I just stumbled found this forum and saw this thread.
Both of my son's established Roth IRA's when they were 16. The older one is now 21 and the younger one turns 18 in a month. Our deal is that I will match the amount they save in their regular account, and I will deposit my match into their Roth's. Every year they exceeded the Roth max, so I had been putting in $5,500, and this year I put in $6,000.
We regularly talk about about the power of compounded growth, the importance of saving, and investment strategy. I think the older boy's Roth is nearing $25K and the younger one's is at almost $15K.
But, what's really cool is that they each manager their own brokerage accounts. They save nearly every cent they make and they invest in companies that they 'know'. They each work as IT techs during school breaks, so that means they buy mainly tech stocks. Last Wed they each were extremely excited to see some huge gains. The older boy yelled out 'hey, I made $1,700 today without even working', and the younger one then checked his account and saw he made over $700 : - )
The older one is on track to have over $100k when he graduates, and I think the younger one will do even better than that.
I know that a lot of people disagree with just giving kids money, but they're going to get a huge hunk when I kick the bucket, so I'd prefer to have some of that in their retirement accounts, growing tax free.