At the age of 15 you should be using a TFSA as you won't have much RRSP room, or income to deduct.

Anything helps, yet $100/mn would be a great start. Your challenge would be what to invest in as you'd want something with low fees so it doesn't eat away what little you have.

My friend started investing early in RRSPs yet then banks were taking yearly fees on investment management, so she was losing $50/yr. For a few years she didn't contribute or manage her investments, only to find out later he balance has actually declined due to all the fees.

By then its too late as most people have been taking on too much mortgage leaving no extra $$$ for retirement savings.

I started saving for retirement when I was 22yo and saved aggressively. At 30yo I had enough saved for retirement that if I didn't save another penny (ie have kids, buy a house, ... things that suck your bank account dry for 20 years) I'd still have enough to get by in retirement.

Pretty sure you must be 19 before you start accumulating room for TFSA but I could be wrong.

It's actually 18, you can start accumulating and open a TFSA at 18.

The catch here however in BC, the age of majority is 19, so any document signed by a 18 year old as a minor is not a valid contract to open an account. The parents or guardian and minor will need to sign a declaration and indemnity form to open a TFSA or RSP for a minor child.

Hell I worried about that + my future kid's college tuition when I was 21.

A lot of the replies here stated the right answers. A lot of the young adults buy things they "want" additional to the things they "need".

Not only that, spending wisely. You really want that pair of jeans, wait for the damn sale, or go black friday /boxing day shopping.

As for me, I save to invest. Whether pouring money to your business, stocks & options, real estate, whatever that will make you money. Then use residual money from these ventures to buy your houses, cars etc.

I'm no financial planner but I know young people are stupid with their money.
All young teens want xbox, ps3, clothes, cars and I'm the same except for one thing. I make sure to save and make sound investments. I've made a substantial amount from just doing research and now running online business ventures. I make sure to save and even my favorite tv show is till debt do us part. The good thing is I'll never have to worry about going broke. I could retire now if I really wanted to but probably not practical. I drive a E63AMG and live downtown coal harbor high rise condo. Heck I just went to commuiinity college and don't have any fancy degree. Got bankrolled from parents to start small business and have been steadily building my career. I never spend things that I can't afford or on dumb frivalous shit. Probabably will take a vacation to mexico in a couple weeks to get away from this shitty weather. Its all how much you want it and you have to have some street smarts too.

I've been pretty stupid with my money ever since I got out of high school. I used to be really good though back when I had my first job (I was 15. I'm 20 right now). I saved a lot and my only expense was for my WoW subscription and the odd time I'd want to go eat outside. Bought my first DSLR with the money I had saved and started doing photography which I ended up loving and I still do it. The rest of the money went into a GIC. I only worked during summer so I had to make enough to last me until the next summer. I then bought a Macbook to use for gr12 and university and I still had some money left over.

But in gr12 my lifestyle started to change. I didn't really play as much video games anymore and I started dating my girlfriend. I had someone to go out with and now I was going out a lot more than I used to and I spent a lot more as opposed to not going out at all. I started to become more social and started to hang out with a lot more people and spent a lot of time with the gf.

This continued for the next few years while I was going to BCIT. I only worked 1-2 shifts a week at minimum wage so I ended up making around 100-200 per paycheck. I started to view it as "throw away" money. As in, it's only so little that it won't really matter since once I started working full time in the summer it would cover for it. Really bad mentality. This resulted in me going paycheck to paycheck all the time 200 in the bank then 0 in the next few days. Also got my first car during this time so I was paying for gas too now. I also got a credit card which wasn't the best decision ever. It was a pretty bad cycle, spend money, max credit card, pay credit card, spent the same amount I just paid.

I thought I was fine with the way I was living until recently. I started my career a few months ago and have been working full time with decent pay. I also had to start taking on a few more responsibilities and need to work on budgeting my money more. I took on a loan for a new car (have to travel about 60km a day and my old car was giving out) and now I'm making monthly payments and also paying for insurance and gas. I look back and think about all that money I spent as "throw away" buying new gadgets, food, clothes that I didn't really need and I would've been able to put down a decent down payment for the car and would've been paying less or even putting that into a bigger investment. The car's supposed to be paid off in 4 years but I'm looking at getting that all paid of by the end of this year.

I'm also finally really close to paying off my credit card and I haven't been spending the way I used to anymore. I've been trying to put my money into a savings account that I opened.

Looking into getting an RRSP now and started using Mint to help me budget my money a little bit.

Bitch please, you dropped out of SFU, and live in your parent's basement.

Props! Like many others, I've started making contributions to my RRSP since I was 16. Why? You can use it for LIRA (life-long learning) and First time home buyers as mentioned multiple times. So far, I've already depleted the latter, and will be exercising the former to pay for grad school. I have zero tolerance for risk, so I've always held the $ in 5 year RRSP-GICs.

(ING Direct has been pretty generous with their 5year rates up until 2008 when the market imploded).

Also, I like to set quarterly milestones for my savings; if I achieve my desired savings target, then I get to splurge a little (I end up combining them for one major trip every year).

Live within your means dont be ashamed by those means and learn to say "I can afford that" and problems solved. Then you can work on getting ahead and building a future.
Secondly you dont need credit to get by. I own a couple late model cars and run my own business all without resorting to credit

Haha. Good joke.
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Hyde: Lower Mainland edition right here...

:troll: