On Time in the Market

[cemanuel]

(12-12-2021, 07:44 AM)fenders53 Wrote: cemanuel

I agree it's about discipline and starting early.  I never made $100K at one job but I wasn't afraid to work a second job for many years.

I didn't let early failures discourage me too much.  I had a separate speculative account I took to worse than zero.  Actually had to pay my broker to close the account.  Things happen for a reason.  I could have blown up my account later with big money had I not learned to manage risk while I had time to recover.

And look at me now.  Annoying people on the internet  daily, lecturing them to realistically assess valuation and the risk in their portfolio.

It really does boil down to the whole, "Pay yourself first" saying. It should be "Pay your future self first." Can be tough to do when your kids want money for swim or music lessons. Best, for me anyway, is automatically taking it out of your paycheck before you ever see it. Not an issue these days but "back when" I missed money I never saw a whole lot less.

The other item that happened to me which is tough to portray to younger folks is that two things happen almost as if by magic. One is where your net worth just explodes. I don't know precisely what my difference is between now (59) and 50 but it has to be triple at least.

The other is how you spend decades scratching, clawing, living paycheck-to-paycheck (partly because you sock extra money away toward retirement). Then all of a sudden the money is there. At some point when paying bills I realized, "I haven't had to give any thought to if I can cover this in at least six months." A magic moment. And I was well into my 40s.

When you think you aren't getting anywhere you just have to set aside your frustrations. You made a plan, keep on executing the plan and eventually it will pay off. At least if it's a good plan - to me, spending $50/wk on lottery tickets isn't.