and they don't have earned income, so we can't set up a Roth IRA for them." The only requirement is to have earned income, and there are a number of ways they can do so.

I'd rather give my kids now than wait until I die

I think it's silly to wait to give our kids money. If someone gets a big lump sum when their mom or dad passes away, they often look at it as this big gift, almost like winning the lottery. They often don't treat it as a tool and instead live on a yacht and party and do nothing.

Instead, I think it's better to give it to our kids now, so that we can teach them how to treat money and how saving and investing has given them opportunities.

If you'd like to share the steps you're taking to prepare for your children's financial futures, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• Andre Nader built a seven-figure portfolio by saving and investing in index funds.
• He leveraged his tech career and dual-income household to maximize savings and investments.
• One strategy he used to max out tax-advantaged accounts is known as 'a mega backdoor Roth'.

Andre Nader built a seven-figure portfolio before age 40 by following a few simple fundamentals: save a chunk of your income, invest it in low-cost index funds, and max out tax-advantaged accounts.

It helped that he worked in tech. He said he started with a modest $40,000 salary right after graduating, but eventually landed a high-paying job at Meta in 2014.

"I won the income game by being in tech, by being a dual-income household," Nader, whose wife is a designer at Uber, told Business Insider.

When he got laid off in 2023, he and his wife had enough between her tech income and their savings that he didn't have to find another job. Nader, who'd been writing about financial independence on his blog FAANG FIRE since 2021, now writes on Substack full-time and does one-on-one FIRE (financial independence, retire early) coaching.

As a high-earner who describes himself as "naturally frugal," Nader found himself with excess savings each month. When he was working full-time, he and his wife used one of their incomes for household expenses and saved the other.

He spent a lot of time thinking about, "How do I save this in the most efficient way possible?" he said. "And, for many in tech, it's going to be about taking advantage of those tax-advantaged accounts. Because when you're in those extremely high earning years, any amount that you can defer those taxes into the future is potentially extremely, extremely valuable."

One particular tax-advantaged account, a Roth IRA, offers major benefits, including tax-free growth — but there's an income limit that can prevent individuals like Nader from contributing directly to it. In 2024, single tax filers must make less than $146,000 to contribute to a Roth, and married couples filing jointly must make less than $230,000.

Nader has used a workaround known as a mega backdoor to sidestep the Roth IRA income limit, and he recommends all high-earners take advantage of it if they can.

Using a mega backdoor Roth to contribute up to $69,000 a year into his 401(k)

To understand how a mega backdoor Roth works, it's important to first understand how after-tax 401(k) contributions work. Some employers offer an after-tax 401(k) — Nader had access to one when he was at Meta, and his wife has one at Uber — which allows you to save more after you've maxed out your traditional 401(k).

In 2024, the annual contribution limit for a 401(k) is $23,000 for employee contributions; but the combined employee and employer contribution limit is $69,000. Say you max out your 401(k) and contribute $23,000, and your employer contributes $5,000 through the matching program, so you have $28,000 in your 401(k). Since the limit is $69,000, if your plan allows for after-tax contributions, you can put another $41,000 in after-tax dollars into the account.

In Nader's wife's case, Uber matches up to $8,000, so after maxing out her 401(k) in 2024, she'll make an additional $38,000 after-tax contribution ($69,000 - $23,000 - $8,000), he explained.

The catch is, while sitting in the after-tax state, any earnings you make on those contributions are taxable.

That's where the mega backdoor Roth comes into play. It allows you to shift after-tax 401(k) contributions to a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k), where it can grow tax-free. Not all 401(k) plans allow this conversion and you'll want to understand your plan, including its restrictions, before making any after-tax contributions.

In Nader's experience, executing the mega backdoor Roth when he was working at Meta was quick and easy. He logged into Fidelity NetBenefits (his 401(k) provider) and elected the percentage of his after-tax earnings he wanted to contribute. Then, he was able to do an in-plan conversion and selected the option to "convert after-tax contributions."

"Every single time I post about it on LinkedIn, someone doesn't know that they had this benefit," said Nader, who has nearly 25,000 LinkedIn followers and specifically writes for FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) employees looking to achieve financial independence. "This extra $30,000, effectively, can end up in a Roth 401(k) — and that's a super powerful type of account."

He recognizes that not everyone has access to this strategy, nor has the funds to save $69,000 a year in a 401(k). But if you're a high-earner who would be saving that money anyway and your plan allows a mega backdoor Roth, "it's really valuable for them to be aware that exists."