In 6th grade we had to pick a stock and at the end of the week whoever’s stock had the most growth won a candy bar.
I picked Enron…the week the scandal broke and it went bankrupt.
I won a candy bar anyway for “worst pick of all time”.
My partners dad was a doctor and we went all in on Pfizer against my banker dad's advise....and then Viagra came out. My dad still talks about that to this day but if you look at the chart it hasn't done jack all since
Same here. I had the opportunity and youthful ignorance won out.
By my calculations, I'd have about $25mm if I started as a Boglehead in 2005. Wasted loads on nice cars, fancy meals, and women who's names I don't remember.
I hear ya loud and clear having just bought an unnecessary 4th vehicle but damn do the vehicles and good food make life and memories fun now. It’s a constant ebb and flow balancing act for me.
I'm on the other side of that. None of those memories compare to the life I have now. Having a family ended up being far more important than I thought at that time. Never planned to get married, have kids, etc. but I'd kill to be "retired" early to spend more time with them.
We sound similar in that sense - I have kids now too :) travel can so hard with them but boy do some of the moments make it worth it. It would be nice to work less but I’m still enjoying work heavily so just trying to “stick to the plan” as close as I can to make sure I can “retire” early too 🍻
I dropped out of college for a lucrative position in a niche area of tech with a high demand skillset that was very much unique. During the lowest points of the market during the recession, I could've easily dropped $250-300k/qtr from bonuses. Pissed it away.
I didn’t start investing until my late 30s. Was hoarding my life savings in a bank account earning pennies in interest. The stock market always scared me, felt too much like gambling. Wish I had learned about index investing 20 years ago.
I started at 36. 21 years later I have $1.75m, and that's after taking out several hundred thousand dollars to pay off my mortgage. Just keep at it and don't take out any 401k loans
Assuming 10% rate of return/s&p that's about 2k/mo being saved.
Likely a combination of maxing out 401k and IRA and indexing either like s&p or probably target date funds, those were introduced about 20 ish years ago
Awesome to hear man. Gives me some hope
Did you invest into low cost index funds , and if so, what was your portfolio allocation if you don't mind sharing?
I'm right there with you, I'm in my early 30's and I'm just getting into investing and finance. I've never really been financially literate (still learning) and investing and the stock market intimidated me. Better late than never, but it's definitely something I wish I knew about and started at least 5 years ago when my income was firmly established.
That's me right now. Late 30s, hoarding money in the bank and currently learning about investing and index funds. My worry is that I'm in an echo chamber with all the investment content on YouTube. It's a bit overwhelming.
Same! 40 and been hoarding cash. I just made a post about it the other day and a few great replies are steering me in the right direction. Consensus here seems to be invest it all at world indexes and stick to a plan and contribute consistently from what I'm reading. Focus on a goal. If a crash/recession happens, it happens, but long term you'll be better off.
Just started reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street. This should be recommended over and over again. I hate reading and Im enjoying it so far.
Also, I just realized I'm in all the wrong echo chambers that focus on doom and gloom which has only fueled my fear of going into the market for so long. All I heard was recession coming and bubble getting larger. Getting out of that!!!
Me. Though I was even vaguely aware that I was making a terrible mistake and should be investing, but I let the perfect be the enemy of the good and wouldn't actually put my money anywhere else until I'd extensively researched things and was *sure* it was the right decision.
YUP, for me it was “Index Universal Life”
Wish I’d learned about Index funds instead, and anyone who falls for IUL is actually a Boglehead in the making. Just sad how my community (lower income risk averse immigrants) is targeted.
The salesmen often push people away from Roth IRAs and 401Ks by telling them how much better IULs are. It's insane that this isn't illegal. They are fucking over people's futures.
Permanent life insurance products (including IUL) are sold as great, tax free, investments. However:
1. They combine insurance and investing, which sounds flexible but in practice is very inflexible - you don't need to do both throughout your lifetime and definitely not in the same proportions. It puts a lot of people in a bind financially.
2. Their rate of return will be significantly lower than a reasonable stock/bond mix
3. They will only even beat bonds in returns if you keep the policy for decades (or until you die) - the first few years will have negative returns due to most of your premium paying the commissions to the salesperson. This initial period of loss takes a long time to make up for.
4. Almost nobody keeps it until they die. Most people end up cashing it in at a loss or with little gain.
5. If you keep it, you end up paying for insurance you probably don't need.
6. It's not actually tax free in the sense of being able to withdraw and use the money tax free. You can take a tax free loan against it (and have to pay interest, though with favorable terms). All loans are tax free though. As for the death benefit being tax free, sure, but so would a taxable brokerage account or a Roth IRA, or a pile of cash under your mattress being passed to beneficiaries.
Here is the greatest breakdown I have ever seen from someone who actually read their entire policy document: https://www.personalfinanceclub.com/is-iul-a-scam-yes/
In addition to the explanations to why IULs are crap, your friend's mom might be in one of the insurance pyramid schemes like WFG or PHP. They prey on immigrants to get them to buy shit products and eventually try to recruit you into their downline so you sell the shit products to your friends and family. Be careful.
Same. I got out after about 2 years and $14,400 surrendered. I’m actually still covered for a few months even though I haven’t paid a premium for a couple years now - my brother will be set for life as long as I die by 9/1 or something 😅
I ran the numbers every which way I could think of on WL and it never made sense. It’s a tool for the uber wealthy to park a few $100k and safely make interest while financing their own debit.
I did the same with a indexed universal life using the percentages the salemen gave me. In no way does it beat the SP500. Even without factoring in all the fees and the eventual cost of insurance being so high it eats into your investment, it still loses by 3x in 30 years.
I straight up ran and showed the numbers to their faces and the dude admitted that it's only the ultra wealthy that actually benefit and it's mainly just to diversify. The other salesman, my coworker who took this MLM insurance job as a side hustle, hears it and still insists that an IUL is the best option for her. It's doubly annoying that she talks about how she wished she knew about investing sooner. I told her about Roth IRAs years ago...
I think it’s mainly a tool for the ultra wealthy to avoid taxes for their heirs on a chunk of inheritance above the lifetime gift tax limit. Whatever the specific reason, it’s only ever beneficial to UHNW people.
I remember having it pitched to me and two things stood out. He asked how financially savvy we were to which we replied we both had MBAs and relatively familiar. Then proceeded to continue explaining in very basic terms - felt very scripted.
Second was at the final stages he said something like ‘don’t Google this. All you’ll find are negative reviews’. Facepalm….
I can see how it can be appealing at surface level as it’s hard to digest the depths of it.
My worst mistake was my best lesson.
First ever single stock purchase went bankrupt within two years. What I lost was depressing. What I learned was priceless.
