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According to her first 'payslip', my baby daughter is earning over a quid a week. Actually, this was the interest on her savings account, but it amounts to the same thing! Her arrival last winter made me decide to become more organised when it came to saving. My wife and I have been saving money for her big brother for the last 3½ years, but only in a haphazard fashion. Here are four products that we plan to use to put money aside for our children in the years to come: 1. Easy-access savings accounts If you're going to teach your children about money, they need some with which to learn. It's a good idea to set up an easy-access savings account for your children, so that they can get used to the mechanics of banking: making deposits and withdrawals, using a passbook, watching the interest mount up, and so on. When choosing a children's savings account, ignore the gimmicks, free gifts and advertising featuring cartoon characters or celebrities. Just go for the highest interest rates that you can find. Your kids can earn annual interest of 5% from the likes of Alliance & Leicester, Halifax or a local building society. My son's Best Buy is the Smart account from Nationwide BS, which pays 5.01% AER. 2. Regular-savings accounts These are great for introducing discipline and organisation into saving. Most savers (including parents) overlook these accounts, yet they pay the highest rates of interest around. Independent financial website Moneyfacts lists thirteen regular-savings accounts that pay between 5% and 5.85% AER. However, it's important to make every monthly payment on time. Otherwise, you could lose a big chunk of your interest, although some accounts allow you to skip one payment without penalty. I like these accounts because they give me the discipline that I sorely lack - being forced to pay £100 a month by standing order on payday stops me from spending this money! My daughter had a Halifax Monthly Saver account, a Best Buy currently paying 5.30% AER. Abbey's Monthly Saver is another good high-street account, which pays 5% AER. By the way, all but the wealthiest children won't have to pay tax on their savings. Learn more here. 3. Index trackers or iShares Once you've amassed a decent sum in cash, there's probably no reason to keep on saving, especially if your kids won't need the money for at least five years or so. It's time to invest - to harness the power of the stock market to produce superior long-term returns. Sure, the stock market bounces up and down all over the place, but its average annual return since 1918 has been around 11% (with income reinvested). One of the easiest and cheapest ways to enjoy stock-market growth is to invest in cheap, flexible, no-frills index trackers. These passively track the stock market up and down, without employing the services of highly paid fund managers. You don't need to be rich to invest in an index tracker, as several will accept as little as £25 a month. Another way to track the stock market is to use iShares, which are listed shares that behave like tracker funds. I invest lump sums for my kids into the iFTSE 100, which tracks... the FTSE 100 index (you don't say!). Learn more about iShares, which are also known as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Investing £50 a month for eighteen years with annual growth of 9% would produce a lump sum of £25,973. That's enough to kickstart a child's adult life, or fund a few years of further education. 4. Child Trust Funds (CTFs) As this recent article explains, the government is to give £250 to every child born after 31 August 2002, which is doubled to £500 for children in low-income families. Each child will receive a further payment at age seven. I'm mad keen to start saving in a CTF, because parents, other relatives and friends can pay in up to £1,200 a year, and the entire pot will grow free of income tax and capital gains tax. It's a bit like an ISA for kids. My daughter's CTF pot will be invested 100% into the stock market, as she will have around 16½ years from when her CTF starts until she becomes an adult, which is long enough to enjoy decent stock-market returns. Sadly, my son is too old to qualify for a CTF, so I'll just have to keep saving for him in other share-based vehicles – using a tax-efficient ISA, of course! More: Check out our Saving for Children, Index Tracker and ISA centres. Cliff owns shares in HBOS, the parent company of Halifax.