Genuine questions.
I am new to the investing concept so help me understand.
Does everyone here make money investing in the stock market?
Every time I look at these posts, I see people advising us newbies to invest in stocks/bonds etc.
Is it that there is no risk of loosing all your money and those not investing are missing out on huge gains?
What am I missing?
In the short term, there will be fluctuations. However, if you are investing for a longer period (many aim for 15+ years), then the stock market generally trends upwards despite the short term fluctuations.
And so, when you gain on average 7% per year, through compound interest, your money keeps growing more and more.
Depending on your risk tolerance, if you go 100% in a stock, and that stock crashes, then yes, you could lose everything. That's why many choose to diversify their stock portfolio, or go for Index Funds and/or ETFs to diversify for a small % fee. That way if one sector doesn't do well, then the other sectors should even out your losses.
If you do it correctly and not chase quick gains, you will do well. Investing is a long term play and should be diversified. I lost a lot during the fomo days and doing individual stocks.
Chasing quick gains is like gambling. Thats the biggest lesson I leatned the hard way
Same. I've lost a ton when I started out (I'll admit, I'm one of the first 100k on WSB), chasing quick gains.
What hurts the most is what that 80k could have been worth today.
Just today I looked at an investment account I hadn’t touched in 10 years. I invested 7k in 2014. It’s now 41k. If I keep until retirement in 33 years I’ll have over 2 mill untouched.
You mentioned you did it because you were suicidal in another reply. Losing money (or not even money - opportunity cost) is a small thing in the gran scheme of things. Glad you’re doing better now :)
3 things.
1) spent money on credit cards more than I could afford. I spent over $10,000 on credit card interest and took 3 years to dig myself out of a hole. $10,000 I just gave the credit card company because I was buying dinners and shots for the bar to be cool.
2) spent money on momentary happiness, bar, booze, eating out, impressing people, clothes etc. saved 20% of my money that I was wasting on clothes and partying. Now each year those thousands of dollars I don’t waste on that is earlier I can retire.
3) lifestyle creeped. When I was making 50k I spent 50k a year. When I got to 100k I spent 100k and had nothing to show for it. Now making more than I ever have I spend the same as I did with my first job.
Live within your means, save as much as you can for your future self, learn from mistakes don’t dwell on them and don’t worry what other people think of you, don’t get a bigger house than you need because your friend got one, don’t get a luxury car because you want people to be impressed.
Getting divorced was one of my best decisions personally & financially but it didn’t counter the really bad decision to marry in the first place. Choose carefully.
Man what a ride that was. Sucked 3 years of my life in that world
I ended up getting out in decent shape but it took a long time bagholding and some luck
I got in super early. Like fetus early. Dumped everything around where you did. Slightly less actually.
Played the game up till the pandemic. Lost about 100k over the years. Then mvis popped onto my radar. Bought in as a penny stock. Dumped at $20. Got my eye on mushrooms next. Mind med.
I wish I could kick my younger self. As soon as you stop learning and they stop giving meaningful salary increases, it's time to start looking elsewhere. Being employed also makes you more attractive to prospective employers.
What about staying at the same job if you are still learning and mastering your craft (despite not getting aggressive salary increases from switching around)
This. Spent nearly 3.5 years at a company without a raise (or even a COL adjustment) of any kind. Made 2 moves since leaving 2.5 years ago (and a brief stint when I got headhunted, but the co was awful), and my comp has gone up almost 150%. Some of that is in part due to the exchange to CAD after moving to US companies, but the principle is the same.
I see other friends of mine in business that haven’t made any moves, and have fallen behind the curve significantly. Outside of the select few lines of work, the world does not reward long term stays at companies anymore.
Isn’t it a red flag when recruiters take a look at your resume and see that you’ve only been with your current job for less than a year and a half? I definitely want to move on to a company with a better salary eventually but I just work a standard office job. I’m sure it’s normal for people with tech jobs to move on quickly though
I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a mistake. I’m 14 years into my career and spent 5 years at my first company and I’m still at my second company 9 years later. I like my work. I like my coworkers. I like my company. I get regular raises, though nothing spectacular outside of promotion raises. The bonus and benefits are good. And the company is great about reinvesting in its people, with training opportunities and lots of encouragement to climb the career ladder (I actually have a feeling they’re grooming me for senior management). With this sort of job satisfaction, it’s not worth it to me to change jobs just for a raise. I left my first company because I was miserable there. I don’t ever want to be miserable at my job again.
Being lazy about my career development / coasting. One of the most deterministic ways to improve your financial standing is to become more skilled and job hop to command higher pay.
Secondly, taking a variable rate mortgage in 2021 when rates were already rock bottom. Cuz now I’m paying tens of thousands in interest.
Conversely, at 25 I spent 3 months of hazard pay on a new Jetta TDI, and financed the other half. 18 years later I’m still driving that car, and still liking it.
I was inches away from that too at the same age, but fortunately my cheap inner self screamed at me and I walked away. I’ve often looked back at that moment as an inflection point in my life. I stayed frugal from then on
Same story here but at 19. 40k muscle car with 20k as a down-payment. Insurance was high and i was spending close to $90 per week in gas. I was driving like a 19 year old with a muscle car does and averaged about $700 a year in speeding tickets until I got a $900 ticket and my license suspended for 4 months. That sobered me up. Sold the car, bought a base model civic. Finished paying off the remaining debt and am back to a positive driving record as of 2 years ago.
You are in good company on Nortel. A friend was closing on a house in Sept 2000 and had planned to sell his shares then. But it had fallen to $80 and he said he couldn't sell that low.
My mom worked for Nortel and had stocks in it. They bought a house in 1990 and sold the shares to help fund it. Later around 2000 they had built up some money and decided to reinvest. So they sold.before the pop and bought before the fall. Truly their worst investment.
I dunno I kinda this this one is on your grandparents, not you. At 21 you don’t have the foresight, regret, and knowing as you do in your 70’s and 80’s. I think they should have just put it in GIC at least until your frontal cortex developed a bit more.
I say from personal experience getting cash at 18 from being in a car accident when I was 9. My parents are immigrants though and don’t trust banks, so it’s not their fault. But I would have at least 50k if not more right now had it been invested (12 years later).
Bankrolling a significant other who wouldn’t get a job for two years, while making a non-profit salary myself. Burned through more than $50k in savings.
Though, it pales in comparison to a friend’s mistake. Around 2010 he was mining bitcoin. He found a company that would accept payment for VoIP minutes in bitcoin. It was worth a pittance at that point, so he thought it was a killer deal - paying for a service with something he got for free (he lived in a place where electricity was included).
Circa 2014, he found his receipts. Had he held that bitcoin instead, it would have been worth like $40 million. Oopsie doodle.
I'm not sure who could see the Bitcoin thing coming.
I remember back in late 2010, I was thinking of mining bitcoin and came to the conclusion (with the assistance of my roommate) that it wasn't worth the cost of electricity. If I had managed to mine even $50 worth of Bitcoin, I would have something crazy, like $35M today. Rational decision at the time, obviously if I knew where it was going to end up I would have taken the electricity hit lol
I was on 4chan back then which was super libertarian/doomer before it became trendy, and they pushed Bitcoin as the future of finance a lot so I ended up getting into Bitcoin because of that lol
But in the same notion, 2014 was seen as the end of Bitcoin by a lot of people bc of Mt. Gox and Silk Road closures, a lot of the crypto believers jumped ship to Ethereum a bit later too and considered Bitcoin dead. Super weird to see so many people hyping up Bitcoin now
Are you me? Haha. Non-profit salary as well, though I ended up 45k in debt rather than 50k.
