What was your costliest investment mistake?

Discuss all general (i.e. non-personal) investing questions and issues, investing news, and theory.
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LowER
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by LowER »

Ex-wife. By far.....
heyyou
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by heyyou »

While earning $20K a year, I put $9K into a real estate limited partnership (LP) about 1980, then received $16K whenever it sold within a year. Thinking that I knew what I was doing, I put the entire sum and my $50K inheritance into the next LP, and lost it all in 1983?, including having to pay back taxes on previous tax deductions. About then, my employer started to offer a 401k with two equity funds, Fido Magellan and S&P500 index. Sometime in the last decade, I looked at what that money in S&P500 shares would have been worth--it was equal to near my portfolio value at that time. I'm fine now with my pension and portfolio, but DW and I can't afford a second home on the Big Island of Hawaii. We could if I had not made a greedy mistake in 1981.

The silver lining is after escaping with only a few weeks pay in my checking account in 1983, I was then highly motivated to save as much as possible after that. I was well positioned when equities shot up in the late 1980s through the 1990s, enough to retire at age 55, 25 years after my costliest mistake. By then, DW and I were living on half of our gross income. In retrospect, that was practice for retirement living.
texasdiver
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by texasdiver »

In 1995 I bought a new 27' SeaSport Sea Master cabin cruiser with a Volvo diesel outdrive to use as a dive boat in Alaska. By the time I was done I had well over 100 grand into it. Five years later I sold it to a charter boat fisherman in Sitka. I don't even want to think about what that boat cost me per hour of use when the depreciation, fuel, maintenance, and accessories are all added up. But it was fun.

Never buy boats as an investment and especially never buy NEW boats or boats that sit in the salt water year round.

The trick is to find a friend who already has the boat and needs people to help use it.
ZumZabo
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by ZumZabo »

texasdiver wrote:In 1995 I bought a new 27' SeaSport Sea Master cabin cruiser with a Volvo diesel outdrive to use as a dive boat in Alaska. By the time I was done I had well over 100 grand into it. Five years later I sold it to a charter boat fisherman in Sitka. I don't even want to think about what that boat cost me per hour of use when the depreciation, fuel, maintenance, and accessories are all added up. But it was fun.

Never buy boats as an investment and especially never buy NEW boats or boats that sit in the salt water year round.

The trick is to find a friend who already has the boat and needs people to help use it.
I had a friend in South Florida who bought a boat. He justified it by saying that he loves fishing and he will eat lots of fish that he catches. He told me after doing the math he figured his fish cost him about $1,200 per pound.
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TravelforFun
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by TravelforFun »

Selling Apple and American Airlines too early.
haginile
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by haginile »

Bought GTAT believing in the support provided by AAPL...
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William4u
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by William4u »

Buying individual stocks recommended by the Motley Fool website way back in the day.

They are still "pushing" individual stocks, like in this article from yesterday...
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... r-tha.aspx

I'm glad I know better now.
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oncorhynchus
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by oncorhynchus »

Individual tech stocks in the 90s in my nascent Roth IRA: Lucent, Cisco, Excite, Yahoo... Like many others, I rode them up into the stratosphere, then into the smoking hole in the ground. On the plus side, that was at the beginning of my investment timeline, and I learned a lot about my limitations and tolerances.

o
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Toons
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Toons »

ZumZabo wrote:
Toons wrote:Drinking Budweiser for a couple decades instead of Investing in Anheuser-Busch :happy
Toons, that is extremely amusing to me. I just started reading this thread, forgive me if I am tardy to respond. I have a friend whose father sold a veterinarian business back in the 1960s if memory serves. He gave his wife $5000 of it and told her to do with it what she wanted to. She bought Anheuser-Busch stock reinvest the dividends and held it for decades. I'm not sure what it's worth these days but the dividends are multiples of her original investment. They built a really nice house for cash using that investment, and I doubt it was the majority of it. The husband's nickname is Bud and they call it the house that Bud built. I've never consumed beer at their house that was not an Anheuser-Busch product.
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itstoomuch
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by itstoomuch »

1. Selling AAPL on a 25% loss. ( in at 40, out at 30)
2. then a few years later, Selling AAPL on a 30% loss. ( in at 60, out at 45)

Didn't have much money then and could not DCA. I held way beyond my 15% loss rule. Really like AAPL as a company. But as a consumer, I can't keep up. And technology waits for no one.
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SteveKL
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by SteveKL »

William4u wrote:Buying individual stocks recommended by the Motley Fool website way back in the day.
Former Fool here. I haven't bought an individual equity in years, and lost more than a few bucks on some misguided Fool picks. I seem to recall one of their newsletters touting Toll Brothers (the home-builder) around '06 or '07.

