Hannah Miao and Gunjan Banerji:
Seventeen-year-old Sophia Castiblanco doesn’t just drive a Tesla. She also owns shares of the company.
Sophia, a high school junior in the Chicago suburbs, invests in stocks such as Tesla, Apple and Amazon.com. When she started making money as a social-media content creator three years ago, her parents encouraged her to put some of her earnings in investments likely to grow over time, rather than parking all her cash in a savings account.
She now has several thousand dollars invested in accounts set up by her father at Charles Schwab, Edward Jones and Robinhood. Last year, she saved up money to buy a new Tesla Model 3, which starts at around $40,000, through a payment plan she is splitting with her parents. On TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, she makes videos teaching her thousands of followers about investing basics.
“I’ve always had a business mindset of wanting to make money, and I’m very OK with taking risk,” Sophia said. “There’s really no minimum age to start.”