17-Year-Old Yells at Dad For Investing $5K of His Savings Without His Knowledge, Yielding Only $50 in Interest

Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor

Jun 16, 2026 12:30 PM EDT

He shouldn't have done that without asking his son first.

When you're a teenager, you don't really need to be investing your money. During that phase of life, you should be more focused on having the money that you need to accomplish more short-term goals. You might want to save up to buy yourself a car. You might have to pay for your college tuition or books. You might just want enough money to go to the movies with your friends without asking your parents to pay. Once you have enough money to cover your educational and transportation costs, you can start saving for an emergency fund in cash, not investments. Once you have enough money to cover 3-6 months of expenses, you can start investing some of your money.

If you put your savings into investments without having any cash, you might end up with nothing if your investments go haywire. We never know when another 2008 is going to happen, so it's best to have a little bit of cash to buffer in case your investments are down for a couple of years, so you don't have to cash them out and lose the money permanently. Investing is a long game, and you shouldn't invest any money that you're planning on spending in the next couple of years. You shouldn't put money saved for a car, a wedding, or a down payment on a house into the stock market unless you're okay with losing it in the short term.

The dad in this story decided to invest his son's savings against his son's will, which was not only dishonest but also totally unhelpful in the long term. The money has only made about $50 in interest, and his son let him know that he was extremely angry about what his father did.