But in the "The Fool is not always foolish" department, I still hold a couple of their picks from the bad old days: Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) up 12.3x my cost and Middleby Corp (MIDD) up 8.2x my cost. Even a blind squirrel...
TroyMcClure
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by TroyMcClure »

In 2001, as a 21 years old, I decided to put my university studies on hold for a while to go and work for Apple computers at their largest location in Europe in Cork, Ireland (I'm French). I absolutely loved it, nice people, nice atmosphere, exciting environment to work in, cool gadgets and product testing and whatnot. We'd go to the office on weekends and have massive LAN parties playing Unreal Tournament, Warcraft, etc. It was all very geeky and cool. We'd also go on trips with friends in West Cork and along the west coast, Dingle, Connemara, etc. Beautiful.

Problem was, this was right in the middle of the dotcom bubble burst, and quite a bit before Apple got cool again. There was no iPhone, iPo/ad and OS X was just released in March of that year. Apple was not doing well at all, and of course got hammered in the tech crash. Shortly after I joined it was announced that all salaries would be "frozen", that there would be no salary increases in the foreseeable future and no bonuses. At the end of 2001 or in 2002, I can't remember, they offered us 100 AAPL shares to make up for it, provided we would open a brokerage account and fill in an endless bundle of forms. We would have to do that by ourselves as we would get no support along the way.
Now remember I was in my early 20s with no financial education and no idea about stocks except for what I was reading and hearing in the news about tech companies going belly up, leaving employees with stacks of worthless shares (remember boo.com?). The share price at that time was about 15-20 bucks, I didn't understand the forms that needed to be filled, I thought these things were basically just going to be trouble because they had their value divided by 4 in the months before I joined; so I decided I'd forget about it and go to the pub instead, bitching about paperwork and the tech bubble over a pint of Murphy's. I stayed at Apple a couple of years till early 2003 when I decided to go back to school, without getting my shares.

We all know where Apple is now, in the meantime the shares were split twice, once as a 2-for-1 (my 100 shares would have become 200) and another time as a 7-for-1 (=1,400 shares).
Now I'm not entirely sure my calculation is right but I think that would be worth roughly ~150k USD today...

I don't regret it, I would totally have gotten rid of them way before they got to their current value because I needed the money to go back to school, but still, the story makes me smile. I didn't really lose any money because I didn't pay for anything, it's all just opportunity cost.

Another mistake I made was not investing in anything after I started working again. Once more, no money lost as such, just missed out on compounding. I saved a lot but I just had it sitting around. Actually I almost got lured into giving it to a "financial advisor" who would have put it into a stupid offshore mutual fund with improbable loadings and expense ratio. I caught myself on time, thankfully, and finally did the right thing which in turn was my most worthy investment decision.

PS: I really enjoy this thread.
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xyz12
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by xyz12 »

In 2006 I was suckered into purchasing a Whole Life Insurance Policy from an Northwestern Mutual agent. Cancelled it after 18 months after figuring out that it was a lousy investment with expensive insurance. Cost me $8,000 :oops:

The silver lining is that it prompted me to really educating myself and hanging around on this board. In the grand scheme of things, it was a very cheap lesson.
RoxieII
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by RoxieII »

Invested in a company stock purchase plan that let employees buy at a 5% discount. Left the company and let the account sit.
Several years later the very large, very well known company closed. Bye, bye 50 grand.
samuck
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by samuck »

