Bank accounts for kids as young as five, six can help build financial skills: experts

Personal finance experts say opening a bank account with your children — starting when they’re as young as five — can help them develop money management skills.

Children develop on different timelines, so experts say that choosing the right time to open a bank account depends more on a child’s temperament than their age.

But regardless of when your child gets access to a bank account, parents should look for ways to make the experience tangible, because managing money is increasingly a digital endeavour than in years prior.

Chris Merrick, principal at Merrick Financial Inc., said he thinks parents should start considering opening an account for their child between the ages of five and nine, “because the kids understand the basic math and the trade-offs.”

However, the appropriate age for each step may vary.

“I really feel it’s the temperament of the child, how much work you put into it, and if they’re going to blow it all, well then you’ve got to control it more,” Merrick said.

But missteps can also be a learning experience.

“It’s also good to have them make the mistakes when they’re young,” he said.

Merrick said there are other considerations for parents looking to open an account for their child, like how much autonomy they want to give their kids. For oversight, he recommends having accounts with joint access for younger kids, but parents should also be cautious of hovering too much over their child’s account.

Additionally, Merrick said parents should consider fees regarding Interac e-transfers.

“The young kids are all digital, so you want one with zero fees,” he said.

He noted that the practice of opening an account for children is not that common.

“The family has to be fairly affluent to do that, because generally it’s only when the mortgage is paid down or off, the parents’ TFSA (or) RRSPs are maxed, and they’ve got extra non-registered money which will be taxable to the parents,” Merrick said.

What is more common, he said, is parents giving smaller sums of money to their kids for a piggy bank.

Fred Masters, president of Masters Money Management Inc., said kids may be more ready than some parents realize.

“It’s quite important to realize that there’s been some progress on the financial literacy education front in Canada in recent years, and that younger kids are clearly being exposed to personal finance now, really across the entire country, beginning as early as Grade 1,” he said.

Masters said bank accounts for children are less about the amount of money in the account and more about “actually starting it” to build saving habits earlier in life.

“If you really drill down, kids don’t need a bank account when they’re in elementary school. They just don’t. What you’re trying to do is naturally introduce them to having a bank account and to saving, that’s really the goal,” he said.

Another important reason to open an account for a child, Merrick said, is that today’s bank accounts are all digital.

“Money has become invisible. In my day … you go to the restaurant, the parents pay cash, and you can visualize it. Now, when you go to the restaurant, you just tap your phone or the card,” he said.

“The kids, they don’t think it’s free; it’s just not like it used to be, where they could visualize the payment, so it gets them to think about that.”

Kelley Keehn, CEO of Money Wise Institute, said that a first bank account is a great opportunity for parents to have financial conversations with their kids. However, she said some parents may feel a little bit nervous talking about money with their children due to their own potential insecurities about finances.

Overall, she said she recommends that parents also take steps to materialize digital bank accounts for their children.

“I know it’s a lot of effort for parents, but I really encourage them at least a couple of times a year to sit down with cash and use cash when you can … just to teach a little tangibility to your kids of what money actually is,” she said.

Additionally, Keehn said parents should be careful not to frame it as a punishment for their kids, where they see their money go into an account that they can’t spend.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2026.