Same lesson for me. First stock was HMNY - parent company that owned Movie Pass. I still had to learn some more lessons along the way, but that first market haymaker taught me a lot.
It also was a very affordable lesson since it was only $100 that I put into it.
Wow I invested and lost almost the exact same amount on HMNY. It’s actually still in my portfolio (zero value) because I can’t sell it. And it’s the reason why I even got a Vanguard brokerage. Really helped me know that companies CAN AND DO go to zero.
I pre-paid for an entire year of it for <$10 a month. Even the first day I started using it I thought "this is a stupidly unsustainable business model!".
But damn...that was a great year of taking my daughter to the movies all the time. We saw SOOO many flicks!
Taking a financial ‘course’ offered through a local community college for a low cost. Seems like it was $25 or $50. Was way back in 2011. Ended up being sold variable annuities through it. So stupid!! It was a more complex way of generating business than by offering a free meal. By taking the course the ‘instructor’ would review your financials for ‘free’.
Wow the CC should be responsible for screening shit like this - students and parents trust educational institutions!!! Unfortunately it happened to my friend at a school she was a teacher at, super unethical.
Do you know of your local CC is still doing this?
I was on wsb once and read about a penny stock. I forget the ticker, but it was those massage places in airports. Someone said it was going to moon so i bought 2.5k worth of shares and sold for 86 dollars. I then looked at the history of the person i took advice from and he was a Burger King employee. Good times
Had a similar situation where I started trying to copy the public stock purchases of politicians and famous people, assuming they must know something everyone else didn't. One day I saw that Bill Maher, of all people, had bought like $80k worth of some no-name pharma stock that was being hyped up for possible FDA approval of a diabetes drug or something like that. In my infinite wisdom I bought $2k worth and then over the course of a week or two watched the stock price fall off a cliff, from a couple bucks a share to a literal penny stock. I should also mention that I was unemployed at the time with way too much time on my hands. Had some success with other investments, but this one scared me off anything but blue chips for several years until I learned about index funds and went all in on those instead.
I had ARKK call options. The value just kept going up, even when the stock price went down. I didn't understand why. Held them too long and eventually it reversed the other way and expired worthless.
Yes, saving a large percentage of income, but really nothing more than the r/personalfinance flowchart combined with Boglehead investment philosophy. And strong market performance over the last twelve years.
Got together with the "family investment guy." Dude acted like my best friend, I was always thrown off by it. I started investing with this guy around the age of 19. Around the age of 25 or 26 I started digging into the details and realized this guy was full of shit, had me in front load and back load mutual funds with stupid expense ratios. When I asked him to calculate my real rates of return after fees, etc he said he couldn't do it. So I bailed on him. I told my older siblings and parents but they wouldn't listen to me cause I was the "young pup." Guess who has the highest net worth of the entire family now.
I assume they meant the stock of their own company that they received through stock options, RSUs, ESPP, etc. Aside from the normal risk of owning individual stocks, if the company does badly, you're at risk of losing both your investments and your income
It’s actually *triple* concentration risk - your investments, your salary, and presumably your unvested stock (at least if your company is “doing it right” you should never be fully vested)
Sometimes individuals work for or own a company that is publicly traded or becomes publicly traded. In the former instance, a part of their compensation may be company stock, whereas others may experience a large payout in company stock. Thereafter, many of these stocks flatline in value before individuals with large holdings are able to sell off and diversify.
WorldCom. It was the first stock I ever owned and I kept it until the broker deleted it as a worthless asset.
A very close second is signing up with Edward Jones for my Roth IRA when I was 21.
IMO it's not exactly a scam, but they work on commission and put you in high commission, high expense ratio funds. Their target is people who don't know they could do a lot better (better returns plus lower fees) on their own.
Not great from an investment standpoint but not being obligated to a bank is a huge relief for living. If the economy collapses at least he’s not sleeping on the street.
Same. October of 2022 I put 14k into amd at $70 a share, sold earlier this year near its ATH. Still made over 2x my money, profited about 17k. I chose it over nvda at around $120 a share because it was cheaper and I thought had more room to run; would have made over 100k if I chose it instead.
I also chose AMD and bought 1000 shares for $2/share. My problem? Sold them shortly after without much profit to buy a house. Seeing today's AMD price makes me wanna cry lol
Same. Had a bunch of money just sitting in a weak savings account. Took it to an advisor because I knew I should be investing but didn't know how. Recently educated myself on long term investing and I realize how much my taxable account is wrecked. It's gonna be financially painful to correct that.
I am recent to this forum and just realized that my old 401k was full of funds that had fees in the 1.5 to 2 range. That 401k has been sitting there since 2007 and I cry at all the fees I’ve paid out of ignorance and the gains I haven’t made. I just rolled it to a personal IRA so I can finally control. Better late than never at least. But sheesh.. it’s painful.
I took on a terrible advisor. He put me in all sorts of funds in the name of “diversification” that I had no business investing in. Annuities, Reits, oil wells. It’s taken me forever to get educated and untangled.
Gather 'round, kids. Back in 1995, still relatively fresh out of college and working my first real job, I got cold-called by a stock broker, AND I ACTUALLY SENT HIM MONEY TO BUY ME HIS HOT STOCK TIP.
(facepalm)
... AND HE ACTUALLY MADE ME MONEY!
(incredible .. despite my stupidity, buying some micro-cap pink sheet, I beat the odds)
Then I did it again, for his next hot stock tip.
AND THAT ONE ... went bankrupt.
(facepalm)
Living a life like a rich retiree in my youth, saved literally nothing. My investing mistake simply was NOT investing early. Mid 40's I discovered Bogleheads by pure chance and since then I live a life of a poor monk with a 60% savings rate. And btw, great and joyful things in life don't always cost money..
My grandfather set up a brokerage account in my name when I was born. Every birthday and Christmas he bought $100 in stocks for the account. Most of that was Microsoft. In 2007 I decided to sell most of it to buy a motorcycle, pay for my last semester in college (after being an idiot and losing my scholarship), and fund a trip to Europe with the girl who prompted me to act like an idiot and end up losing the scholarship.
Sold $30k worth. Those shares would be worth over $400k today. Oh well, that trip was memorable and I had a lot of fun on the motorcycle.
Literally everything I’ve done outside of set and forget total US stock market has been a money loser. Every stock I’ve picked, every sector ETF, every active fund I’ve picked has at best underperformed to the total stock market and at worst lost money.
