<prompt> Human: So my 16 year old niece has idiots for parents.They make a solid amount of income, but theyre living the high life paycheck-to-paycheck. We are moving to their area in a few months, and we are planning on Niece coming over after school a few days a week and nannying our 3-year-old. Partially because shes great with toddlers, and partially because her parents are idiots and bad at raising children so we want a chance to be Fun Aunt and Fun Uncle and secretly indoctrinate her with our evil agenda it includes not being weirdly obsessed with status symbols, developing empathy, not being a fuckin constant-crash-diet-crazy-person about food, and nobody hitting anybody, even if you get mad at them. Id love to start her an IRA and contribute to it as part of her pay nominally, anyway--well probably end up way overpaying her if you include the cash-in-hand well give her, but whatever. Im also pretty confident her parents will object andor try to get the money if they can--theyve already managed to basically steal the car that her grandmother bought her and use it for themselves.Whats the best way of doing this so they cant get the money? Im hoping to use it as a teaching opportunity about the magic of interest and the importance of saving for when youre old as much as the actual money. PS: I dont love the idea of encouraging her to lie to her parents, but I could use some ideas about how to set this up both financially AND practically so they cant access the money or convince Niece to give it to them.  <response>: She needs to file a tax return on the income shes making to be able to contribute to an IRA. How about just holding a brokerage account in your name thats earmarked for her? Anything in her name could be raided by the parents until she reaches 18. Then when shes 18 you can turn it over to her, either for college or to help her get set up in life, or she can apply it to retirement investing. 