Your Teen's First Summer Job and Money

He walked in the door with a job offer and the look on his face that means he already knows it's a big deal.

Maybe it's stocking shelves at a grocery store, or landscaping with a neighbour's company. Whatever the job, in a few weeks a paycheque is going to land in his hands for the first time. The question is whether anyone has helped him think about what to do with it before that moment arrives.

What a sixteen-year-old does with his first paycheque tends to become what a thirty-year-old does with his. The habits form early, and so does the order he does things in. They form from the patterns that get established in the first year or two of earned income, far more than from any single conversation.

You are in the room. That gives you more influence than you probably realize.

The Conversation Has to Happen Before the First Paycheque

Most dads miss it by waiting.

The teen gets hired. Starts work. Earns that first direct deposit. Spends most of it before the week is out. And then dad, watching the balance, tries to teach the lesson after the money is already gone.

That lesson arrives too late to do much. The teen may be open to the conversation, but the money already has a direction, and once the purchase has happened, whatever dad says sounds like a critique.

The talk has to come before the first paycheque arrives.

Before the first shift, if possible, and certainly before the first deposit. The slate is still clean then. The money is abstract enough to think clearly about, and the framework you offer has nothing to correct.

The first move is a question, and it's his to answer.

Ask him what he's planning to do with the money, and ask it because you want to know. Most teens have a vague sense of the answer (save some, spend the rest) but haven't thought carefully about the order or the percentage or what saving actually means. Let him tell you his instinct first. Then gently, without a lecture, offer him a framework.

A Framework Simple Enough to Actually Use

The three-bucket approach is the simplest and most durable one I know for a first job. It comes down to three decisions, made once and then kept, and it runs without a spreadsheet or a budgeting app.

Give first. Before anything else, a portion comes off the top for God and others. Proverbs 3:9 puts it plainly: honour God with your wealth and with the firstfruits. Firstfruits means what it sounds like: the first portion, before anything else gets touched. For most Christians starting out, the tithe (10%) is the starting line. For a sixteen-year-old earning $600 in a two-week pay period, that's $60, small enough to feel doable and large enough to build a habit.

When giving is first, it shapes the whole posture toward money. When it's last, it rarely happens.

This is about formation. A teenager who learns to give before he spends is building a reflex that will outlast this job and every budget he'll ever write. And something happens when you give first: the rest of the money feels different in your hands, held more loosely. I've heard from men who are genuinely generous with their money, and they almost always say the same thing: giving put the rest of their life in order.

Save second. After giving, a portion goes to savings. Ten percent is a clean starting point, and the habit will do more for him than the exact percentage ever will. He can't open a TFSA until he turns 18, but he can open a youth savings account at almost any financial institution right now.

At this stage the account type is a detail. What he's building is the habit of moving money to savings on payday, before spending begins, and the discipline of leaving it alone once it's there.

That discipline, formed at sixteen, compounds for forty years. A teenager who saves $100 a month from his summer job and keeps that habit through his twenties will have dramatically different options at thirty-five than one who didn't. Compound growth does the heavy lifting once the habit exists, and the hard part is the first transfer. The earlier the habit forms, the earlier it starts working for him.

Spend the rest, without guilt. This is the part most Christian money conversations forget to include. After he gives and saves, what's left is his to spend freely, on the video game or the coffee with friends. No questions from dad, and no sermon.

The freedom to spend without guilt is what makes the framework sustainable. If giving and saving feel like obligations that leave him with nothing, he'll abandon the whole system by August. If they feel like the structure that gives him permission to enjoy the rest, he'll keep it.

The Paperwork That Has to Be Done Before His First Shift

There is practical paperwork that needs to happen before he starts day one, and it's easy to miss if nobody walks him through it.

The Social Insurance Number. Your teen needs a SIN before his employer can process his first paycheque or file any tax documents on his behalf. If he doesn't have one yet, he can apply online through Service Canada (canada.ca/sin) or walk in to a Service Canada Centre with his birth certificate or passport. It's free. It takes fifteen minutes. Without it, there is no legal way for an employer to pay him.

Get this done before the first shift.

The TD1 form. On his first day, his employer will ask him to fill out a federal and provincial TD1 (his Personal Tax Credits Return). This tells the employer how much tax to withhold from each paycheque. If he fills it out correctly and claims the Basic Personal Amount ($16,452 federally for 2026, indexed up each year), his employer won't over-withhold on a modest summer income.

Sit down with him to fill this out beforehand. It's a one-page form. Walking him through it is five minutes well spent, and it saves him from getting a refund he should never have had to wait for.

Why He Should File a Tax Return Even When He Owes Nothing

In February, his employer will send him a T4 slip. This is his record of the year: what he earned, what was withheld. He needs to keep it. It's the document that makes filing his tax return possible.