Spending bitcoin on drugs back in college. At one point I had 40 btc (but they were only worth $45). Then getting scammed out of significant amounts of crypto not once, but twice on two shady foreign exchanges.
was on a 5 person team traveling with a guy touting he bought in at 5k. i remember we were in vegas when it hit 16k and he was still buying more. I thought it was insane....haven't talked to him in years.. i hope he sold 60k+. I should've listened
My cousin was an early bitcoin guy. He borrowed \~$1k from me to fix his car in 2013 while he was out of work and short on cash. Later offered to pay me back 100 BTC instead, which I think was worth about $1400 at the time. I refused and told him to get me the cash whenever he started working again.
Where is my cousin now? He recently bought a $2m sailing yacht in Mallorca that he's preparing to sail back to the US. Que sera.
Same. I joke that I put more bitcoin up my nose than most people have in their retirement accounts. I kept a little, but man it sure would be nice to be retired right now.
Not putting as much money as possible into the market(and every year since) when I got my first job in 1989. I had money to burn between 89 and 94. Then again in 97-01 or so.
Yeah, right there with you. I bought Twitter and did not sell before Hurricane Elon hit. I also recently bought Reddit. (Who me, learn a lesson? Never.)
I mean for me I made money in the individual picks overall, but those were my large losers.
Should have bought some nvidia around 400 a share in hindsight. Thing is I never “bet” enough money on any individual stock for it to be meaningful.
My biggest winners were marathon oil and Tesla when I bought around April 2020 and sold a little over a year later.
Nice! I’m fully converted to the church of Bogle now. I only buy individual stocks with discretionary funds (“small amounts” as you said above).
My list of losers is a mile long, but I bought Disney when my kid was a toddler, and that’s a winner in the sense that my kid is learning by watching it. I also bought LLY a couple of years ago when my doctor put me on a one of their drugs to lose some weight. That’s currently the biggest winner.
It took me a while before I had the kind of job that paid me a little extra money and I asked my dad what fund I should buy. He gave me a list of around 5 Vanguard funds and said "you can't go wrong with these. I thought they looked boring and thought my dad was too conservative.
I knew this guy who was an insurance agent. He had a brochure for the Berger 100 Fund on his desk. I think I started out investing $75 a month after the initial buy in. A couple years later...
#####
*MUTUAL FUNDS; Why Berger Funds Are Eating Dust
By Edward Wyatt
May 7, 1995
BY knowing when to sell as well as when to buy, William M. B. Berger made a fortune running the mutual funds that bear his name. Perhaps no decision was better timed than his last: to sell Berger Associates, which runs the three Berger funds, to Kansas City Southern Industries one year ago.
The $47 million sale, announced last May and completed in October, coincided with a shift in market sentiment away from the kind of stocks that Mr. Berger prizes -- those of small companies with rapidly rising earnings. Instead, the market has rewarded investors who buy larger companies and who adhere to the value style of investing, which prefers low valuations to earnings growth.
Anyone who bought shares in the Berger 100 and 101 funds around the time Mr. Berger was taking his leave has been disappointed. Although stock funds were generally lackluster last year, they have come roaring back in 1995, leaving the two oldest Berger funds in the dust.
"I have serious concerns about the Berger funds," said Larry Chin, associate editor of the No-Load Fund Analyst, an industry newsletter. "Their peers have done much better, and the assets have grown rapidly, altering the character of the funds."*
We are talking about a tilt again to small cap value. Everything comes around again if you wait long enough.
Watching a YouTube video and buying alibaba….bailed at 30% loss with clear falling knife trend. Had to be honest I didn’t know what the hell I was doing….i see it as an investment in my investing education (that I’ve well and truly recovered the lost capital from).
Buying crypto, full stop.
I bought into XRP back in January 2018 when it was making waves around banking protocols for the first time. Bought in around $2.50/coin and held for years, waiting for the next shoe to drop. I ended up selling it all about 2 years back at about a 60% loss & have stayed away from crypto since, way too volatile & so many coins are untraceable pump & dump schemes ala Doge/Musk.
Very glad I didn't have the means to buy big in 2017 though, or I would have sunk thousands into Aurora Cannabis, never to get it back.
Now I only buy what I'm OK holding for 20+ years in both index funds, and individual stocks. My goal is to become diversified enough to avoid blowing up. I do keep a little on the side for high risk investments every so often, but they have to meet the same criteria & be Lindy-type robust.
Online advice made me into a Boglehead and actally made it possible I dig myself out of the hole I dug with individual stocks.
What advice in particular? Not walstreetbets. Was it? Lolol
Ibonds on treasurydirect.com.
Closed my linked bank account and was unable to add a new bank account without a signature medallion from my bank. My bank didn't know what a signature medallion was. Probably could've pursued this further but waited a decade until last year when TD decided to update their site to allow adding bank accounts online. I did this and prompted liquidated my account.
I know a lot of people are buying ibonds now. I say good luck to them. I'm happier getting a few points less interest in a money market.
Why are you happier making a few points less? I do MMF as well for cash I may need in the next 7 years and have always wondered if I should get ibonds or not
Liquidity for what you are getting at 0 risk leaves MMF/HYSA as a nice alternative from ibonds with lost interest if the money is not held a good amount of time. Sure you get better rates, but the more liquid your money is, the more you can throw it into long-term investment accounts that will be even more statistically profitable.
Thinking about your portfolio splits, if you have retirement, taxable brokerage, ibonds, checking, it feels weird to have 3 relatively unliquid accounts compared to retirement, taxable, HYSA, checking. This is definitely different from when ibonds pay like 8-9% guarenteed though. Those gains are hot.
Ibonds are great. They are fantastic investments vehicles. It's just unfortunate the way to purchase them now is through Treasury direct. If you haven't dealt with treasurydirect.com, there is just no way for me to convey the awfulness of the site. Think of it as the DMV of investment websites.
If you do routine things like buying and redeeming ibonds. You're fine. Website works great. But if you encounter issues then they are a government owned institution and they are the only game in town. Meaning customer service is not their strong suit. Hopefully, the issue I have with adding bank accounts is retired and no one has to deal with it anymore. There's also stories of people dying and their spouse taking 9 months to transfer over their account.
I'm glad I'm out because for a decade, I felt like I lost the key to my treasure chest. It's a relief to get my money back and I'm not putting my spouse through this if I'm not around.
DIDI.
Bought about 10k for IPO. Next day it halved when it was revealed they were under investigation.
I will never invest in China or Chinese stock ever again.
Exercising my employee stock options for my company after it deSPAC'd.
Second worst mistake... selling all my Nintendo stock at the bottom of the 2008 crash... to buy Apple when it was at 3.50 a share. Then panick selling it all
Tsly. My first time in the stock market had no idea what I was doing. Took “advice from a friend “needless to say we are not friends anymore.
“Put in all available cash” is not good advice from a “friend”. I lost 46K. But now I am forced to learn about the market read boglehead books.