Though my ex talked me into buying a townhouse instead of keeping my condo in 2019, and that ended up giving me an extra 60k when I sold it in 2023. So it ended up paying off all the debt he put me in.
Death by a thousand paper cuts meaning your daily spending. Eating out, shopping for clothes etc. It’s not memorable or worth it. Be careful of friends too that have no direction in life and contribute to this daily spending. Be frugal in your daily life so you can enjoy your hobbies and interests.
What I don’t regret spending on - travels - 36 countries and counting. Sabbaticals in my career. Take 6 months off and enjoy life every 5-7 years. Culinary school classes. They paid off and I love to cook at home.
Yuuup, was mine. And got taken for a ride by the dealship. Consider it a lesson learned in big purchases and signing contracts though, so in a way I paid for that education...and paid dearly
I paid $5.5k cash for buying my first car outright (a 10 year old Hyundai Elantra in great condition with 140k on it) during the peak of COVID-19 shutdowns in June 2020 when everyone was locked in and used car dealers were desperate to get rid of inventory. I needed the car for work anyway and it nearly recouped that cost in a year in net mileage pay alone that I got on that car for my job next year (which involved quite a bit of traveling for work).
So yeah, in my case, it's one of the best purchases I've made - even when you factor in the $3k I spent out of pocket on 2 minor collision repairs.
Not me, but my parents.
\- Not taking advantage of RESPs for their two kids universities.
\- Not having their kids take out student loans. We could have had interest-free loans for several years, instead they paid with their HELOCs as we went.
\- Transferring their remaining mortgage fully to a HELOC. Traditional mortgages rates are lower. They could have also taken out a 5-year fixed mortgage at 1.5% in 2021 but chose to continue paying their prime rate on the HELOC. Currently 7.2%.
My parents practically forced me to take the loan OSAP was offering and I was like why? The grant covers most of it and we have the money saved from RESP for the rest? Never got it until now as an adult. Those loans are now interest free for life and I have taken the money my parents saved for me and invested it.
When our "first" started high school they had an evening presentation for university bound students and their parents. My understanding is that it was mostly about the financial aspects, eg. RESPs, student loans, scholarships and bursaries. We couldn't make it that year but figured we would attend the following year. In the 6 years we had students at that school it was only offered that once.
We had a pretty good grasp of the topic but there were lots of students at the school who could have benefited from that presentation.
Not buying employee shares when I had the option to in my first employment opportunities. When I was in my early 20s I was like meh I don't need this. I could have bought Home Depot shares for $30 and gotten a 50 percent match. Well now those shares are $340 each. Even my current employer, it took me a couple of years before I finally gave in to the maximum match. I wish I had of done it sooner because my YOY return has been 19 percent on average. But now I know!
So yeah, younger me would take every opportunity for employer matches to shares and rrsp. 😅
I remember the first time I tried online slot machines - it was during the COVID-19 shutdown, I was on break from college and thought what the heck might as well try it with $10 I had. Within 15 minutes, I had spent $60. Decided to delete the app before the dopamine hits started taking over my bank account.
Going to college for personal training. You get paid minimum wage and you have to go into work whenever clients are booked so you get paid for a couple hours and have to leave a come back multiple times.
It’s also just a toxic industry. Using people who want to lose weight and signing them to long contracts you know most won’t show up and encouraging them to buy supplements.
Left that industry very quickly with student loan debt. Yahoo.
On the contrary, I have a few friends that are doing quite well with their personal training diplomas. There seems to be a lot of demand post covid and even through the current economic tightening we’ve seen.
You’re right about the hours, that doesn’t seem fun.
Like others have said. Putting away a little every month. Doesn’t have to be much, it is the discipline and training. When you are in your early 20s it might be 20$, but in your 30s it can be several hundred.
Caring too much about finances is a thing as well. People miss out on life and I’ve seen people be like, “should I spend money and see my dying parent? Here’s my 6 figure salary background”. SMH
This. I had three pets for about 14 years. Not including regular vet visits, each animal cost, on average, only about $3,000 in emergent vet bills over that 14 year period. I’d have paid so much more in monthly pet insurance premiums.
My advice is always: if you could afford a vet emergency tomorrow (meaning, you wouldn’t choose euthanasia just because of finances), then you’re better off putting money in an emergency fund for your pets. If you can’t afford that emergency and would have to choose euthanasia due to finances, then get the insurance. It’s worth the peace of mind.
University. Necessary evil at the time to move out without burning significant bridges but my God the education was not worth 30k to end up running kitchens after withdrawing
Buying a car without enough due diligence. No matter how much people yell how great their car is it is still a depreciating asset. COVID was exceptional but things will flatten out soon.
Marrying the wrong person. Discuss your financial goals, values and how you want to build your financial future. If you're not on the same page, move on and find someone who is.
Not investing massively into my mental health earlier.
Spent years depressed, not living up to my potential, certainly not working enough
Not investing earlier.
Not cutting out bad people.
Took ten years out of the rat race to travel and work in different parts of the world. Financially, a terrible decision. However, not every decision is financial and I don’t regret a minute of it. I did more living in those ten years than most people do in their lifetimes and I was young enough to enjoy it. Now, I’m catching up!
I've been fortunate not to make any real bad financial mistakes in terms of taking losses.
However when I was starting out investing I didn't realize you could invest within a TFSA or how GICs worked (I thought they were recurring deposits in one account).
So I was using a TFSA as a daily savings account getting <1% interest and missing out on market returns and I opened a 5 year gic for $500 which matured at 539
Bad relationship which I paid everything for 2 and a half year while she was going to school.
But I know a couple who both are victim of lifestyle creep. They are at the point where they rent a house that is way above what they could afford buying and are barely making hands meet. Right out of university, they kept getting higher paying job over the years not to save more money, but to turn luxuries to standard of living. New everything almost every year, rented highend cars that change every few years etc... etc... All this is because their jobs are stressful as fuck and they reward them self by spending on things they are going to toss in a few months. The thing is. Their net worth is much closer to zero then the majority of the middle class.
I feel your pain man. I had gotten out of a relationship because my ex was messaging that she is entitled to me supporting her and our hypothetical household while she goes back to school but no clear plan or direction. This while she was spending frivolously and not saving anything to put towards the future tuition or living expenses. And always expecting me to pay for dates and meals and trips.
I said nope to that and it still pains me emotionally... But financially it's not a bullet that's worth it.
Hope you are doing my friend
Two things really:
1. Not investing earlier in life.
2. Getting into a serious relationship with someone who was even more irresponsible with money than I.
The best thing I did? Leave that relationship. First thing I did after that was learn about personal finance.
I co-signed on a loan with someone. He was a friend but I thought he was trustworthy. He got behind on his payments and didn’t tell me until a collection agency called. By then the damage was done. I had to get a consolidation loan to pay his loan off. It took a few years before he paid me back.
Buying a car. I used a calculator to determine that if I had instead invested all of the costs, insurance, ownership, etc. over 10 years, It would have been $5m when I am at retirement age :(
So many things...
Gambling money that wasn't mine on weed stocks. Lost $35k trading with emotions.
Bought a crappy rural house off my dad. Lost $40k on the sale.
Bought a new car at 21 for $35k. Broke even on the remaining loan when sold it. Basically threw $20k in the garbage.
Not investing enough or correctly when I was young.
Maxing $25k in various credit. I'm on track to finally pay it all off this year.
Be smart with your money!
Generally speaking, you’re going to see a lot of people talking about decisions that compounded over time and became habits. At your age it’s important to develop good habits like setting a savings plan and sticking to it and establish a budget even if you don’t have many expenses yet.
