In today’s low market, it is a perfect time to invest or even practice investing, and the people who really should be taking an interest are teens.

Teenagers should think about their futures, like paying for college. In order to do that they will need to take student loans or get scholarships, and a good way to pay for a good college, like Harvard or Yale, is through income from investments.

Teenagers can practice investing now, by getting parents to open up small investment accounts or registering for stock-practice games like “VSE” (Virtual Stock Exchange). These games follow the real market and give you a sum of virtual money to buy pretend stocks that are real and really are registered and rising and falling. One account on “VSE” was registered to a 13-year-old who registered a gain from $1,500 to $30,000 within a few months of penny stock investing. Today’s market is low and could be on the verge of collapse with the stimulus running out. That collapse or our current low are and could be the perfect time for investors to make money and learn about investments and what stocks really are. Another start-off method is to perhaps read some books from the library like the “For Dummies” books.

If you start out now, you could really open up more opportunities for the future, and that is what every teen really needs, especially since we are living in the land of opportunity.

Ihlal Mustafa, Heritage Christian Academy eighth-grader, Bothell