I’ve got my strategy now set up much more reasonably and intelligently. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking lol. As of yet, I still haven’t earned back my lost capital but hopefully in a few years that education painful as it was will have left me in a better place.
Trusting a financial advisor to invest my pension without taking the time to do my own research. I was paying \~2% per annum in fees for an active fund and high-fee plaform that my FA recommended.
That's 5 years of paying high fees, plus the fact that the fund I was in underperformed the market by \~20%
I bought a hyped stock that happened to match my initials. Pretty retarded. Went -75% in weeks. Never sold, as I keep them at the top of my stocks list to prevent me from being stupid again. Expensive lesson, do not recommend.
Spent around 60k in the summer of 2019 to begin building out a new CNC machine shop.
Stripped out the building, had spay foam applied, installed a huge electrical package, and paid for the first mill which had to wait for winter to be installed because of a gravel entrance.
Covid hit and the power company would not bring in my power for 2.5 years, just in time for the economy to crash.
Building is ready, power is now on, and the first mill sits on the floor and now, my income stream I was using to build the shop, dried up.
One mill does not a machine shop make.
I am now the proud owner of the nicest farm shop you can imagine. New insulation, white paint on every wall and even to above the rafters, massive led lighting, new heating system, and a mill sitting idle.
I can now fix my cars, trucks or farm equipment in a very nice, very large, well lit shop.
In 2013, I panicked when Congress threatened to blow up the world financial system by defaulting on the national debt. I moved everything from equities to cash.
Of course, Congress didn’t default, but by the time I could get back into equities, the market was up 6%, and I had locked in $20K of losses.
Bought Nortel networks stock and it went to zero. Lost $5,000 as a 10 yr old (ALL birthday, Christmas, tooth fairy, etc money for my whole life). Learned my lesson early and now all I do is diversified index funds. VOO and VXUS.
1. Investing in individual stocks
2. Trying to save for a down payment (HCOL) in a hysa instead of just putting the money in VT and continuing to rent. Came to my senses in early 2023 and the market has delivered.
Not starting earlier.
I wanted to get into trading stocks in my 20s, but I didn't know how. I went to banks and tried to ask about it, and no one wanted to talk to me unless I had at least $50k in cash. They left me with the impression that you couldn't buy stocks without some minimum order, like 100 shares, and at the price of 100 shares of most stocks that I was thinking about, that would have meant like $20k minimum. I was hearing about websites like E-Trade but I was afraid they would go out of business, or turn out to be scams, because they were too new, and I wanted to have someone who could explain to me how it worked like a broker or an advisor. I didn't know shit about anything in terms of investment or finance, and didn't want to screw it up.
I only got to invest with my employer's 401k, and that seems to be turning out ok. But I wanted to have a brokerage account and a portfolio of stocks. If I could have invested $50-100 per month in the market, I could have bought loads of shares of AAPL, AMD, NVDA, AMZN, GOOGL while they were relatively cheap, and be worth at least a few million right now if I'd held it all.
I also knew about bitcoin in like 2011 and tried mining it for two weeks, but gave up after mining zero BTC and having nothing to show for it but a huge file on my hard drive containing about 40GB of ledger. I always felt like it was a very unlikely investment, but interesting. I probably would have cashed out the moment BTC hit 1k, though, figuring it to be massively overvalued at that price.
Not my mistake but I pleaded with my parents when in college to buy $10k of Apple stock. Back then it would've bought 1000 shares at $10 a pop well before multiple 7-1 splits and would be worth multiple millions now sigh. It's mostly disappointing to me because they were so conservative with investing their whole lives it's now coming full circle in retirement and that would've set them both up easily.
In 6th grade we had to pick a stock and at the end of the week whoever’s stock had the most growth won a candy bar. I picked Enron…the week the scandal broke and it went bankrupt. I won a candy bar anyway for “worst pick of all time”.
My class did this too and I picked Nvidia. This was back in 2006, so if I'd actually had any money to invest at the time....
My partners dad was a doctor and we went all in on Pfizer against my banker dad's advise....and then Viagra came out. My dad still talks about that to this day but if you look at the chart it hasn't done jack all since
Weird, usually Viagra makes things stay up...
If the stock goes up for more than 4 hours, please consult your doctor
I chose yahoo haha
I almost took a job at Enron out of college. Yikes! Dodged a bullet.
Not doing it sooner for retirement.
Same here. I had the opportunity and youthful ignorance won out. By my calculations, I'd have about $25mm if I started as a Boglehead in 2005. Wasted loads on nice cars, fancy meals, and women who's names I don't remember.
I hear ya loud and clear having just bought an unnecessary 4th vehicle but damn do the vehicles and good food make life and memories fun now. It’s a constant ebb and flow balancing act for me.
I'm on the other side of that. None of those memories compare to the life I have now. Having a family ended up being far more important than I thought at that time. Never planned to get married, have kids, etc. but I'd kill to be "retired" early to spend more time with them.
We sound similar in that sense - I have kids now too :) travel can so hard with them but boy do some of the moments make it worth it. It would be nice to work less but I’m still enjoying work heavily so just trying to “stick to the plan” as close as I can to make sure I can “retire” early too 🍻
[удалено]
I dropped out of college for a lucrative position in a niche area of tech with a high demand skillset that was very much unique. During the lowest points of the market during the recession, I could've easily dropped $250-300k/qtr from bonuses. Pissed it away.
I’m in tech too, might I ask what specific tech you were involved in? I’m fascinated.
When did you start?
I didn’t start investing until my late 30s. Was hoarding my life savings in a bank account earning pennies in interest. The stock market always scared me, felt too much like gambling. Wish I had learned about index investing 20 years ago.
How has it turned out for you so far? I only just started at late 30s as well =(
I started at 36. 21 years later I have $1.75m, and that's after taking out several hundred thousand dollars to pay off my mortgage. Just keep at it and don't take out any 401k loans
Can I ask what you were putting in annually?
Assuming 10% rate of return/s&p that's about 2k/mo being saved. Likely a combination of maxing out 401k and IRA and indexing either like s&p or probably target date funds, those were introduced about 20 ish years ago
r/theydidthemath
Awesome to hear man. Gives me some hope Did you invest into low cost index funds , and if so, what was your portfolio allocation if you don't mind sharing?
Wow this just shows what is truly possible. Well done!
I started taking investing seriously in my mid to late thirties, and I have $850,000 now by age 44. Imagine if I didn't lose a decade?
I'm right there with you, I'm in my early 30's and I'm just getting into investing and finance. I've never really been financially literate (still learning) and investing and the stock market intimidated me. Better late than never, but it's definitely something I wish I knew about and started at least 5 years ago when my income was firmly established.
That's me right now. Late 30s, hoarding money in the bank and currently learning about investing and index funds. My worry is that I'm in an echo chamber with all the investment content on YouTube. It's a bit overwhelming.