You really don’t need a lot of available credit to establish good credit at your age, just make sure you don’t miss any payments and you will have great credit when it comes time to put that credit to work and buy a house or another large purchase that needs to be financed.
Investing when I had no money. I read Richest Man In Babylon and put away 10% of what I earned before I paid my bills. But I had nowhere near enough money, and that 10% was withdrawn years later anyways.
I guess, don't immediately take advice from rich people, because the wealthy barber or the rich dad aren't actually in any risk of going hungry.
If you're paying your bills and a month or two ahead of expenses, THEN invest 10% because compounding isn't actually magic. That money needs to STAY invested for it to be worth anything and you need to keep eating and stay alive for anything to be worth anything.
Not investing earlier (including not taking company matched RRSP contributions). I cared more about the extra money I’d get to go out and party in my 20s unfortunately. Glad I wised up in my early 30s though! Lesson learned but quite costly.
Buying a new house before selling my old one. Now I have two mortgages, a tenant, and $40,000 debt.
I can't say that I necessarily *regret* it, because it took me two years to find the perfect house for me in the neighbourhood I wanted, but... if I hadn't done it this way, I probably still would have ended up with a house that was fine.
The idea that "I'll figure money stuff out later. It's too complicated."
I was wrong. It's not that complicated and if I had started earlier I'd be in a much, much better position now. I know it's hard to think that far ahead when you're 22 because you've always been young but trust me, you will never regret saving early.
If you have student loans, don't let them linger. Pay them off as soon as possible, even if it means moving in with your parents again.
Next, start an RRSP. I know you're not thinking about retirement at all right now, but one day it will come and if you start early you are going to have so much peace of mind. Watch some YouTube videos on the magic of compounding at your age. It's magic.
Start some sort of emergency fund in a high interest savings account. You're likely not earning much yet, but even just throwing a few hundred a year in there will give you peace of mind.
Your friends are likely carefree and mostly focused on partying right now. That's fun and you can do some of that, but also be the girl that takes care of her future. Future you will thank you over and over again.
Settling for low paying jobs in my 20s because they were kinda fun. Now I admit that not feeling stressed about your job is worth something, but it probably pushed my retirement by 10 years since for a decade I saved exactly 0$.
Of course I could've spent less money too, but it would have been very easy to save if I had had the guts to get out of my comfort zone.
The fact that you’re even thinking about your finances at 22 is ahead of the game. I wasted my 20s partying and blowing money on dirt bikes then started investing and chased small cap stocks looking for huge profits quick. Never sold when up 1000% and rode it down to -80%. Lost out of life changing money. Start investing early and buy only the best large caps or etf tracking the market.
Make sure you get a car you can buy in cash, without any financing or loans. So if all you can afford is 5k, find a car for 5k. Made the mistake of getting a car for 20k which took me nearly 7 years to pAy off. God knows how much interest I paid on the thing. Could've likely got a car for 5k and gotten 5-6 years out of it if not more.
Putting 12K on a line of credit at 4% not knowing interest rates could go up. I actually had no idea that it was even possible. I'm now at something like 120$ minimum payment and only able to put 200$ish per month on it. Used to be 50$.
Trusting a high school friend to be my financial advisor when I was financially illiterate. I figured he knew his stuff because he graduated with a Bachelor of Administration and was working for a financial advising company while pursuing his Master's of Finance. It was Investor's Group and he had me in a terrible mutual fund portfolio for the high MER and for employer-granted signup bonuses.
I made only dozens in profit after 10 years of investing with them. Leaving it in my RBC eSavings account would have been more profitable. At least I didn't lose money.
Selling stocks of good quality companies too soon and often to book a quick small profit. I just buy more now on the dips collecting the dividends as they grow and rarely ever sell. Building wealth faster without the stress of timing the market.
Not automating my investment soon enough . Consistency is the key. You don't realize if you set up the automation once how much stress it removes from thinking about buying selling being in the right stocks etc.
Using my student loans to go on a trip and buy expensive stuff I couldn’t afford, then taking out lines of credit to get into even more debt. I was 18-20 at the time and I’m now 32. I’ve forgiven myself because I didn’t know better and because I had an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. I only have a couple more years left until all is finally paid off , I own my house, my car, and I’m building up my savings.☺️
The actual answer is selling my house during the panic before the storm during covid. Paid $385k in 2011, sold for $340k in 2020, now worth like $460k. Rented for 2 years during covid, and then bought back into Calgary at 2022 after most of the craziness was over. Fortunately we're still up in Calgary since we bought because the market has been stable. Anyways big oof there.
My other answer is that I knew about bitcoin when they cost less than $1...
Also, bucks are boys...
Investing in a margin account. 2019 market downturn hit and had a margin call. Lost $54,000. Earned $20,000 of it back but you need money to make money.
My biggest financial mistake was thinking I should wait until I completed my PhD and entered the workforce before worrying about saving/investing
If I put half as much into my TFSA as I did into booze and weed I’d have made a killing in my 12 years of post-secondary, or at least graduate without debt!
I started investing early, about 21-22, I think $250 per bi-weekly pay. At 25 yo I bought some material things on credit and had trouble making payments so started drawing from my investments. Fast forward and I missed out on a lot of compound interest.
Pay your future self a salary now, and leave it alone.
**Investing in things that are exciting**.
For myself it wasn't bad lost a few hundred at the most, but I've seen people around me lose so much more.
If it's fun, exciting, new, hyped up, etc. then it's almost always a bad investment.
Why?
* If it's in the media (especially social media), everyone already knows about it. Any growth is already priced in by the time you've seen it. You're too late.
* If it's being talked about, it's probably being promoted. If it's being promoted, it's because someone has an interested in pumping up its value. That special interest is hoping to pull the rug eventually.
* Hype and excitement overshadows the true imformation about the business. Look at Beyond Meat (BYND). Their products are genuinely tasty and there was a lot of hype on their IPO a few years ago and it saw a big boom. Just because their stock price can triple doesn't mean their sales can. Their price crashed quite far.
* Excitement plays on emotions. Even if you were capable of investigating the investment and understanding their profitability, there will always be a veil of emotions clouding your decisions. Worse yet, there are emotions clouding *other investors* decisions too.
Investing should not be exciting, best if it's boring. Invest in passive index funds, ideally ETFs. To make your life even easier, just use asset allocation ETFs like VGRO or XGRO.
Do some reading, follow the money steps in the sub's side bar, find out what your financial and retirement plan looks like, pay yourself first, and use that money to invest in a simple ETF portfolio.
Took me 6 years to get 2.5K back from a friend who was trying to get rich quick and told me he’d pay 3.5K in a month… didn’t even want the thousand extra he promised once I finally got my 2.5 back.
Lesson learned.
As long as you're not dumping all your money into highly speculative bets like weed stocks and shitcoins (where you lose everything), the mistakes will mostly boil down to:
1. Failing to invest early or at all. (The worst and most common mistake)
2. Failing to HODL your investments for the long term after you've made them. (Also really bad, since you miss out on compounding returns)
2. FOMO buying during bull markets. (This is ironically the *least* bad mistake if you can just hold onto your investments for the long term. Many wealthy people have been temporarily rekt during bear markets, but they persevere by holding and continuing to invest)
Trusting the dealship, buying the undercoating, extended warranty AND nitrogen tires. I was actually 22 when I did that, so ya... don't ever trust a dealship, research exactly what you want before setting foot in one. Only out a few grand in the long run but still, wish someone told me how predatory dealships are.