The fact that I started to invest in 2013 - and not in 2009.
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ERMD
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by ERMD »

don't have a huge timeline to draw from, but i worked for three years at a former employer without putting a cent towards a 403b, despite a very generous match in place. i remember telling people the interest on my debt was so high (~8%), it didn't make any sense to invest, because i couldn't expect higher returns from my investments.. and that the employer match was irrelevant i guess? :oops:
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PedsDoc
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by PedsDoc »

HongKonger wrote:Paying monthly into a managed retirement fund for a decade only to discover that after 10 years it was worth less than if I had put the cash under my bed. I tried to cancel it and get what funds I could out. I was only allowed to take what would remain after the managers fees for the remaining 25 years of the policy. I got roughly 30% of my money back while the balance is slowly year by year being taken to zero. This was my sole serious retirement savings for that entire decade.

I could still cry just thinking about it.
I cringed just reading this. Had to read parts of it twice to fully grasp how much they "stole" from you in fees! Wow!
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William4u
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by William4u »

SteveKL wrote:
William4u wrote:Buying individual stocks recommended by the Motley Fool website way back in the day.
Former Fool here. I haven't bought an individual equity in years, and lost more than a few bucks on some misguided Fool picks. I seem to recall one of their newsletters touting Toll Brothers (the home-builder) around '06 or '07.

But in the "The Fool is not always foolish" department, I still hold a couple of their picks from the bad old days: Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) up 12.3x my cost and Middleby Corp (MIDD) up 8.2x my cost. Even a blind squirrel...
Yup. Some of my Fool stocks did okay, but many did not (e.g., Lucent, Cisco, and Yahoo were a bit painful to hold). Overall, I would have been much better off in an S&P 500 fund, and it would have saved a lot of time on paperwork for spin-offs, mergers, dividends, etc.

I finally got rid of all my individual stocks this year after 20 years or so. It feels good!
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by abuss368 »

Simple: Individual stocks that were invested in because we believed we were "smarter" than other investors in the market.
John C. Bogle: “Simplicity is the master key to financial success."
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tylerdurden
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by tylerdurden »

1. Swing trading individual stocks for a few months.
2. Using a financial advisor that put me in high-cost, front-loaded mutual funds that under-performed.
3. Spending too much on cars during my younger years.

First two items are no longer an issue. I'm still a car guy, so I still sometimes make unwise financial choices in that area.
"The things you own end up owning you." -TD
mws13
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by mws13 »

1. I grew up in Philly and I left Vanguard 20+ years ago for Shearson Lehman Brothers as a money manager. I worked at Shearson for 9 months or so before graduate school where they teach you how to be "smarter than the market". :wink: Happy to be back at Bogleheads aka Vanguard.

2. Invested in a "Bulgarian TV Station" private placement. 22 years of blissful marriage, but my wife still pulls that one out when she needs it!

3. Laughed at the comments about drinking Bud versus investing in Bud. However, the golf obsession got out of control, and golf is a terrible investment if I had been investing in golf instead of spending on golf....

Low overhead + Vanguard + real estate in high density/demand/good school areas is boring, but it works and I sleep great....
theghetto
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by theghetto »

Bought 4 pot-related penny stocks a couple days after Colorado legalized marijuana. I read the pump and dump warnings and decided to ignore them. The day after the purchase, one of them was up several hundred percent and I was thinking I had really fooled everyone. I'd hold these thousands of shares and all they had to do was go up a few dimes and I'd be thousands richer. Luckily I only invested 900 bucks in total. Today they are worth $120 combined.

(And I didn't start investing until my 30's. I'm so grateful for this website.)
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abuss368
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by abuss368 »

On the flip side, our smartest investment and financial decision was to return to Vanguard where we will stay.
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vv19
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by vv19 »

samuck wrote:The fact that I started to invest in 2013 - and not in 2009.
Same here! :oops:
Nozzle
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Nozzle »

Bought a new condo in '03 for $192K with no $ down. Steep appreciation. HELOC (yay, free money!). Refi in '05 with appraised value of $345K (!!). Started renting it out while considering selling it. By the time I listed it, the market was in freefall - and I never caught up. Bottomed out around $110K in '08. It has finally recovered past my purchase price, but nowhere near what I owe (due to HELOC then cash-out refi).