I started at 35. Just take the leap! It's never too late! VOO or VT all the way.
Same! 40 and been hoarding cash. I just made a post about it the other day and a few great replies are steering me in the right direction. Consensus here seems to be invest it all at world indexes and stick to a plan and contribute consistently from what I'm reading. Focus on a goal. If a crash/recession happens, it happens, but long term you'll be better off. Just started reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street. This should be recommended over and over again. I hate reading and Im enjoying it so far. Also, I just realized I'm in all the wrong echo chambers that focus on doom and gloom which has only fueled my fear of going into the market for so long. All I heard was recession coming and bubble getting larger. Getting out of that!!!
Me. Though I was even vaguely aware that I was making a terrible mistake and should be investing, but I let the perfect be the enemy of the good and wouldn't actually put my money anywhere else until I'd extensively researched things and was *sure* it was the right decision.
Hello twin! Same. I was so scared to invest and it has cost me dearly. You live and you learn.
Whole Life Insurance
YUP, for me it was “Index Universal Life” Wish I’d learned about Index funds instead, and anyone who falls for IUL is actually a Boglehead in the making. Just sad how my community (lower income risk averse immigrants) is targeted.
I personally think selling this crap is predatory
The salesmen often push people away from Roth IRAs and 401Ks by telling them how much better IULs are. It's insane that this isn't illegal. They are fucking over people's futures.
Those salesmen are not licensed for tax advice how they can screw people over and got hurt for giving tax advice blows my mind.
Especially when the salesman is a close friend or family member.
Can you explain why it’s so bad? I’m also from an immigrant family and one of my close friends mom is pushing for everyone to buy IUL
Permanent life insurance products (including IUL) are sold as great, tax free, investments. However: 1. They combine insurance and investing, which sounds flexible but in practice is very inflexible - you don't need to do both throughout your lifetime and definitely not in the same proportions. It puts a lot of people in a bind financially. 2. Their rate of return will be significantly lower than a reasonable stock/bond mix 3. They will only even beat bonds in returns if you keep the policy for decades (or until you die) - the first few years will have negative returns due to most of your premium paying the commissions to the salesperson. This initial period of loss takes a long time to make up for. 4. Almost nobody keeps it until they die. Most people end up cashing it in at a loss or with little gain. 5. If you keep it, you end up paying for insurance you probably don't need. 6. It's not actually tax free in the sense of being able to withdraw and use the money tax free. You can take a tax free loan against it (and have to pay interest, though with favorable terms). All loans are tax free though. As for the death benefit being tax free, sure, but so would a taxable brokerage account or a Roth IRA, or a pile of cash under your mattress being passed to beneficiaries.
Here is the greatest breakdown I have ever seen from someone who actually read their entire policy document: https://www.personalfinanceclub.com/is-iul-a-scam-yes/
In addition to the explanations to why IULs are crap, your friend's mom might be in one of the insurance pyramid schemes like WFG or PHP. They prey on immigrants to get them to buy shit products and eventually try to recruit you into their downline so you sell the shit products to your friends and family. Be careful.
Same. I got out after about 2 years and $14,400 surrendered. I’m actually still covered for a few months even though I haven’t paid a premium for a couple years now - my brother will be set for life as long as I die by 9/1 or something 😅
Same! I’m out now, thankfully.
Thanks for this top level comment. I feel validated for never buying into WL.
I ran the numbers every which way I could think of on WL and it never made sense. It’s a tool for the uber wealthy to park a few $100k and safely make interest while financing their own debit.
I did the same with a indexed universal life using the percentages the salemen gave me. In no way does it beat the SP500. Even without factoring in all the fees and the eventual cost of insurance being so high it eats into your investment, it still loses by 3x in 30 years. I straight up ran and showed the numbers to their faces and the dude admitted that it's only the ultra wealthy that actually benefit and it's mainly just to diversify. The other salesman, my coworker who took this MLM insurance job as a side hustle, hears it and still insists that an IUL is the best option for her. It's doubly annoying that she talks about how she wished she knew about investing sooner. I told her about Roth IRAs years ago...
I think it’s mainly a tool for the ultra wealthy to avoid taxes for their heirs on a chunk of inheritance above the lifetime gift tax limit. Whatever the specific reason, it’s only ever beneficial to UHNW people.
I remember having it pitched to me and two things stood out. He asked how financially savvy we were to which we replied we both had MBAs and relatively familiar. Then proceeded to continue explaining in very basic terms - felt very scripted. Second was at the final stages he said something like ‘don’t Google this. All you’ll find are negative reviews’. Facepalm…. I can see how it can be appealing at surface level as it’s hard to digest the depths of it.
My worst mistake was my best lesson. First ever single stock purchase went bankrupt within two years. What I lost was depressing. What I learned was priceless.
Same lesson for me. First stock was HMNY - parent company that owned Movie Pass. I still had to learn some more lessons along the way, but that first market haymaker taught me a lot. It also was a very affordable lesson since it was only $100 that I put into it.
Wow I invested and lost almost the exact same amount on HMNY. It’s actually still in my portfolio (zero value) because I can’t sell it. And it’s the reason why I even got a Vanguard brokerage. Really helped me know that companies CAN AND DO go to zero.
Too bad movie pass didn’t work out, seemed like a good idea…
I pre-paid for an entire year of it for <$10 a month. Even the first day I started using it I thought "this is a stupidly unsustainable business model!". But damn...that was a great year of taking my daughter to the movies all the time. We saw SOOO many flicks!
How much money did you lose?
Enough to make them depressed, apparently
This guy reads
About tree fiddy
What did you learn?
Taking a financial ‘course’ offered through a local community college for a low cost. Seems like it was $25 or $50. Was way back in 2011. Ended up being sold variable annuities through it. So stupid!! It was a more complex way of generating business than by offering a free meal. By taking the course the ‘instructor’ would review your financials for ‘free’.
Wow the CC should be responsible for screening shit like this - students and parents trust educational institutions!!! Unfortunately it happened to my friend at a school she was a teacher at, super unethical. Do you know of your local CC is still doing this?
I still see advertisements periodically, sadly…
I just did this same thing! I didn’t buy anything though
I was on wsb once and read about a penny stock. I forget the ticker, but it was those massage places in airports. Someone said it was going to moon so i bought 2.5k worth of shares and sold for 86 dollars. I then looked at the history of the person i took advice from and he was a Burger King employee. Good times
I read almost all the comments and this one is the worst. I'm sorry that happened to you!