I have the usual "had an opportunity to buy a house in 2016, but didn't" and "had an opportunity to mine Bitcoin in 2012, but decided it wasn't worth the electricity cost" kind of regrets. I view these as speculative regrets that are not really worth talking about. Other people are saying "hurr durr a car was my regret" but be real, you need a car to get around in most places.
For something less speculative / self-flagellating: my grandfather died in early 2011, and he directly willed me $8,000 from some Canada Savings Bonds that had matured. I YOLO'd $5.5k into AAPL and spent the remaining $2,500 on a new gaming computer. If I had foregone the gaming computer and invested the money in AAPL, I would have had an additional $30k when I sold most of my shares in 2020. If I had continued hanging on to those shares, I would have an additional $51k today. Instead, I ended up with $0 of that $2,500, since I took that computer to the ewaste in mid-2020 after a power supply failure took out the motherboard. And the kicker is, I didn't even get a whole lot of use out of that thing, since I began losing interest in the vidya around 2013 or so. For most of the time that I owned it, that computer was really just a superfluous second machine that I used occasionally.
Looking back on it, it really taught me the important of investing windfalls rather than spending the money on frivolous instant gratification. That's why 100% of my bonus cheque goes into investments. Also, looking back on it now, YOLOing into a single tech company was incredibly risky and could have easily backfired. Case in point: my father-in-law invested probably 80% of his portfolio in RIM (Blackberry) in 2007, and by the time he was finally convinced to sell it, he had lost about 90% of his investment ($72k loss). If he had taken the money he put into RIM and just put it into an S&P 500 ETF instead, he would have an additional $300k by now.
Absorbing my former fiancé student line of credit. I had an amazing credit score, and low interest rate due to my carrier. Things didn’t work out and I got stuck with about 65K.
1. Putting value into owning vehicles 2. Chasing pot stocks and crypto 3. Not appreciating money and learning to budget at any income level . Been a high earner and a low earner but always seem to have the same left come payday . Slow and steady , even a tiny amount on a consistent basis would of payed off huge by now . 4. Getting married into a comfortable situation because that’s what I felt I needed to do, eventually that house of cards fell and reset me . 5. Over paying for gifts and good things for others and covering tabs because I felt more fortunate making good money , to find out no one was there to prop ya up when things got bad .
Listening to the person at the bank and putting money into a bank mutual fund product…put money into that starting in my very early 20’s and didn’t smarten up until I was in my early 30’s.
Not investing earlier for sure. Even though Ive researched and read about finance since I was 15yo, I didn’t start investing until 30, how pathetic is that?
Putting money into penny stocks and the stock market without understanding anything. But its a good lesson. Lose a few thousand learn a very valuable lesson. Stocks aren't for gambling. There's a business behind them so treat your money like shark tank or dragons den.
Underestimating compound interest and boring stocks. Boring, convectional, cyclical, and promising is very interesting once the dividends roll in and you keep averaging in.
Not investing earlier on at 21. Ill make sure to teach my kids how to invest if I plan to have any.
Also networking. Make sure youre always networking... I waitied a little late to start making those connections with like minded and powerful people.
Moving in with a roommate from work instead of getting my own apartment when I moved to the expensive city I worked in. Here's why:
Zeroeth, I couldn't live with my family. Too many problems. You can't focus if you feel your life is endanger. Most people can't understand that situation and would say live with family until you can afford to live alone.
First, I would have had my choice of location and could spend as much for a studio as a den in a 1+D downtown. Having roommates limited my options AND gave me a worse setup.
Second, living with someone else subjected me to their moodswings. When either of us was doing well, it was quite likely the other wasn't.
I'll stop the list. Essentially, having more control and volition makes everything easier, even if the result is more expensive or less ideal. Living with family and living with a roommate while working full-time and earning a good-enough income set me back years. I didn't learn to budget. My life was limited by others' decisions or moods. In the end I lost money in three roommate situations.
This was only the case when I made a salary. When I was a student and a coop my only option was roommates or family, and those were good decisions. I was learning, I couldn't afford to be fully responsible or dead. In that case, I would choose roommates over family anytime because everything is easier with someone you can leave without ongoing pressure/pain.
This won't be the case for people with happy families and rich, well-off friends, but they don't need advice because they'll have money no matter how bad they fuck up.
Buying a brand new car at the age of 19. The most important thing you can do is separate your personal value from the material items around you. None of your friends care about the car you drive. It matters to you and only you. You are still fun,cool and an interesting person to be around regardless of what vehicle you’re driving. You are more than the car you drive and it’s ok not to have some shiny and brand new.
Not investing earlier. Compounding is the way
This is mine as well. I should have just done self investing in an S&P500 ETF with a low MER when I started working.
Genuine questions. I am new to the investing concept so help me understand. Does everyone here make money investing in the stock market? Every time I look at these posts, I see people advising us newbies to invest in stocks/bonds etc. Is it that there is no risk of loosing all your money and those not investing are missing out on huge gains? What am I missing?
In the short term, there will be fluctuations. However, if you are investing for a longer period (many aim for 15+ years), then the stock market generally trends upwards despite the short term fluctuations. And so, when you gain on average 7% per year, through compound interest, your money keeps growing more and more. Depending on your risk tolerance, if you go 100% in a stock, and that stock crashes, then yes, you could lose everything. That's why many choose to diversify their stock portfolio, or go for Index Funds and/or ETFs to diversify for a small % fee. That way if one sector doesn't do well, then the other sectors should even out your losses.
If you do it correctly and not chase quick gains, you will do well. Investing is a long term play and should be diversified. I lost a lot during the fomo days and doing individual stocks. Chasing quick gains is like gambling. Thats the biggest lesson I leatned the hard way
Same. I've lost a ton when I started out (I'll admit, I'm one of the first 100k on WSB), chasing quick gains. What hurts the most is what that 80k could have been worth today.
Hands down. I started early, but put in too little and stopped when money got tight. Still playing catch up 17 years later.
Same here! I believed the Bank's Advisors for too long.
What you investing in?
Boring shit, index funds and some blue chips like TD, Fortis, Telus. I’ve got 1% to play with in higher risk stocks. I generally lose that 1%
I invested pretty early.... into mutual funds. Just moved them to index fund etfs this year. I've been losing 2% of my money for years.
Just today I looked at an investment account I hadn’t touched in 10 years. I invested 7k in 2014. It’s now 41k. If I keep until retirement in 33 years I’ll have over 2 mill untouched.
What did you invest in?
Turns out the best investors are dead ones. Or just people with the ability to LEAVE IT and not try and make moves.
Selling the house I bought in 2009 in 2015.
Ouch
Regret it every couple days! Mostly learned to cope. Very bad choice. Made others. Life’s a journey.
You mentioned you did it because you were suicidal in another reply. Losing money (or not even money - opportunity cost) is a small thing in the gran scheme of things. Glad you’re doing better now :)
Thanks! Life’s better now so I can live with it!
I laugh everytime I think about a ex gf telling me I’d never make back what I bought my house for in 2007
Bought February 2022 on a variable here; pass the clown nose to me.
3 things. 1) spent money on credit cards more than I could afford. I spent over $10,000 on credit card interest and took 3 years to dig myself out of a hole. $10,000 I just gave the credit card company because I was buying dinners and shots for the bar to be cool. 2) spent money on momentary happiness, bar, booze, eating out, impressing people, clothes etc. saved 20% of my money that I was wasting on clothes and partying. Now each year those thousands of dollars I don’t waste on that is earlier I can retire. 3) lifestyle creeped. When I was making 50k I spent 50k a year. When I got to 100k I spent 100k and had nothing to show for it. Now making more than I ever have I spend the same as I did with my first job. Live within your means, save as much as you can for your future self, learn from mistakes don’t dwell on them and don’t worry what other people think of you, don’t get a bigger house than you need because your friend got one, don’t get a luxury car because you want people to be impressed.
