When I was a teenager, my father had a deal with IRA contributions that I thought was a good idea. He offered to double whatever I put in. So if I put in $500, he kicked in another $500 and we put it into an IRA. I still have that IRA today, although it's no longer in the Janus 20 fund like it was when I was a teen. It taught me not only about saving and investing for retirement, but also the perils of a stock market bubble. It flew high in the late 90's and then crashed to earth in the dot-com crash.