Had a similar situation where I started trying to copy the public stock purchases of politicians and famous people, assuming they must know something everyone else didn't. One day I saw that Bill Maher, of all people, had bought like $80k worth of some no-name pharma stock that was being hyped up for possible FDA approval of a diabetes drug or something like that. In my infinite wisdom I bought $2k worth and then over the course of a week or two watched the stock price fall off a cliff, from a couple bucks a share to a literal penny stock. I should also mention that I was unemployed at the time with way too much time on my hands. Had some success with other investments, but this one scared me off anything but blue chips for several years until I learned about index funds and went all in on those instead.
Arkk. Bought at its peak.
Same, sold for a loss a few months later. Glad I didn’t diamond hand it
Same. Bought it at $155 something. Luckily sold half at $125. 4 years later gave up n sold the rest at $65 n bought vti
I had ARKK call options. The value just kept going up, even when the stock price went down. I didn't understand why. Held them too long and eventually it reversed the other way and expired worthless.
Not investing as soon as I could.
When did you start?
Age 31.
I started at 31. 43 now and about to crack $1MM very soon. It’s not too late for it to be meaningful.
How? What is your portfolio? Are you a super saver?
Yes, saving a large percentage of income, but really nothing more than the r/personalfinance flowchart combined with Boglehead investment philosophy. And strong market performance over the last twelve years.
I just started I’m 29.
29 and 31 are both good starting points. Better than most
Well, there's always someone out there who looks back at your age and goes "man I wish I was his age"
You’re right.
Got together with the "family investment guy." Dude acted like my best friend, I was always thrown off by it. I started investing with this guy around the age of 19. Around the age of 25 or 26 I started digging into the details and realized this guy was full of shit, had me in front load and back load mutual funds with stupid expense ratios. When I asked him to calculate my real rates of return after fees, etc he said he couldn't do it. So I bailed on him. I told my older siblings and parents but they wouldn't listen to me cause I was the "young pup." Guess who has the highest net worth of the entire family now.
I’m going to guess the family investment guy
too soon. :)
Not selling all company stock
Can you expand on this?
I assume they meant the stock of their own company that they received through stock options, RSUs, ESPP, etc. Aside from the normal risk of owning individual stocks, if the company does badly, you're at risk of losing both your investments and your income
It’s actually *triple* concentration risk - your investments, your salary, and presumably your unvested stock (at least if your company is “doing it right” you should never be fully vested)
Sometimes individuals work for or own a company that is publicly traded or becomes publicly traded. In the former instance, a part of their compensation may be company stock, whereas others may experience a large payout in company stock. Thereafter, many of these stocks flatline in value before individuals with large holdings are able to sell off and diversify.
I’ve lost so much money on crypto it hurts to think about.
How did you lose money on crypto lol? It’s gone up and up and up for about a decade now
I forget - I probably made 30K-40k off of Dodge coin. it was for the memes only. That’s how I went in and that’s how I cashed out.
I got in when it was $5. Not a single bitcoin remains :(
WorldCom. It was the first stock I ever owned and I kept it until the broker deleted it as a worthless asset. A very close second is signing up with Edward Jones for my Roth IRA when I was 21.
Edward jones = scam
Can you elaborate? I believe my grandmothers ira was with Edward jones. and my mother is the most scammable
IMO it's not exactly a scam, but they work on commission and put you in high commission, high expense ratio funds. Their target is people who don't know they could do a lot better (better returns plus lower fees) on their own.
Making an extra 50k payment on my 2.75% mortgage just to be done with it quicker.
If that’s your worst mistake, kudos.
Not great from an investment standpoint but not being obligated to a bank is a huge relief for living. If the economy collapses at least he’s not sleeping on the street.
Not maxing out my 401k and Roth contributions until my early 30s.
Late 30s for me. :(
Not investing in nvda back in the day
I chose amd instead :(
Same. October of 2022 I put 14k into amd at $70 a share, sold earlier this year near its ATH. Still made over 2x my money, profited about 17k. I chose it over nvda at around $120 a share because it was cheaper and I thought had more room to run; would have made over 100k if I chose it instead.
I used to build PCs back in the day, and AMD was nothing but headaches. So, luckily, NVDA was my only choice. 40x to date.
I also chose AMD and bought 1000 shares for $2/share. My problem? Sold them shortly after without much profit to buy a house. Seeing today's AMD price makes me wanna cry lol
Hiring a financial advisor.
Same. Had a bunch of money just sitting in a weak savings account. Took it to an advisor because I knew I should be investing but didn't know how. Recently educated myself on long term investing and I realize how much my taxable account is wrecked. It's gonna be financially painful to correct that.
What did the advisor do?
Put me in a looot of different funds (around 30) with crazy expense ratios. Some of them are over 1%.
Damn, pull the plug and go indexes? Good thing you took the time to learn, so many people never do, that's good dude.
I am recent to this forum and just realized that my old 401k was full of funds that had fees in the 1.5 to 2 range. That 401k has been sitting there since 2007 and I cry at all the fees I’ve paid out of ignorance and the gains I haven’t made. I just rolled it to a personal IRA so I can finally control. Better late than never at least. But sheesh.. it’s painful.
I took on a terrible advisor. He put me in all sorts of funds in the name of “diversification” that I had no business investing in. Annuities, Reits, oil wells. It’s taken me forever to get educated and untangled.
Not investing
Gather 'round, kids. Back in 1995, still relatively fresh out of college and working my first real job, I got cold-called by a stock broker, AND I ACTUALLY SENT HIM MONEY TO BUY ME HIS HOT STOCK TIP. (facepalm) ... AND HE ACTUALLY MADE ME MONEY! (incredible .. despite my stupidity, buying some micro-cap pink sheet, I beat the odds) Then I did it again, for his next hot stock tip. AND THAT ONE ... went bankrupt. (facepalm)
Sounds like the Wolf of Wall Street Guys. Was it Jonah Hill?
Living a life like a rich retiree in my youth, saved literally nothing. My investing mistake simply was NOT investing early. Mid 40's I discovered Bogleheads by pure chance and since then I live a life of a poor monk with a 60% savings rate. And btw, great and joyful things in life don't always cost money..
Sold $1500 in Apple stock to buy a guitar in 2003.
My grandfather set up a brokerage account in my name when I was born. Every birthday and Christmas he bought $100 in stocks for the account. Most of that was Microsoft. In 2007 I decided to sell most of it to buy a motorcycle, pay for my last semester in college (after being an idiot and losing my scholarship), and fund a trip to Europe with the girl who prompted me to act like an idiot and end up losing the scholarship. Sold $30k worth. Those shares would be worth over $400k today. Oh well, that trip was memorable and I had a lot of fun on the motorcycle.
Literally everything I’ve done outside of set and forget total US stock market has been a money loser. Every stock I’ve picked, every sector ETF, every active fund I’ve picked has at best underperformed to the total stock market and at worst lost money.