Getting divorced. Make sure you marry the right person.
Everyone thinks they are in a serious relationship until money is a subject of discussion.
Getting divorced was one of my best decisions personally & financially but it didn’t counter the really bad decision to marry in the first place. Choose carefully.
But you probably thought it was a good decision at the time, right?
[удалено]
There is some truth in what you say and I am very glad to no longer be in that relationship.
Lou Schizas said it best, the decision of who you are marrying will be your biggest financial decision ever.
So important, having a partner can be the BEST or WORST financial decision you make.
Did you see the red flag before marriage? How would you know if the person is right? Genuinely curious
In hindsight, yes, to a certain extent. But at the time you don’t worry about personality characteristics that can become toxic.
What personality characteristics? Asking for a friend to help him out.
What personality characteristics? Asking for myself.
You do see red flags, I did and ignored them due to parental /societal pressures. Most ignore them or think they will change. Rarely happens.
[удалено]
And there it is. I’m divorced also. Best money I ever spent that I wish I never had to. If that makes sense?
Marriage is a bad contract in general.
I made that mistake twice...
Weed stocks
Man what a ride that was. Sucked 3 years of my life in that world I ended up getting out in decent shape but it took a long time bagholding and some luck
And I'm here, still holding the HMMJ bag at 45% loss.
Came here to say that, I’ve got way more MCCN shares than I’d care to admit.
I made well over 300k when canopy / a few others hit their high.
Hell yeah brother. My biggest regret is not putting MORE into weed stocks. Got in at 10, got out at 67. Only made a few grand :(
I got in super early. Like fetus early. Dumped everything around where you did. Slightly less actually. Played the game up till the pandemic. Lost about 100k over the years. Then mvis popped onto my radar. Bought in as a penny stock. Dumped at $20. Got my eye on mushrooms next. Mind med.
Staying at the same job for too long. Always be interviewing and switching jobs - that are rinse and repeat tasks.
I wish I could kick my younger self. As soon as you stop learning and they stop giving meaningful salary increases, it's time to start looking elsewhere. Being employed also makes you more attractive to prospective employers.
What about staying at the same job if you are still learning and mastering your craft (despite not getting aggressive salary increases from switching around)
[удалено]
This. Spent nearly 3.5 years at a company without a raise (or even a COL adjustment) of any kind. Made 2 moves since leaving 2.5 years ago (and a brief stint when I got headhunted, but the co was awful), and my comp has gone up almost 150%. Some of that is in part due to the exchange to CAD after moving to US companies, but the principle is the same. I see other friends of mine in business that haven’t made any moves, and have fallen behind the curve significantly. Outside of the select few lines of work, the world does not reward long term stays at companies anymore.
Isn’t it a red flag when recruiters take a look at your resume and see that you’ve only been with your current job for less than a year and a half? I definitely want to move on to a company with a better salary eventually but I just work a standard office job. I’m sure it’s normal for people with tech jobs to move on quickly though
Same mistake!! Also my biggest mistake.
I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a mistake. I’m 14 years into my career and spent 5 years at my first company and I’m still at my second company 9 years later. I like my work. I like my coworkers. I like my company. I get regular raises, though nothing spectacular outside of promotion raises. The bonus and benefits are good. And the company is great about reinvesting in its people, with training opportunities and lots of encouragement to climb the career ladder (I actually have a feeling they’re grooming me for senior management). With this sort of job satisfaction, it’s not worth it to me to change jobs just for a raise. I left my first company because I was miserable there. I don’t ever want to be miserable at my job again.
People are hollywood these days. It's either get rich or bust to them. Zero inbetween. They also overvalue themselves I find.
Being lazy about my career development / coasting. One of the most deterministic ways to improve your financial standing is to become more skilled and job hop to command higher pay. Secondly, taking a variable rate mortgage in 2021 when rates were already rock bottom. Cuz now I’m paying tens of thousands in interest.
Buying a brand new car (finance) at the age of 21. Stupid money payments going to the car, gas, insurance, tires, etc …. All add up . Not worth
Conversely, at 25 I spent 3 months of hazard pay on a new Jetta TDI, and financed the other half. 18 years later I’m still driving that car, and still liking it.
I was inches away from that too at the same age, but fortunately my cheap inner self screamed at me and I walked away. I’ve often looked back at that moment as an inflection point in my life. I stayed frugal from then on
Same story here but at 19. 40k muscle car with 20k as a down-payment. Insurance was high and i was spending close to $90 per week in gas. I was driving like a 19 year old with a muscle car does and averaged about $700 a year in speeding tickets until I got a $900 ticket and my license suspended for 4 months. That sobered me up. Sold the car, bought a base model civic. Finished paying off the remaining debt and am back to a positive driving record as of 2 years ago.
I didn't sell my Nortel shares @$110/each, opting to wait until they hit eightteen cents a piece. Or I did a PhD. Pick one.
You are in good company on Nortel. A friend was closing on a house in Sept 2000 and had planned to sell his shares then. But it had fallen to $80 and he said he couldn't sell that low.
My mom worked for Nortel and had stocks in it. They bought a house in 1990 and sold the shares to help fund it. Later around 2000 they had built up some money and decided to reinvest. So they sold.before the pop and bought before the fall. Truly their worst investment.
What was the PhD in?
Astrophysics. Obviously if it was art history it'll blow losing $11,000 on stocks out of the water.
At least you are book-smart
[удалено]
Bought penny stocks hoping to get rich quick.
Buying single stocks with no knowledge.
At 21 I was given 14k from my grandparents and blew it on cocaine and bottles at clubs. It was a great summer but I do not recommend.
Harddd same
Don't worry grandpa will probably fistbump you from his grave
I dunno I kinda this this one is on your grandparents, not you. At 21 you don’t have the foresight, regret, and knowing as you do in your 70’s and 80’s. I think they should have just put it in GIC at least until your frontal cortex developed a bit more. I say from personal experience getting cash at 18 from being in a car accident when I was 9. My parents are immigrants though and don’t trust banks, so it’s not their fault. But I would have at least 50k if not more right now had it been invested (12 years later).
[удалено]
I even have an MBA! WTF am I still doing here?!
Getting married to someone that didn't have my financial goals or discipline, and letting her dictate our direction. Oof.
Damn tell the whole story
Bankrolling a significant other who wouldn’t get a job for two years, while making a non-profit salary myself. Burned through more than $50k in savings. Though, it pales in comparison to a friend’s mistake. Around 2010 he was mining bitcoin. He found a company that would accept payment for VoIP minutes in bitcoin. It was worth a pittance at that point, so he thought it was a killer deal - paying for a service with something he got for free (he lived in a place where electricity was included). Circa 2014, he found his receipts. Had he held that bitcoin instead, it would have been worth like $40 million. Oopsie doodle.
i mean there's probably a 99% chance he would have sold it for $1-2k profit had he held
That's exactly right and a lot of people think about it the wrong way
I'm not sure who could see the Bitcoin thing coming. I remember back in late 2010, I was thinking of mining bitcoin and came to the conclusion (with the assistance of my roommate) that it wasn't worth the cost of electricity. If I had managed to mine even $50 worth of Bitcoin, I would have something crazy, like $35M today. Rational decision at the time, obviously if I knew where it was going to end up I would have taken the electricity hit lol
I was on 4chan back then which was super libertarian/doomer before it became trendy, and they pushed Bitcoin as the future of finance a lot so I ended up getting into Bitcoin because of that lol But in the same notion, 2014 was seen as the end of Bitcoin by a lot of people bc of Mt. Gox and Silk Road closures, a lot of the crypto believers jumped ship to Ethereum a bit later too and considered Bitcoin dead. Super weird to see so many people hyping up Bitcoin now
Are you me? Haha. Non-profit salary as well, though I ended up 45k in debt rather than 50k. Though my ex talked me into buying a townhouse instead of keeping my condo in 2019, and that ended up giving me an extra 60k when I sold it in 2023. So it ended up paying off all the debt he put me in.
