Education has always been a core value for my family, so when I was born, my parents started a savings account for me. They wanted to fund my college education, and though they weren’t wealthy, they set aside $3,000 to pay for my college education. Being novice investors, they opened a savings account at our local bank. When I went to college 18 years later, that savings had growth to $3,700, which paid for my room and board freshman year. Later, I learned that had that savings been invested in a stock mutual fund, the balance would have been closer to $20,000! Because I didn’t have the extra $16,000, I worked the last three years of my college years, often as many as 32 hours a week.