Through out my life a a 17 year old, I’ve had my attention captured by a few things. Some of those include basketball, cars, computers, and most recently investing. Due to the fact that I’m black, in my experiences, investing is something blacks talk about but really don’t due. For example, I’ve been told many times by adults that investing is important but many times don’t have more then $400 in their savings account. i say this because knowing this, i wanted to be the person to break this terrible trend.
Investing first got my attention 2 years. I was at the Kappa Alpha Psi mentorship program, Kappa League, which im now president of. The program was made to help guide young black men in the right direction by using real life experiences and speakers. The speaker that day was a brother of the fraternity who was a stock broker or financial advisor(i forget which). he came in and talked about the importance of a few things that could lead to great success. Those being the importance of a savings account, being financially literate, investing, and doing these things when young. He went on and talked about each of these. After the talk i went home and started doing research on a few of these things and became hooked about 6 months later.
When i became hooked was when i had my first summer job. This meant that i would be getting paid regularly. Due to this i had hoped to use some of the money and to invest in myself. Sadly i didn’t and spent it on things like food and clothes. But mainly clothes. After my job ended and school started up again i realized how dumb i was. I promised myself that next summer i would invest.
Fast forward to know, I put 50% of every paycheck in my savings. I plan to invest in a few companies when i turn 18 and recently i bought my first few litecoins. I say this because sometimes messing up is what is needed to truly learn the value of something. All you have to do is believe in yourself and sometimes take a leap of faith. I know i did and i see its working out well for me.