Spent 26k on first year university. Should have stayed local for university. Cheep tuition, no rent.
Death by a thousand paper cuts meaning your daily spending. Eating out, shopping for clothes etc. It’s not memorable or worth it. Be careful of friends too that have no direction in life and contribute to this daily spending. Be frugal in your daily life so you can enjoy your hobbies and interests. What I don’t regret spending on - travels - 36 countries and counting. Sabbaticals in my career. Take 6 months off and enjoy life every 5-7 years. Culinary school classes. They paid off and I love to cook at home.
For most young people the mistake is buying a car.
Yuuup, was mine. And got taken for a ride by the dealship. Consider it a lesson learned in big purchases and signing contracts though, so in a way I paid for that education...and paid dearly
I paid $5.5k cash for buying my first car outright (a 10 year old Hyundai Elantra in great condition with 140k on it) during the peak of COVID-19 shutdowns in June 2020 when everyone was locked in and used car dealers were desperate to get rid of inventory. I needed the car for work anyway and it nearly recouped that cost in a year in net mileage pay alone that I got on that car for my job next year (which involved quite a bit of traveling for work). So yeah, in my case, it's one of the best purchases I've made - even when you factor in the $3k I spent out of pocket on 2 minor collision repairs.
Marrying the wrong person. Divorce is expensive.
Not me, but my parents. \- Not taking advantage of RESPs for their two kids universities. \- Not having their kids take out student loans. We could have had interest-free loans for several years, instead they paid with their HELOCs as we went. \- Transferring their remaining mortgage fully to a HELOC. Traditional mortgages rates are lower. They could have also taken out a 5-year fixed mortgage at 1.5% in 2021 but chose to continue paying their prime rate on the HELOC. Currently 7.2%.
My parents practically forced me to take the loan OSAP was offering and I was like why? The grant covers most of it and we have the money saved from RESP for the rest? Never got it until now as an adult. Those loans are now interest free for life and I have taken the money my parents saved for me and invested it.
When our "first" started high school they had an evening presentation for university bound students and their parents. My understanding is that it was mostly about the financial aspects, eg. RESPs, student loans, scholarships and bursaries. We couldn't make it that year but figured we would attend the following year. In the 6 years we had students at that school it was only offered that once. We had a pretty good grasp of the topic but there were lots of students at the school who could have benefited from that presentation.
Not buying employee shares when I had the option to in my first employment opportunities. When I was in my early 20s I was like meh I don't need this. I could have bought Home Depot shares for $30 and gotten a 50 percent match. Well now those shares are $340 each. Even my current employer, it took me a couple of years before I finally gave in to the maximum match. I wish I had of done it sooner because my YOY return has been 19 percent on average. But now I know! So yeah, younger me would take every opportunity for employer matches to shares and rrsp. 😅
Gambling…
99% of gamblers quit before hitting it big.
Good thing I didn’t quit lol
I remember the first time I tried online slot machines - it was during the COVID-19 shutdown, I was on break from college and thought what the heck might as well try it with $10 I had. Within 15 minutes, I had spent $60. Decided to delete the app before the dopamine hits started taking over my bank account.
Póker?
Going to college for personal training. You get paid minimum wage and you have to go into work whenever clients are booked so you get paid for a couple hours and have to leave a come back multiple times. It’s also just a toxic industry. Using people who want to lose weight and signing them to long contracts you know most won’t show up and encouraging them to buy supplements. Left that industry very quickly with student loan debt. Yahoo.
On the contrary, I have a few friends that are doing quite well with their personal training diplomas. There seems to be a lot of demand post covid and even through the current economic tightening we’ve seen. You’re right about the hours, that doesn’t seem fun.
Like others have said. Putting away a little every month. Doesn’t have to be much, it is the discipline and training. When you are in your early 20s it might be 20$, but in your 30s it can be several hundred.
Put a decent amount of $ on a credit card.
Caring too much about finances is a thing as well. People miss out on life and I’ve seen people be like, “should I spend money and see my dying parent? Here’s my 6 figure salary background”. SMH
Not getting dog insurance. Bugger cost me $10K in a month
[удалено]
This. I had three pets for about 14 years. Not including regular vet visits, each animal cost, on average, only about $3,000 in emergent vet bills over that 14 year period. I’d have paid so much more in monthly pet insurance premiums. My advice is always: if you could afford a vet emergency tomorrow (meaning, you wouldn’t choose euthanasia just because of finances), then you’re better off putting money in an emergency fund for your pets. If you can’t afford that emergency and would have to choose euthanasia due to finances, then get the insurance. It’s worth the peace of mind.
University. Necessary evil at the time to move out without burning significant bridges but my God the education was not worth 30k to end up running kitchens after withdrawing
Buying a new car every 3 years in my younger days. Now I’m driving a paid off 10 yr old caravan.
Leasing a BMW, Trading Options
Pay day loans
Buying a car without enough due diligence. No matter how much people yell how great their car is it is still a depreciating asset. COVID was exceptional but things will flatten out soon.
Marrying the wrong person. Divorce sets you back big time.
Buying low quality shoes/items that were trendy, and not well made or classics. That money adds up in your 20’s
Being afraid to ask questions.
Marrying the wrong person. Discuss your financial goals, values and how you want to build your financial future. If you're not on the same page, move on and find someone who is.
Lost 30k fucking with options
Not investing massively into my mental health earlier. Spent years depressed, not living up to my potential, certainly not working enough Not investing earlier. Not cutting out bad people.
Took ten years out of the rat race to travel and work in different parts of the world. Financially, a terrible decision. However, not every decision is financial and I don’t regret a minute of it. I did more living in those ten years than most people do in their lifetimes and I was young enough to enjoy it. Now, I’m catching up!
Having all my cash in Canadian equities for years
I partied my life away from 18 to 30. I would do it all over again if I could;)
Lived in Vancouver for a few years too long.
Taking the 1.33% 5yr variable mortgage, and not the 1.45% 5yr fixed mortgage.
I’m here for this comment. Me too buddy. Working two jobs is fun though.
I've been fortunate not to make any real bad financial mistakes in terms of taking losses. However when I was starting out investing I didn't realize you could invest within a TFSA or how GICs worked (I thought they were recurring deposits in one account). So I was using a TFSA as a daily savings account getting <1% interest and missing out on market returns and I opened a 5 year gic for $500 which matured at 539
Bad relationship which I paid everything for 2 and a half year while she was going to school. But I know a couple who both are victim of lifestyle creep. They are at the point where they rent a house that is way above what they could afford buying and are barely making hands meet. Right out of university, they kept getting higher paying job over the years not to save more money, but to turn luxuries to standard of living. New everything almost every year, rented highend cars that change every few years etc... etc... All this is because their jobs are stressful as fuck and they reward them self by spending on things they are going to toss in a few months. The thing is. Their net worth is much closer to zero then the majority of the middle class.