Had I priced it right in '05 I could have been six figures ahead instead of six figures behind...
ShiftF5
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by ShiftF5 »

Many many years ago when cell phones were just coming out a fellow salesman in our office asked me if I thought he should buy a boat OR a cell phone. I told him a cell phone.

I bought a cell phone and he bought a boat. He ended up getting fired for not returning customer calls in a timely manner.

I guess that would be his biggest investment mistake.

Me? I've got so many Im not sure which one is best.
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Go Blue 99
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Go Blue 99 »

My biggest potential mistake was, ironically, being too financially conservative when buying our home. Our income wasn't high enough at the time to afford a house, so we purchased a townhome in the same subdivision. While we have seen very good appreciation, the homes in our subdivision have seen even more (our neighborhood is one of the hottest in our city).

Since then, our income has increased more than we thought it would. In the end, I wish we had splurged on the house, even though money would have been tight for the first few years.
sk.dolcevita
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by sk.dolcevita »

Buying high, selling low.

Simple and consistent.
2Birds1Stone
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Purchased $35,000 in physical Ag/Au in January 2013........after which it has plummeted -50%/30%

I went "all in" like an idiot and kept trying to catch a falling knife. This was before I discovered BH and indexing.

I still have those PM's but now they make up 28% of my portfolio, and I am not ready to sell at this point.

Call me stupid, but I don't feel comfortable trading them for equities at this point, however I am putting in $2000/month into stocks/bonds.
happyjuice8000
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by happyjuice8000 »

Using a fee-based financial advisor at a prestigious Wall Street-based firm with wood paneled offices...

It went way beyond the usual 1% per year in "advisory fees." These are the only fees which show up on quarterly statements, which is why these were the only fees disclosed. Another 0.5-1% annually was 'invisibly' deducted to pay mutual funds and 'managed account' stock pickers. Another 0.25-0.5% annually in incentives paid by mutual funds back to the financial advisors (which it turns out is 100% legal). NOT disclosed on the statements. And my bonds were sold to me at 1-2% premiums over market price, which I never would have known had I not started looking up the bid-ask prices on the open market. Also, because of the ridiculous churn in the accounts to try to stay ahead of the benchmarks, I owed another 2-4% of assets per year in capital gains taxes. They'd say, "but paying capital gains means I made money for you!" This is why my financial advisor drives a new Mercedes, and I drive an old Nissan.

I was fleeced for 5% to 6% per year by using your typical 1% fee financial advisor. I still have many friends and colleagues who use this firm, because they still believe they are only paying 1% and don't see these other hidden fees and taxes on their statements.

Even if I had made dozens of market timing errors a year, I would still have outperformed most fee-based financial advisors, especially as those fees and taxes served as a heavier and heavier anchor on my portfolio.

Please learn from my mistakes! This is what "staying the course" means to me. No matter how scared you are, you are doing just fine on your own. If you need help, reach out to the wonderful folks on Bogleheads.org, or pay someone for an hour of their time. Never pay someone a percentage - ever!
TMCD75
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by TMCD75 »

Not making my advisor take the five grand I had brought with me for the sole purpose of investing every penny of it in Ford stock. It was selling for way less than 2 dollars per share during this period, around the 07' or 08' time frame. She balked and said no way I'm letting you do this and I relented to her pressure.

I know buying individual stocks are not the Bogle Head way but it sure cost me a ton of money because Ford trades for over 16 dollars per share now.
Rodc
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Rodc »

Goofing off in grad school cost me two or three years of income and a two or three years delayed start in investing. But I had some really good times climbing, backpacking, skiing, all of which skills I still use so not at all a complete waste. And I'll be FI by age 60, so not the end of the world. Indeed could retire now if push came to shove.

Second, I could have saved more aggressively the first 10 years. Again, not a horrible mistake, but might have made FI come a year or so earlier (have not run the numbers).
We live a world with knowledge of the future markets has less than one significant figure. And people will still and always demand answers to three significant digits.
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ashleyk23
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by ashleyk23 »

ny_rn wrote:I had the intention of funding my Roth IRA. I contributed to this account at Merrill for ~ 2 years. The money was not invested in anything. It sat in a money market account the entire time. :shock:
This was my same mistake. Another mistake was wasting money on loaded funds at American Funds. A third was leaving the rest of my taxable savings in a low yield CD and money market account.
I'd probably have double if not triple my money if I had discovered bogleheads back when I had started accumulating wealth. :(

Ashley <3
anonyvestor
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by anonyvestor »

Cash-drag.

