【单选题】
When I was about 14, I decided to make money, so I got a part-time job at a local restaurant. With my first paycheck, I realized that I would have to work awfully hard to make very little money. My boss had been making just above minimum wage for 20 years, and I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working to death.Around the same time, my godparents took me to an investment(投资) workshop. Immediately, my eyes were opened to the power of compound growth in investing. I knew that this was a way to financial freedom. I left the workshop, determined to make my money work for me instead of just me working for money.
Honoring what my mother had taught me, to
share whatever I had, I donated part of my paychecks to raise money for breast cancer, and saved everything else to build up a large enough nest egg to open a brokerage account (经纪人账户). Too excited to wait, I began reading everything I could about investing. With most of my life savings (which wasn't very much money), I invested inDuPont,AT&T,Caterpillar, and International Paper. The pride in being a shareholder (股东)in a company, along with watching my stocks increase in value, fueled my desire to learn more. I went to three more investment workshops with my godparents and browsed(浏览) books at the library.
I began with $4,000 in my account and have added about $2,000 since then. My portfolio is now worth roughly $12,000, five years later, having grown about 18% per year, on average. My favorite holdings are biotechnology companies that I know a fair amount about because they're based near me.
In the years since then, I have experienced many moments of gratitude for discovering investing so early in my life. I'm in college now, and plan to go on to medical school and become a family practice physician.And I know that, thanks to investing, my road will be much easier. Not only have I taken an active step towards improving my long-term financial future, but I am confident that I will also be able to generously support the causes I believe in with more ease than I otherwise would have imagineD、