5 Ways 8 Year Old Mini Makes Her Own $

IRS is pretty strict about what you can pay your kids for. In a tax audit, paying an 8 year old 10k a year may seem hard to justify. But I think I have a case with my 8 year old Mini Wise Money (MWM).

Moneywise, it makes sense to pay Mini 10k, deduct her pay from Dr. Wise Money LLC business income, let MWM file and pay her own taxes, and then fund her own Roth IRA. Not only is MWM’s 10k AGI tax rate way lower than mine and that of DWM LLC, but also it is likely the lowest tax bracket MWM will ever enjoy going forward. Both Mini’s income and the tax rate are bound as she gets older.

As many of you know, MWM is a gifted artist. Here’s a piece of oil-painting she completed in 9 hours, over 3 Sundays as a 4 year old. Her art teacher, taught a group of 15 5-13 year old, MWM got in the group class because I convinced the teacher she was a very well behaved 4 year old.

Her art teacher loved MWM so much that when I went on residency interview trail, she offered to take MWM off of her dad’s hand. She joked she would adopt MWM if she could.

Many people have offered to purchase MWM’s artwork, but parents, grandparents are not willing to part with MWM’s original art pieces. Hence MWM has only sold replica so far, but she has sold one original sculpture to my company DWM LLC at $300, and that’s with a generous discount.

MWM has generously displayed her artwork in galleries on drwisemoney.com. So for that, she’s getting compensated for $1500/year. Additionally, you noticed her pictures throughout many of my blog posts and even published on Physicians’ Money Digest. For her modeling work, she gets $1500/year flat fee.

We recently moved into our dream home (the second home I purchased in 2 years). We kept the first home in our family and got this dream home for MWM, my parents, and myself. As soon as the seller signed our purchase contract, MWM started planning parties and summer camps.

I was going to hire a professional party planner for MWM’s 9^th birthday, but to my great surprise, Mini rose up to the occasion with quality-work that beats the professional I was going to hire. The tear-jerking party invitation letter (essay) and the party schedule (planned down the minute) certainly would have taken me more than 4 hours to produce (which is worth $388/hr x 4 to me.)

So MWM deservedly earned herself $1500 orchestrating her own 9^th year old birthday party. See below for her party invitation letter, and the party schedule. I would definitely hire MWM for future company parties and events. Since at this party, we will be entertaining  & feeding business associates and conducting business meetings for DWM LLC, we can definitely justify paying MWM from the DWM LLC. So it’s definitely wonderful that I am not paying as person, but my company DWM LLC is paying Mini. When I pay Mini, it’s post-tax dollars. When DWM LLC pays mini or me, it’s pre-tax money.

Back to MWM’s talent and hobby in art. She is designing and making our DWM LLC company uniform. The art supply and raw materials would be deducted from DMW LLC. Furthermore, MWM makes $500 for her creative design of the company T shirts. Then she gets $30/shirt purchased. I’m buying 40 shirts for business associates and volunteers. She made another $1200 here. We’re now at $6500.

Do you notice how many posts/articles I write are about MWM? She’s my think tank and creative juice. For every post she helps me generate, I started paying her $50 on 1/1/2016. Then I realized MWM was involved in so many posts that it was getting expensive, so we negotiated a fair deal after we discussed DWM LLC’s balance sheet.

Mini gets $2500 flat fee for the year of 2016 regardless of how many posts she help me generate. It’s already saving me money, as I have written more than 50 articles inspired by her this year, not counting all the other ones from prior year when MWM worked for free. $9,000.

While I can’t exactly justify Mini’s equestrian lessons as DWM LLC company expenses, I could certainly justify her art lessons as furthering employee education. Since she directly benefits DWM LLC with her digital art gallery contribution on drwisemoney.com, time she spends on improving her art skills are compensated. MWM, voluntarily on average spends 15 hours per week watching art/DIY videos and creating new art pieces: 1-2 hour on each week day; 5-8 hours on the weekend. To be safe, we will count 10 hours per week and that’s 520 hours per year. So I pay her $2,000 for her 520 hours of work, which is just south of $4/hour. Not too shabby right?

So MWM will have made $11,000 in year 2016. She’s a pretty good little entrepreneur, right? As her mommy, I’m more than happy to deduct her pay from my business, watch her fund her Roth IRA at the tender age of 8 years old.

This one-time 5.5k she contributes to Roth IRA in 2016, assuming 8% annualized return, will double every 9 years. She’d have (2 to the 5^th power= 64x of 5.5k = $352,000) at retirement age of 62; tax free too. Let alone if she contributes 5.5k for the next 10 years before she starts college. The 10^th 5.5k would have 4 doubling time, so still worth $171,000 at 62. Now imagine adding up all the 5.5k’s impact from 2016 to 2026.

I didn’t fund My Roth IRA until 30.

Mini’s certainly starting early and using time value of money as her ally, rather than a foe!