I tend to over-research/over-plan to the point of inactivity. So my cash positions have been excessive and prolonged during periods the cash comes in.

That being said, this little vice of mine is also my virtue. I have kept funds for decades, dampened losses as much as gains, and can't recall a purchase I regret.
flybynite
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by flybynite »

bs010101 wrote:LNUX. Fortunately I had just started working and didn't have very much money.
Funny! RHAT was one of my luckier (I wouldn't say better). WCOM was the one that convinced me to stop individual stock picking - and later stocks at all (outside index funds).
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Maynard F. Speer
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Maynard F. Speer »

It's always been over-analysis and lack of conviction ..

If investing were a videogame, I'd probably be 25% invested in Russia now (rather than 2%)

Making an accurate prediction isn't as hard as people think; converting it into a meaningful return is a completely different story
"Economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions." - John Maynard Keynes
sawhorse
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by sawhorse »

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread. It takes courage to do that. If I had made some of these mistakes, I would probably be too ashamed and humiliated to tell anyone.

A follow up question: How did this affect your personal life, marriage, and family life? I read that the most common cause of divorce is not infidelity but rather financial problems.
Ignatious P. Daily
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Ignatious P. Daily »

in 2003 and again in 2007 I purchased rental properties, 100% financed, on a very tight cash flow with no emergency fund. When the market tanked and I lost both renters I was forced into bankruptcy. Fortunately, I had a strong 401k that I did not touch. Within 9 months of BK my income from work doubled and stayed in the $220k - $300k range from 2011 to today. I learned three valuable lessons from my early adventures.

1: Leverage cuts both ways (avoid leverage)
2: Get rich slowly and methodically through diversification
3: The purpose of money is consumption... its nice that my balance sheet value increased with the rental properties, but when it went bust I still had to pay for my personal housing, food, etc...

So, when I had my jump in income with the clean slate from my BK, I got to work more methodically. I invested in a simple diversified index fund portfolio. Lived the same lifestyle that I had lived before my income doubled, and saved. This last year, due to savings and investment gains, I pulled the trigger on buying a house for cash (prepaying a lifetime of housing consumption). I have no debt, a strong 401k, and a savings rate that is borderline absurd (>40%, often > 55%). I spend my time focused on family and things I enjoy doing.

I will likely continue on this path for 5 more years until age 40, then I will re-evaluate my profession for alignment with what I enjoy doing and gain personal gratification from. I look to have a strong passive income by then. Who knows, I may stay in my current professoion well into my 40's and simply retire by 50. The options are open.

To answer the last question... this all caused stress in my life and with my wife, but we are a team and she had my back the whole way. Thats love for you!
selftalk
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by selftalk »

Listening to Bob Brinker in 2000 saying to buy stocks as the counter trend rally is real soon. It never came. He was right in calling the top but wrong in getting back in. What good is that? No good I`m afraid. I don`t listen to any more gurus at all now. If they knew they`d own the world in quick order. It`s the same way at the race track I`m sure. Listen to yourself.
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randomizer
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by randomizer »

Failing to save at all for most of my life is by far my biggest mistake.

Other than that I haven't made any significant "investment" mistakes per se so far (I screwed up a tax loss harvest in a minor way; chalk it up as a lesson learned). I think I have made bad choices related to other financial services though (things related to banking, mortgages, transfers etc). I just hope that the influence of the Boglehead philosophy (things like saving, keeping costs low etc) do enough good to get me to retirement before I fall apart.
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Sandtrap
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Sandtrap »

Not becoming an informed "Boglehead" 4 decades ago when I was making substantial money and spending it on substantial things :shock: :oops:
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mrtiger
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by mrtiger »

Buying oil ETF's ( UCO and USO)few years ago thinking that crude can not go below $80.00 . I lost 60% of the investment :shock:
diy60
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by diy60 »

Liquidating my entire portfolio to all cash in early 4Q07, and then waiting almost 5 years to get back in.
friar1610
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by friar1610 »

Starting my investing career by investing in a front-loaded, high expense mutual fund bought through USPA-IRA (now renamed "First Command".) The fund, a "contractual" one managed by Fidelity, actually performed well, although I would have been so much better off with Vanguard S&P 500 Index. On the plus side, since this plan was set up for recurring monthly investments over a 10-15 year period, I learned the value of regular investing by allotment from my pay before I had the money in hand, so it wasn't a completely bad experience, just too costly.