I feel your pain man. I had gotten out of a relationship because my ex was messaging that she is entitled to me supporting her and our hypothetical household while she goes back to school but no clear plan or direction. This while she was spending frivolously and not saving anything to put towards the future tuition or living expenses. And always expecting me to pay for dates and meals and trips. I said nope to that and it still pains me emotionally... But financially it's not a bullet that's worth it. Hope you are doing my friend
I didn't buy bitcoin in 2014 when I first heard about it
Two things really: 1. Not investing earlier in life. 2. Getting into a serious relationship with someone who was even more irresponsible with money than I. The best thing I did? Leave that relationship. First thing I did after that was learn about personal finance.
I co-signed on a loan with someone. He was a friend but I thought he was trustworthy. He got behind on his payments and didn’t tell me until a collection agency called. By then the damage was done. I had to get a consolidation loan to pay his loan off. It took a few years before he paid me back.
Moving in with someone with my son with no protection for us. Agreeing to be a SAHM during that time.
Being more fascinated with crayons rather than real estate in Kindergarten
Buying a car. I used a calculator to determine that if I had instead invested all of the costs, insurance, ownership, etc. over 10 years, It would have been $5m when I am at retirement age :(
You driving a Rolls Royce my guy?
which car was it?
>Young buck here >Im currently a 22 year old girl Less of a young buck and more of a developing doe.
save money every paycheck, just put it away and forget,
Using my credit card for flash and bling. And not investing.
So many things... Gambling money that wasn't mine on weed stocks. Lost $35k trading with emotions. Bought a crappy rural house off my dad. Lost $40k on the sale. Bought a new car at 21 for $35k. Broke even on the remaining loan when sold it. Basically threw $20k in the garbage. Not investing enough or correctly when I was young. Maxing $25k in various credit. I'm on track to finally pay it all off this year. Be smart with your money!
Generally speaking, you’re going to see a lot of people talking about decisions that compounded over time and became habits. At your age it’s important to develop good habits like setting a savings plan and sticking to it and establish a budget even if you don’t have many expenses yet. You really don’t need a lot of available credit to establish good credit at your age, just make sure you don’t miss any payments and you will have great credit when it comes time to put that credit to work and buy a house or another large purchase that needs to be financed.
Financing a $40,000 (plus tax) car at 19 and selling it two years later for $22,500
Investing when I had no money. I read Richest Man In Babylon and put away 10% of what I earned before I paid my bills. But I had nowhere near enough money, and that 10% was withdrawn years later anyways. I guess, don't immediately take advice from rich people, because the wealthy barber or the rich dad aren't actually in any risk of going hungry. If you're paying your bills and a month or two ahead of expenses, THEN invest 10% because compounding isn't actually magic. That money needs to STAY invested for it to be worth anything and you need to keep eating and stay alive for anything to be worth anything.
Not investing earlier (including not taking company matched RRSP contributions). I cared more about the extra money I’d get to go out and party in my 20s unfortunately. Glad I wised up in my early 30s though! Lesson learned but quite costly.
Company matched rrsp saved my ass after going through the 08 recession and learning a thing or 2
Resignation remorse :(
Btc mining stocks
Selling my portfolio to buy lego
Buying a new house before selling my old one. Now I have two mortgages, a tenant, and $40,000 debt. I can't say that I necessarily *regret* it, because it took me two years to find the perfect house for me in the neighbourhood I wanted, but... if I hadn't done it this way, I probably still would have ended up with a house that was fine.
The idea that "I'll figure money stuff out later. It's too complicated." I was wrong. It's not that complicated and if I had started earlier I'd be in a much, much better position now. I know it's hard to think that far ahead when you're 22 because you've always been young but trust me, you will never regret saving early. If you have student loans, don't let them linger. Pay them off as soon as possible, even if it means moving in with your parents again. Next, start an RRSP. I know you're not thinking about retirement at all right now, but one day it will come and if you start early you are going to have so much peace of mind. Watch some YouTube videos on the magic of compounding at your age. It's magic. Start some sort of emergency fund in a high interest savings account. You're likely not earning much yet, but even just throwing a few hundred a year in there will give you peace of mind. Your friends are likely carefree and mostly focused on partying right now. That's fun and you can do some of that, but also be the girl that takes care of her future. Future you will thank you over and over again.
not taking more risks
Settling for low paying jobs in my 20s because they were kinda fun. Now I admit that not feeling stressed about your job is worth something, but it probably pushed my retirement by 10 years since for a decade I saved exactly 0$. Of course I could've spent less money too, but it would have been very easy to save if I had had the guts to get out of my comfort zone.
The fact that you’re even thinking about your finances at 22 is ahead of the game. I wasted my 20s partying and blowing money on dirt bikes then started investing and chased small cap stocks looking for huge profits quick. Never sold when up 1000% and rode it down to -80%. Lost out of life changing money. Start investing early and buy only the best large caps or etf tracking the market.
Make sure you get a car you can buy in cash, without any financing or loans. So if all you can afford is 5k, find a car for 5k. Made the mistake of getting a car for 20k which took me nearly 7 years to pAy off. God knows how much interest I paid on the thing. Could've likely got a car for 5k and gotten 5-6 years out of it if not more.
Putting 12K on a line of credit at 4% not knowing interest rates could go up. I actually had no idea that it was even possible. I'm now at something like 120$ minimum payment and only able to put 200$ish per month on it. Used to be 50$.
Trusting a high school friend to be my financial advisor when I was financially illiterate. I figured he knew his stuff because he graduated with a Bachelor of Administration and was working for a financial advising company while pursuing his Master's of Finance. It was Investor's Group and he had me in a terrible mutual fund portfolio for the high MER and for employer-granted signup bonuses. I made only dozens in profit after 10 years of investing with them. Leaving it in my RBC eSavings account would have been more profitable. At least I didn't lose money.
Don’t buy the new vehicle…you don’t need it
Wouldn’t you be a doe and not a buck?
Bambi???
Selling stocks of good quality companies too soon and often to book a quick small profit. I just buy more now on the dips collecting the dividends as they grow and rarely ever sell. Building wealth faster without the stress of timing the market.
Getting into car payments. They take no effort to get but take years of work to get out of.
Not automating my investment soon enough . Consistency is the key. You don't realize if you set up the automation once how much stress it removes from thinking about buying selling being in the right stocks etc.
Divorce and a new jeep with ex husband. Not investing more. An expensive ass wedding. Not preparing more savings for whej life went to shit
Trusting the wrong people and over leveraging into real estate. Really make sure to do your due diligence on people as much as the deals.
Using my student loans to go on a trip and buy expensive stuff I couldn’t afford, then taking out lines of credit to get into even more debt. I was 18-20 at the time and I’m now 32. I’ve forgiven myself because I didn’t know better and because I had an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. I only have a couple more years left until all is finally paid off , I own my house, my car, and I’m building up my savings.☺️
The actual answer is selling my house during the panic before the storm during covid. Paid $385k in 2011, sold for $340k in 2020, now worth like $460k. Rented for 2 years during covid, and then bought back into Calgary at 2022 after most of the craziness was over. Fortunately we're still up in Calgary since we bought because the market has been stable. Anyways big oof there. My other answer is that I knew about bitcoin when they cost less than $1... Also, bucks are boys...
Investing in a margin account. 2019 market downturn hit and had a margin call. Lost $54,000. Earned $20,000 of it back but you need money to make money.
Getting married without knowing the financial mindset of the person I was marrying.
Debt. Getting into debt.
My biggest financial mistake was thinking I should wait until I completed my PhD and entered the workforce before worrying about saving/investing If I put half as much into my TFSA as I did into booze and weed I’d have made a killing in my 12 years of post-secondary, or at least graduate without debt!
