Key Takeaways:
A high school junior in Queens learned personal finance from YouTube videos and board games — then became his immigrant parents' de facto financial adviser.
Dave Lee turned 17 in May with $26,000 in a brokerage account and a role he never applied for: his family's financial adviser, managing investments for parents who immigrated from Korea with little English. The soon-to-be high school senior in New York helps his mother and father navigate everything from auto loans to retirement planning.
"A lot of my interest in finance really comes from watching how hard my parents worked and wanting to make sure the sacrifices they made weren't wasted," Lee said.
Lee helped his mother open her first brokerage account with about $500, teaching her dollar-cost averaging into an S&P 500 ETF and technology stocks including Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia. That portfolio has grown to $10,000. He also negotiated a car loan rate down to about 4% from an initial 7% offer when he was still in middle school, after checking average rates on his phone during the dealership visit.
Lee is part of a growing cohort of teenagers who are flipping the traditional parent-child financial dynamic — driven by state-mandated personal finance courses, social media investing content, and in immigrant households, the necessity of children translating bills and managing household finances from an early age. More than half of U.S. states now require a personal finance course for high school graduation, up from fewer than 10 a decade ago, according to Next Gen Personal Finance.
From board games to brokerage accounts
Lee's interest in finance began in middle school after his older sister, Annabel, introduced him to "Rich Dad Poor Dad," the personal finance book by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. She also got him to play a board game by Kiyosaki in which players build income to achieve financial goals. He then taught himself through YouTube videos breaking down credit cards, mortgages and investing.
His sister opened a custodial brokerage account for him at Charles Schwab, and he started investing money earned working at his parents' restaurant, Sambak Sambabjip, in Flushing, Queens. He would check the account daily and follow news on the technology companies he owned.
"I became obsessed with investing and the stock market," he said.
This past school year, Lee earned a spot on his high school's personal finance team at Francis Lewis High School in Queens. The four-person squad won the New York state championship in the National Personal Finance Challenge and placed third nationally. Christopher Power, the team's coach and a teacher at the school, said students like Lee are increasingly able to have higher-level financial conversations with their families.
"They're able to have higher-level financial conversations with their parents and with their families, and they can actually assist in decision-making," Power said.
The limits of being a teen adviser
Lee's mother, Mi Jeong Yoon, 55, was initially skeptical about investing, viewing it as similar to gambling. She now has $10,000 invested with her son's guidance but remains wary of opening a Roth IRA — a frustration for Lee, who wants his parents to save more aggressively for retirement.
"The ultimate goal is to help my parents retire," he said.
Lee now works a summer job at a local bakery making $18 an hour and plans to invest his earnings, aiming to save $10,000 by the end of the summer. He also set aside money to help his parents with a down payment on a new family car. His longer-term goal is to save enough to attend an out-of-state college without needing to work part time while in school.
"My goal is just to aggressively save," he said.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