And yes: he should file.

Even if he earns less than the Basic Personal Amount and owes no federal income tax, filing is worth doing.

Filing builds RRSP contribution room. CRA calculates RRSP room at 18% of earned income, reported on each year's return. That room accumulates and carries forward. Once your teen turns 18 and opens his first RRSP, the room from his working years is waiting for him. A summer of work earning $5,000 creates $900 of future contribution room he can put to work eventually. It's a small number now, and it will be waiting for him later.

There's a second practical reason: if EI premiums were withheld from his paycheques during the summer (standard across all ages), he may be entitled to a partial refund. Those deductions happen automatically. The refund requires filing.

The third reason is the simplest. Filing a tax return every year is a habit. A teenager who files his first return, even a five-minute one through a free service like Wealthsimple Tax, is learning that the CRA can be dealt with, and that there is a record of his work history being built year by year.

He will carry that habit long after the refund is spent.

Where His Money Should Actually Live

He needs a bank account in his own name before the first paycheque arrives: somewhere for direct deposit to land, and ideally a second account for savings, kept separate from his spending money.

That separation is more important than most people realize. When savings live in the same account as spending money, they don't stay savings. Visibility changes behaviour. Two accounts (one to use, one to leave alone) make the three-bucket system actually work.

Most major banks offer no-fee youth accounts. Wealthsimple also offers free accounts with no minimum balance, worth looking at if your teen is curious about eventually investing. Any institution will do as long as the structure holds: two accounts, with money moved to savings on payday and left there.

Where the family's longer-term money for him should sit is a different question, and the RESP versus TFSA comparison works through that one.

What This Season Is Really About

I want to be direct here, because it's easy to lose this in the logistics.

The paperwork matters, and I've spent half this page on it. The thing he carries into adulthood is the framework. What order do things go in, and who does the money belong to? What is it for?

A teenager who gives before he spends is learning, in a small way, that he is a steward. He is learning that the money passing through his hands comes from a good God who is the source of every good gift, and that part of receiving a gift well is sharing it.

That is formation, and it takes more than one conversation. It comes through a pattern of choices, week over week and summer over summer, until the habit becomes a reflex and the reflex becomes character.

Some dads worry about finding the right language for this conversation, or about connecting the theology to the practical. The requirement is smaller than that: be willing to talk about it, out loud, with the gaps showing. A dad who says "I'm still working this out myself, but this is what I try to do" is more credible than one who delivers a polished lesson he doesn't live. Your son will believe what he sees in you long before he believes what he hears from you.

Your job this June is a framework simple enough to use and real enough to feel. The full financial education can take the next decade.

If He Wants to Go Further

We built a section on this site specifically for teenagers who want to learn about money on their own terms. If your son has his first job and wants to understand how taxes work or how investing eventually fits in, send him to the Wise and Faithful Teens section. It's written for him directly, in language that doesn't assume any prior knowledge. And when he is a few years past this summer and standing at a real first job, the letter I wrote to a young man starting his first job is the thing to send him then.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is hand him something and let him explore it himself.

The Conversation to Have This Week

One thing, before his first paycheque lands.

Sit down with him for fifteen minutes and no agenda beyond listening first.

Ask him: "What are you planning to do with the money you earn this summer?"

Let him answer. Hear him out. Then ask the second question:

"Have you thought about giving any of it?"

That second question is an invitation. Give him room to think about it. If he hasn't thought about it (and most sixteen-year-olds haven't), that's your opening.

He may push back. He may say he doesn't see why he has to give, or why he can't just save when he feels like it.

Let the objection stand and ask another question: "What do you think money is for?"

Most adults haven't thought carefully about that question either, and there is no obvious answer to hand him. Working at it together, even briefly, is worth more than winning the argument. Coming around to your view could take him years. The question will stay in him, and the life he sees you live will give it weight over time.

Skip the full budget session and the spreadsheet. Fifteen minutes and those two questions, asked before the money arrives, put a framework in place for when it does.

The Window Is Open Right Now

I've heard from many men who describe a gap in their formation around money. Nobody taught them. Dad was either uncomfortable with those conversations or simply assumed the kid would figure it out.

Kids do figure things out. The version they figure out on their own, shaped by advertising and the constant suggestion that they deserve whatever they want right now, is rarely the version we'd have chosen for them.

The years between sixteen and twenty-two are when the habits that will define the next four decades get established, without anyone deciding to establish them.

You are in the room, and you know something he doesn't yet. Right now, before the patterns take hold, your words carry real weight.

What you say in the next few weeks, even in one fifteen-minute conversation, has the chance to echo for the rest of his life.