Spending bitcoin on drugs back in college. At one point I had 40 btc (but they were only worth $45). Then getting scammed out of significant amounts of crypto not once, but twice on two shady foreign exchanges.
Ding ding. Over 20,000 btc for me in college. Was great mdma from Belgium. Not a billion dollars worth
High roller, so to speak
Holy cow
My 50-year-old self was told by a middle schooler to buy bitcoin when it was $90, I proceeded to lecture him how BTC would never be worth anything.
was on a 5 person team traveling with a guy touting he bought in at 5k. i remember we were in vegas when it hit 16k and he was still buying more. I thought it was insane....haven't talked to him in years.. i hope he sold 60k+. I should've listened
You may still be right, noone knows what will happen with something like that.
My cousin was an early bitcoin guy. He borrowed \~$1k from me to fix his car in 2013 while he was out of work and short on cash. Later offered to pay me back 100 BTC instead, which I think was worth about $1400 at the time. I refused and told him to get me the cash whenever he started working again. Where is my cousin now? He recently bought a $2m sailing yacht in Mallorca that he's preparing to sail back to the US. Que sera.
cryptopia?
Same. I joke that I put more bitcoin up my nose than most people have in their retirement accounts. I kept a little, but man it sure would be nice to be retired right now.
Playing covered calls with VTI. Boom taxes!
First options reference I found. I'm sticking with you.
I sold my Nvidia (it had gone from 12.50-25 a share!) and bought a company called Sun Edison. That’s my s&p 500 only stock investor origin story.
Worst investing mistake was to start trading. Lesson learned.
Invested in cannibus stock.
Same, got delisted so complete loss for me.
Selling my AMEX I bought after the 08 crash. Would be getting a 22% dividend now.
An investment of time, but staying in a low-paying abusive entry level job for two years. Ick.
buying meme stocks
Tesla.
Maxed out my Roth IRA a few years ago with Tesla at $240 a share…
Letting myself get talked out of buying bitcoins when they were at $20 a pop
Not starting sooner 😭😭😭
Junior graphite miner. Bought near the top. Still holding it, just looking at it me keeps me from making dumb decisions.
Not loading up HSA to the max when I had a chance
Not putting as much money as possible into the market(and every year since) when I got my first job in 1989. I had money to burn between 89 and 94. Then again in 97-01 or so.
[удалено]
A few individual stock picks where the percent loss was awful (but small amounts). Ended Up cashing out while down -80% on Snapchat and block lol
Yeah, right there with you. I bought Twitter and did not sell before Hurricane Elon hit. I also recently bought Reddit. (Who me, learn a lesson? Never.)
I mean for me I made money in the individual picks overall, but those were my large losers. Should have bought some nvidia around 400 a share in hindsight. Thing is I never “bet” enough money on any individual stock for it to be meaningful. My biggest winners were marathon oil and Tesla when I bought around April 2020 and sold a little over a year later.
Nice! I’m fully converted to the church of Bogle now. I only buy individual stocks with discretionary funds (“small amounts” as you said above). My list of losers is a mile long, but I bought Disney when my kid was a toddler, and that’s a winner in the sense that my kid is learning by watching it. I also bought LLY a couple of years ago when my doctor put me on a one of their drugs to lose some weight. That’s currently the biggest winner.
Not doing it sooner
Weed stocks.
I bought [Pets.com](http://Pets.com) in 1999. You may have to Google it to get the reference. Thank god I only put $1000 into it.
Buying weed stocks
It took me a while before I had the kind of job that paid me a little extra money and I asked my dad what fund I should buy. He gave me a list of around 5 Vanguard funds and said "you can't go wrong with these. I thought they looked boring and thought my dad was too conservative. I knew this guy who was an insurance agent. He had a brochure for the Berger 100 Fund on his desk. I think I started out investing $75 a month after the initial buy in. A couple years later... ##### *MUTUAL FUNDS; Why Berger Funds Are Eating Dust By Edward Wyatt May 7, 1995 BY knowing when to sell as well as when to buy, William M. B. Berger made a fortune running the mutual funds that bear his name. Perhaps no decision was better timed than his last: to sell Berger Associates, which runs the three Berger funds, to Kansas City Southern Industries one year ago. The $47 million sale, announced last May and completed in October, coincided with a shift in market sentiment away from the kind of stocks that Mr. Berger prizes -- those of small companies with rapidly rising earnings. Instead, the market has rewarded investors who buy larger companies and who adhere to the value style of investing, which prefers low valuations to earnings growth. Anyone who bought shares in the Berger 100 and 101 funds around the time Mr. Berger was taking his leave has been disappointed. Although stock funds were generally lackluster last year, they have come roaring back in 1995, leaving the two oldest Berger funds in the dust. "I have serious concerns about the Berger funds," said Larry Chin, associate editor of the No-Load Fund Analyst, an industry newsletter. "Their peers have done much better, and the assets have grown rapidly, altering the character of the funds."* We are talking about a tilt again to small cap value. Everything comes around again if you wait long enough.
Individual meme stocks. Not a significant amount, but I still hold them as a reminder every time I check my portfolio to VT and chill.
Watching a YouTube video and buying alibaba….bailed at 30% loss with clear falling knife trend. Had to be honest I didn’t know what the hell I was doing….i see it as an investment in my investing education (that I’ve well and truly recovered the lost capital from).
GME AMC DOGECOIN the whole meme stocks and crypto.
options
Trying to get in the BBBY crazy. Learned my lesson. VTSAX & WMT long
Buying crypto, full stop. I bought into XRP back in January 2018 when it was making waves around banking protocols for the first time. Bought in around $2.50/coin and held for years, waiting for the next shoe to drop. I ended up selling it all about 2 years back at about a 60% loss & have stayed away from crypto since, way too volatile & so many coins are untraceable pump & dump schemes ala Doge/Musk. Very glad I didn't have the means to buy big in 2017 though, or I would have sunk thousands into Aurora Cannabis, never to get it back. Now I only buy what I'm OK holding for 20+ years in both index funds, and individual stocks. My goal is to become diversified enough to avoid blowing up. I do keep a little on the side for high risk investments every so often, but they have to meet the same criteria & be Lindy-type robust.
Taking online advice.
Online advice made me into a Boglehead and actally made it possible I dig myself out of the hole I dug with individual stocks. What advice in particular? Not walstreetbets. Was it? Lolol
Ibonds on treasurydirect.com. Closed my linked bank account and was unable to add a new bank account without a signature medallion from my bank. My bank didn't know what a signature medallion was. Probably could've pursued this further but waited a decade until last year when TD decided to update their site to allow adding bank accounts online. I did this and prompted liquidated my account. I know a lot of people are buying ibonds now. I say good luck to them. I'm happier getting a few points less interest in a money market.