First Command targets military folks (as I was at the time.) If you are a military person reading this and First Command ever invites you to a dinner presentation near your base or post, run, don't walk in the other direction, preferably to a bookstore where you can buy "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing" or one of the other excellent investing books recommended on this site.
Friar1610 | 50-ish/50-ish - a satisficer, not a maximizer
Liveware Problem
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by Liveware Problem »

Here's a good one: wasn't invested in 2008 when financial crisis happened. Bought a fund near bottom as I thought it would be a good investment in a miracle of insight (don't recall which fund). Happily sold it after a few months when it had returned close to 40% (as I can recall, the details are a bit hazy) :oops: Didn't enter the market again until 2014 :oops: :oops: (paying down mortgage instead).
equiv-tech
primetime5
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by primetime5 »

Great question. I didn't make money until my 30's so I guess I would have to say that Google's IPO is my greatest mistake. I was in college and had $0. I should've either been born earlier or taken out a loan to invest. It's the only time in my life where I look back and can honestly say I had 100% confidence in an investment. Alas, it just wasn't meant to be. :oops:
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KlingKlang
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by KlingKlang »

Cashed out of Vanguard Short Term Investment-Grade Bond Fund in October 2008. I held on to all of my stock and longer term bond funds (actually added to them), but this fund was supposed to be 'almost as safe as a money market' (not). I lost about $6200 and the fund recovered rapidly in 2009.

Runner Up: Had my IRA 100% in bank CDs during the first half of the 1990's and in Vanguard Asset Allocation fund for the second half. CD rates were pretty good back then but nothing like the stock market run up. Barely broke even on the Vanguard Asset Allocation fund.
Last edited by KlingKlang on Fri Mar 31, 2017 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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FreeAtLast
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by FreeAtLast »

I have mentioned this error before in this forum. Two decades ago, I was really thinking hard about investing a goodly sum in Vanguard's Health Care sector fund. By some sort of convoluted, self-deluded analysis of the prospects for the American health care system over the next ten years, while ignoring every thing my gut was telling me, I talked myself out of writing the check and never pulled the trigger. Ouch! :oops:
Illegitimi non carborundum.
limeyx
Posts: 308
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 5:34 pm

Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by limeyx »

Not understanding a company ESPP plan until the last minute where by a pecularity of stock swings we could buy for $1.90 and sell for $15-$20 (same day sale) for 2 years...I got in for the last 9 months or so but by then everyone else had figured it out too and the pickings were less

At the beginning just a few figured it out (and didnt say anything) and were pulling $30K/month.... :oops:
ROIGuy
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Re: What was your costliest investment mistake?

Post by ROIGuy »

I have made numerous stock picking mistakes over the years. One hurts to much to talk about, but my favorite could of/ should of was TASR.
My wife told me about the company (April 2003..I think), Bought $2,000 worth of shares at around 13.00 and then maybe a month later another $2,000 worth at around $15.00 a share.

A few months later it got up to around $20 a share, then some news broke and I sold it around $18.00 a share. A little profit which was nice.
The stock went all they way down to about $4.75 a share 6 months after I had made my initial purchases. Which makes me a genius.

From the bottom (I told my wife if she had only told me about this company six months it would of been a whole different story), it then went up to $150.00 a share / split 3 for 1 / then went up to $120 a share / split 2 for 1 and then went up to about $120 a share again.
Then it crashed all the way back to $4.00 a share.

Bottom line... If I had held my original investment, that $4,000 would of grown to about $120,000 in just 18 months. If my wife had told me about it six months later that investment would of been worth $450,000.
Of course we all know I would of sold it at the peak...LOL
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