DOCTORS, INSURANCE CARDS, MEDS

Has your child ever made a doctor’s appointment? Fix that. Outsource form management as well. My teenager was twice as fast as me on the tablets that many doctors use for intake these days anyway, so good riddance to all that paperwork.

Your children can stay on your health insurance plan until the age of 26, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. If you plan on having them pitch in for deductibles, it’s probably time to sit down and explain how your family coverage works. At the very least, they need to know what a co-pay is.

According to the scores of parents who responded to my query on Grown and Flown, a website and Facebook group for parents of teenagers and young adults, filling a prescription for the first time is filled with interesting obstacles, especially on refills for regular but essential medicines. So introduce your child to the various insurance cards and account numbers he or she needs, and do a walk-through with your local druggist or whatever mail-order pharmacy your insurance company forces you to use.

THE W-4 TAX FORM

Most employers that issue formal paychecks will require your teenager to fill out the Internal Revenue Service’s W-4 form. So review it to explain what it is and what kind of taxes, if any, your teenager might pay.

Do you get confused when you have to fill out your own every so often? There’s no shame in that, and the I.R.S. has a calculator that can help. And if it looks like too much money, or too little, is showing up in the first check after the withholding of taxes that you specified, you can revise the form.

ROTH INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT ACCOUNT

If compound interest isn’t officially the eighth wonder of the world, then it ought to be. The sooner teenagers start saving, the more they could benefit from its magic as it unfolds over a half-century or more.