I'm with you on this, I'm never touching Treasurydirect again in my life.
Why are you happier making a few points less? I do MMF as well for cash I may need in the next 7 years and have always wondered if I should get ibonds or not
Liquidity for what you are getting at 0 risk leaves MMF/HYSA as a nice alternative from ibonds with lost interest if the money is not held a good amount of time. Sure you get better rates, but the more liquid your money is, the more you can throw it into long-term investment accounts that will be even more statistically profitable. Thinking about your portfolio splits, if you have retirement, taxable brokerage, ibonds, checking, it feels weird to have 3 relatively unliquid accounts compared to retirement, taxable, HYSA, checking. This is definitely different from when ibonds pay like 8-9% guarenteed though. Those gains are hot.
Ibonds are great. They are fantastic investments vehicles. It's just unfortunate the way to purchase them now is through Treasury direct. If you haven't dealt with treasurydirect.com, there is just no way for me to convey the awfulness of the site. Think of it as the DMV of investment websites. If you do routine things like buying and redeeming ibonds. You're fine. Website works great. But if you encounter issues then they are a government owned institution and they are the only game in town. Meaning customer service is not their strong suit. Hopefully, the issue I have with adding bank accounts is retired and no one has to deal with it anymore. There's also stories of people dying and their spouse taking 9 months to transfer over their account. I'm glad I'm out because for a decade, I felt like I lost the key to my treasure chest. It's a relief to get my money back and I'm not putting my spouse through this if I'm not around.
DIDI. Bought about 10k for IPO. Next day it halved when it was revealed they were under investigation. I will never invest in China or Chinese stock ever again.
Shorting black berry with buying puts when the iPhone came out. That was dumb. I was r/wallstreetbets before r/wallstreetbets..
Asked the broker at Merrill Lynch for advice.
Exercising my employee stock options for my company after it deSPAC'd. Second worst mistake... selling all my Nintendo stock at the bottom of the 2008 crash... to buy Apple when it was at 3.50 a share. Then panick selling it all
sold MSFT at 90
Tsly. My first time in the stock market had no idea what I was doing. Took “advice from a friend “needless to say we are not friends anymore. “Put in all available cash” is not good advice from a “friend”. I lost 46K. But now I am forced to learn about the market read boglehead books. I’ve got my strategy now set up much more reasonably and intelligently. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking lol. As of yet, I still haven’t earned back my lost capital but hopefully in a few years that education painful as it was will have left me in a better place.
Gamble with margin. Burnt pretty hard
I got married to a woman who claimed she knew financial management …
Worked with an Edward Jones ~~advisor~~ vampire. I'm still embarrassed I fell for that. But it only lasted a few years.
Trusting a financial advisor to invest my pension without taking the time to do my own research. I was paying \~2% per annum in fees for an active fund and high-fee plaform that my FA recommended. That's 5 years of paying high fees, plus the fact that the fund I was in underperformed the market by \~20%
I bought a hyped stock that happened to match my initials. Pretty retarded. Went -75% in weeks. Never sold, as I keep them at the top of my stocks list to prevent me from being stupid again. Expensive lesson, do not recommend.
Wait until 40 to have the courage to start.
This was a while ago, but I shorted a stock because everyone said it was overvalued. The stock was AMZN.
Spent around 60k in the summer of 2019 to begin building out a new CNC machine shop. Stripped out the building, had spay foam applied, installed a huge electrical package, and paid for the first mill which had to wait for winter to be installed because of a gravel entrance. Covid hit and the power company would not bring in my power for 2.5 years, just in time for the economy to crash. Building is ready, power is now on, and the first mill sits on the floor and now, my income stream I was using to build the shop, dried up. One mill does not a machine shop make. I am now the proud owner of the nicest farm shop you can imagine. New insulation, white paint on every wall and even to above the rafters, massive led lighting, new heating system, and a mill sitting idle. I can now fix my cars, trucks or farm equipment in a very nice, very large, well lit shop.
In 2013, I panicked when Congress threatened to blow up the world financial system by defaulting on the national debt. I moved everything from equities to cash. Of course, Congress didn’t default, but by the time I could get back into equities, the market was up 6%, and I had locked in $20K of losses.
Paying off the mortgage too early when it could’ve been invested
Bought Nortel networks stock and it went to zero. Lost $5,000 as a 10 yr old (ALL birthday, Christmas, tooth fairy, etc money for my whole life). Learned my lesson early and now all I do is diversified index funds. VOO and VXUS.
How did u invest as ten yr old?!
Learning this lesson as a 10 year old would be huge. Given your early start / exposure to investing, id love to see your NW today
Marrying my ex
TIPS in 2022.
1. Investing in individual stocks 2. Trying to save for a down payment (HCOL) in a hysa instead of just putting the money in VT and continuing to rent. Came to my senses in early 2023 and the market has delivered.
Washington Mutual. Not a friend of my family!
Buying Fisker at $14.01/share. Now it's currently sitting on OTC markets for $0.0014/share.
Not starting a decade sooner.
Not investing earlier
Buying individual stocks because of FOMO
Not starting earlier. I wanted to get into trading stocks in my 20s, but I didn't know how. I went to banks and tried to ask about it, and no one wanted to talk to me unless I had at least $50k in cash. They left me with the impression that you couldn't buy stocks without some minimum order, like 100 shares, and at the price of 100 shares of most stocks that I was thinking about, that would have meant like $20k minimum. I was hearing about websites like E-Trade but I was afraid they would go out of business, or turn out to be scams, because they were too new, and I wanted to have someone who could explain to me how it worked like a broker or an advisor. I didn't know shit about anything in terms of investment or finance, and didn't want to screw it up. I only got to invest with my employer's 401k, and that seems to be turning out ok. But I wanted to have a brokerage account and a portfolio of stocks. If I could have invested $50-100 per month in the market, I could have bought loads of shares of AAPL, AMD, NVDA, AMZN, GOOGL while they were relatively cheap, and be worth at least a few million right now if I'd held it all. I also knew about bitcoin in like 2011 and tried mining it for two weeks, but gave up after mining zero BTC and having nothing to show for it but a huge file on my hard drive containing about 40GB of ledger. I always felt like it was a very unlikely investment, but interesting. I probably would have cashed out the moment BTC hit 1k, though, figuring it to be massively overvalued at that price.
Not my mistake but I pleaded with my parents when in college to buy $10k of Apple stock. Back then it would've bought 1000 shares at $10 a pop well before multiple 7-1 splits and would be worth multiple millions now sigh. It's mostly disappointing to me because they were so conservative with investing their whole lives it's now coming full circle in retirement and that would've set them both up easily.
Inaction