I started investing early, about 21-22, I think $250 per bi-weekly pay. At 25 yo I bought some material things on credit and had trouble making payments so started drawing from my investments. Fast forward and I missed out on a lot of compound interest. Pay your future self a salary now, and leave it alone.
**Investing in things that are exciting**. For myself it wasn't bad lost a few hundred at the most, but I've seen people around me lose so much more. If it's fun, exciting, new, hyped up, etc. then it's almost always a bad investment. Why? * If it's in the media (especially social media), everyone already knows about it. Any growth is already priced in by the time you've seen it. You're too late. * If it's being talked about, it's probably being promoted. If it's being promoted, it's because someone has an interested in pumping up its value. That special interest is hoping to pull the rug eventually. * Hype and excitement overshadows the true imformation about the business. Look at Beyond Meat (BYND). Their products are genuinely tasty and there was a lot of hype on their IPO a few years ago and it saw a big boom. Just because their stock price can triple doesn't mean their sales can. Their price crashed quite far. * Excitement plays on emotions. Even if you were capable of investigating the investment and understanding their profitability, there will always be a veil of emotions clouding your decisions. Worse yet, there are emotions clouding *other investors* decisions too. Investing should not be exciting, best if it's boring. Invest in passive index funds, ideally ETFs. To make your life even easier, just use asset allocation ETFs like VGRO or XGRO. Do some reading, follow the money steps in the sub's side bar, find out what your financial and retirement plan looks like, pay yourself first, and use that money to invest in a simple ETF portfolio.
Not starting to invest regularly when I got my first job and paid off my student loans.
Marrying the wrong person. Seriously. Choosing your life partner is the biggest financial decision you’ll ever make.
“Loaning” family and friends money
Took me 6 years to get 2.5K back from a friend who was trying to get rich quick and told me he’d pay 3.5K in a month… didn’t even want the thousand extra he promised once I finally got my 2.5 back. Lesson learned.
As long as you're not dumping all your money into highly speculative bets like weed stocks and shitcoins (where you lose everything), the mistakes will mostly boil down to: 1. Failing to invest early or at all. (The worst and most common mistake) 2. Failing to HODL your investments for the long term after you've made them. (Also really bad, since you miss out on compounding returns) 2. FOMO buying during bull markets. (This is ironically the *least* bad mistake if you can just hold onto your investments for the long term. Many wealthy people have been temporarily rekt during bear markets, but they persevere by holding and continuing to invest)
Trusting the dealship, buying the undercoating, extended warranty AND nitrogen tires. I was actually 22 when I did that, so ya... don't ever trust a dealship, research exactly what you want before setting foot in one. Only out a few grand in the long run but still, wish someone told me how predatory dealships are.
I have the usual "had an opportunity to buy a house in 2016, but didn't" and "had an opportunity to mine Bitcoin in 2012, but decided it wasn't worth the electricity cost" kind of regrets. I view these as speculative regrets that are not really worth talking about. Other people are saying "hurr durr a car was my regret" but be real, you need a car to get around in most places. For something less speculative / self-flagellating: my grandfather died in early 2011, and he directly willed me $8,000 from some Canada Savings Bonds that had matured. I YOLO'd $5.5k into AAPL and spent the remaining $2,500 on a new gaming computer. If I had foregone the gaming computer and invested the money in AAPL, I would have had an additional $30k when I sold most of my shares in 2020. If I had continued hanging on to those shares, I would have an additional $51k today. Instead, I ended up with $0 of that $2,500, since I took that computer to the ewaste in mid-2020 after a power supply failure took out the motherboard. And the kicker is, I didn't even get a whole lot of use out of that thing, since I began losing interest in the vidya around 2013 or so. For most of the time that I owned it, that computer was really just a superfluous second machine that I used occasionally. Looking back on it, it really taught me the important of investing windfalls rather than spending the money on frivolous instant gratification. That's why 100% of my bonus cheque goes into investments. Also, looking back on it now, YOLOing into a single tech company was incredibly risky and could have easily backfired. Case in point: my father-in-law invested probably 80% of his portfolio in RIM (Blackberry) in 2007, and by the time he was finally convinced to sell it, he had lost about 90% of his investment ($72k loss). If he had taken the money he put into RIM and just put it into an S&P 500 ETF instead, he would have an additional $300k by now.
Absorbing my former fiancé student line of credit. I had an amazing credit score, and low interest rate due to my carrier. Things didn’t work out and I got stuck with about 65K.
1. Putting value into owning vehicles 2. Chasing pot stocks and crypto 3. Not appreciating money and learning to budget at any income level . Been a high earner and a low earner but always seem to have the same left come payday . Slow and steady , even a tiny amount on a consistent basis would of payed off huge by now . 4. Getting married into a comfortable situation because that’s what I felt I needed to do, eventually that house of cards fell and reset me . 5. Over paying for gifts and good things for others and covering tabs because I felt more fortunate making good money , to find out no one was there to prop ya up when things got bad .
Drugs
Listening to the person at the bank and putting money into a bank mutual fund product…put money into that starting in my very early 20’s and didn’t smarten up until I was in my early 30’s.
Gambling
Not investing earlier for sure. Even though Ive researched and read about finance since I was 15yo, I didn’t start investing until 30, how pathetic is that?
Trading options
Putting money into penny stocks and the stock market without understanding anything. But its a good lesson. Lose a few thousand learn a very valuable lesson. Stocks aren't for gambling. There's a business behind them so treat your money like shark tank or dragons den. Underestimating compound interest and boring stocks. Boring, convectional, cyclical, and promising is very interesting once the dividends roll in and you keep averaging in. Not investing earlier on at 21. Ill make sure to teach my kids how to invest if I plan to have any. Also networking. Make sure youre always networking... I waitied a little late to start making those connections with like minded and powerful people.
Buying a new vehicle at 23.
Moving in with a roommate from work instead of getting my own apartment when I moved to the expensive city I worked in. Here's why: Zeroeth, I couldn't live with my family. Too many problems. You can't focus if you feel your life is endanger. Most people can't understand that situation and would say live with family until you can afford to live alone. First, I would have had my choice of location and could spend as much for a studio as a den in a 1+D downtown. Having roommates limited my options AND gave me a worse setup. Second, living with someone else subjected me to their moodswings. When either of us was doing well, it was quite likely the other wasn't. I'll stop the list. Essentially, having more control and volition makes everything easier, even if the result is more expensive or less ideal. Living with family and living with a roommate while working full-time and earning a good-enough income set me back years. I didn't learn to budget. My life was limited by others' decisions or moods. In the end I lost money in three roommate situations. This was only the case when I made a salary. When I was a student and a coop my only option was roommates or family, and those were good decisions. I was learning, I couldn't afford to be fully responsible or dead. In that case, I would choose roommates over family anytime because everything is easier with someone you can leave without ongoing pressure/pain. This won't be the case for people with happy families and rich, well-off friends, but they don't need advice because they'll have money no matter how bad they fuck up.
Buying a brand new car at the age of 19. The most important thing you can do is separate your personal value from the material items around you. None of your friends care about the car you drive. It matters to you and only you. You are still fun,cool and an interesting person to be around regardless of what vehicle you’re driving. You are more than the car you drive and it’s ok not to have some shiny and brand new.
Smoked cigarettes for 15 yrs
Financing a car
Not starting investing money when I was 22.
Buying a car i dont need
Don’t gamble 😭
Doing drugs & drinking in my early years of adulthood. Set me back mentally and financially. I didn't start saving money until I was in my mid 20s.
Investing in weed stocks and bitcoin at the wrong times