You are considering investing in a developing-country bank account that pays a nominal annual rate of 18%,compounded monthly.If you invest $5,000 at the beginning of each month,how many months will it take for your account to grow to $250,000? Round fractional years up.

A) 23
B) 27
C) 32
D) 38

To solve this, we use the future value of a series formula: $FV=P\times \frac{(1+r{)}^n-1}{r}$ , where $FV$ is the future value of the series, $P$ is the payment amount, $r$ is the monthly interest rate, and $n$ is the number of payments. The nominal annual rate is 18%, so the monthly rate is $18\%/12=1.5\%$ , or $0.015$ in decimal form. We want the future value ( $FV$ ) to be $250,000, and we know that P = $5,000 . Rearranging the formula to solve for $n$ , and substituting the given values, we can solve for $n$ . This requires iterative calculation or financial calculator. The correct answer, after performing the calculation, is closest to 38 months, considering the compounding effect and the monthly contributions.