What were your biggest financial mistakes?

[Anonymous]

Getting a PhD and going into academia. My raises haven’t kept up with inflation and I’m underpaid for my education level, yet I chose a field that doesn’t have well paying options in industry either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1997, some friends and I had a stock "club" where we pretended to put money in stocks and watched what they did. I had $2000 in pretend money invested in Apple, which was deep in the depths of its John Scully days at the time.

Had I put $2000 of real money in AAPL, it would be worth about $3 million today.

Oops.

Had you invested in 2007 when Iphone came out, you still would have made money. I think every person at the presentation bought apple stock the next day.

Total BS but illustrative of why picking individual stocks is a fool’s errand.

It was NOT at all obvious in 2007 that the iPhone would become the winner in the cell phone market or even remain a viable product. (Bezos is a genius too – anyone remember the Amazon Fire phone??)

There’s a famous clip on YouTube of Steve Ballmer mocking the iPhone when it first came out, saying that it was too expensive for the general public and would never appeal to business customers because it didn’t have a keyboard. Ballmer was an insider’s insider in the tech industry and is himself now one of the 10 wealthiest people on Earth, and yet he had no idea what would happen in the cell phone market.

But this is what idiots like the PP do: look at a clear winner now, rewrite history to imagine that this was always obvious, and use that as a justification to buy individual stocks, imagining they know more than billionaire hedge fund managers and similar market participants who determine prices.

Outside of very true rare exceptions such as Warren Buffett, anyone who beats the market long-term by individual stock picking is L-U-C-K-Y!

Actually I have dove extremely well picking individual stocks. I also have a bunch of people I pay to help conduct due diligence on potential and ongoing investments.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you paying time based advisor/s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Telling my kids I would pay for any college they got into

You are not alone in this. I also added that I would pay for advanced degrees for any program they got into. Two are not interested. But my youngest definitely is interested in an advanced degree.

[Anonymous]

This forum is gonna hate it, but hearing about buying Bitcoin for under a dollar back in 2011 and not jumping on it. Worse, not buying Ethereum in 2014 for a few dollars and ignoring it.

All because I thought crypto was a scam. Then seeing these same friends buy nice homes just being selling their Bitcoin.

[Anonymous]

Selling AAPL stock instead of holding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Selling AAPL stock instead of holding.

Eek that’s always a long term hold. I bought back in 2004 and held and am doing pretty well.

[Anonymous]

Voting Democrat. Never again.

[Anonymous]

When I was like 27 I got suckered of those phone stock scams. The company ended up getting in all sorts of trouble and people got arrested, but I was out like $2,000 which at the time was a big deal. I felt so stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was like 27 I got suckered of those phone stock scams. The company ended up getting in all sorts of trouble and people got arrested, but I was out like $2,000 which at the time was a big deal. I felt so stupid.

Don't feel bad, all investors have been burnt by penny stocks scams or the like. Be glad you were 27 and only lost $2000. I was steered by close friends into a medical investment in my mid 40s, lost nearly $38k on that dog stock. I averaged down and later listened to the conference calls which slowly became abysmal. Disappointing lesson. Cambridge Heart CAMH

[Anonymous]

My DH became a Fed over a decade ago. He immediately started maxing out his TSP but it took 2 years for him to realize that the default setting was the G fund. 😟

[Anonymous]

Running for president and losing. Very expensive mistake

[Anonymous]

In 2000 I sold $5k in the Vanguard Index 500 and split it between Janus Enterprise and Janus Global Life Sciences. Floundered for a decade and then I bailed. Should have left it in the index.

Dad/financial advisor: “If that’s the most expensive mistake you make, count yourself lucky.”

[Anonymous]

Being a SAHM
Not standing up to my husband when he insisted on spending money on things we couldn’t really afford

[Anonymous]

My ex pulled out all our Roth savings from the market in 2009. I didn't realize this included my funds. We got divorced and I moved on. I remembered the fund in 2016 when buying a house and figured out that 7k had been sitting not invested for over 7 years. I wish I had paid more attention to that account and kept on top of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Running for president and losing. Very expensive mistake

Just set up GoFundMe and ask your fools oops followers to make you whole.