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Like many of you I have read Jonathan writings from WSJ to Humble Dollar . I have been content to just enjoy reading without comment. After Jonathan health news and his hopes Humble Dollar will continue I decided to get off the sidelines and have started to add my 2 cents worth (which is only worth about half a cent these days) on some of the posts. This is my first post. What first got you interested in investing? I find peoples finance stories fascinating. For me it was a combination of things. When I was in 9th grade in my civics class ( does anyone even teach that now) we spent a semester learning about the stock market and we were given an imaginary $10,000 to invest in one stock. The Dow was around five or six hundred at the time. I choose Coca Cola Bottling just because my best friend picked Coke. During this semester I watched the stock every day. At dinner my dad would tell me stories of the nifty fifty stocks and how much he could have made if he had ever invested. He never invested a cent in his life. During this time my dad was in the Air Force, my mom was a homemaker and money was very tight. I always remember the time his sister lent him some money to help pay utilities. He was humiliated and I think I probably made him feel worse when I offered to give him the money I had from cutting lawns. He never took it. Back to the stock market game, when the semester was up my investment was the 2nd worst of the class. But the winner had made almost five thousand dollars. I said to myself I never want to be in the financial situation my folks were in and a light went on that as soon as I got my first job I could put money in stocks for real. How that played out over decades is for another post.
In a college marketing course in 1980s our professor discussed the presidential election cycle theory of investing. Although I never followed up on this idea, I did start to read investing tips and A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
I came of age right around the 07-08 financial crisis, and most of the messaging I had gotten about investing during my formative years had been negative and/or made it sound like a casino. However, watching my parents struggle financially and personally due to a combination of poor decision making and lack of planning gave me a strong drive to seek out financial stability.
Once I finally began full-time employment, I started doing basic online research about how to approach budgeting, saving, debt, etc. I work in a public library, and one day, I was sorting through a pile of returned items, when I stumbled across Bogle’s Little Book of Common Sense Investing. I can’t recall exactly what drew me to pick it up, but that book changed my life. It showed me a vision of investing that is simple, practical, and effective. I feel like I started my financial journey later than most, but that book helped me start it on the right foot.
I was most influenced by the writings of Burton Malkiel and Jack Bogle. Once you read their books you will be on the best path to wealth creation investing throughout your life in stock and bond index funds. Fifty plus years of proof in the pudding
Thank you for your post and keep posting!
As much as I tried to remember what got me interested in investing, I am not able to. I know it started around college and my first investment was Coca Cola. It continued when I started my professional career and I started reading the Wall Street journal and barrons and watching Louis Rukeyser on pbs. Also I remember going to the library to use value line for research.
Louis Ruykeyser in my early teens (says much about my wild social life on Fridays), a few years later TIAA-CREF ubiquitous in academic health centers, finally RSUs.
I started investing through the 457 plan offered by UNC (Go Tarheels!) shortly after getting my first job after graduate school. I had no idea what I was doing until I started reading Jonathan’s columns from the WSJ, which were printed in the Raleigh News and Observer’s Sunday paper. I think he mentioned various books in some of his columns, including Jack Bogle’s Little Book of Common Sense Investing, which made a lot of sense then and now. In any case, I checked out Bogle’s books from the library and became a diehard index fund investor. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Jonathan and Jack.
Once I started my first real engineering job in the late 80s I was able to save a reasonable amount, even beyond any company retirement savings. First I bought savings bonds through a payroll deduction option that was offered at work. Then when I amassed a fair sum in my savings account I remember asking my Dad what I ought to do with my money. He said I should buy mutual funds. I was so clueless I told him I didn’t want to own corn, beans, or pork bellies (mistaking mutual funds for commodities). At age 25 I did end up buying mutual funds through Janus funds, and a couple of other companies. I’ve made a few mistakes over the years but investing early and keeping at it has worked out splendidly for me.
Interested? Maybe better is “paying attention” … to be honest it was somewhat recently when I joined a tech start-up late career and started getting a fair chunk of RSUs. “Awareness” as far back as the 60s with vague memories of Barron’s being in the house and hushed stories of my dad loosing $ he inherited. “Paying some attention” as I was dumping money into 401k(s). “Aware of the downsides” as I rode out dot-bomb at WorldCom. “Paying a little more attention” as I consolidated my father’s estate and and my ?6-ish” 401ks with a broker friend. Understanding? When I started reading HumbleDollar regularly.
I got interested investing about age 20 when at work I started a small and rather pathetic investment club that was a failure.
Each lunch hour we went to a brokers office to watch the ticker and he talked us in to penny stocks. Needless to say we just lost money, not much in those days.
Using a discount employee stock purchase plan really got me started.
I’m not interested in investing, if by that you mean stocks. At all. I once belonged, briefly, to an investment club, and found reading the necessary reports excruciatingly boring. If I had stayed in the UK, with a COLAed pension, I would not have gotten involved with the stock market. Once I realized my US pension had no COLA I started saving for retirement, but I was fortunate to discover Vanguard and index mutual funds very early in the process. I do hold a few shares of my former employer’s stock, bought at an employee discount, but only because of the capital gains.
Compounded interest and saving were early and persistent themes in my investment journey. Does anyone recall the dime savings cards the banks used to give out? Save five dollars in dimes to deposit at the bank and the teller would record the deposit, along with any accumulated interest, in pen in a tiny passbook savings book. Those are my earliest memories of “investing”. That money could grow without me doing anything amazed me; I was too young to grasp how the bank used deposits.
As a teen, my investment horizon broadened when my father convinced me to close the savings account and earn better rates in the then-new money market accounts. I continued along a fixed income path well into my thirties, opening an IRA account out of college, benefiting from the high interest rates of the 1980s on zero-coupon bonds and CDs. Not until I had accumulated a decent nest egg did I feel comfortable investing in stocks. To this day, I am overweight in fixed income, but sleep well at night.
My dad convinced me to open an IRA CD in the early 80s when interest was high. He would never put money in the market. But I got the itch to invest when rates began to fall. I took the plunge in mid 1987 with about 3k from one of my CDs. Then Black Monday hit. Near panic as my stomach felt like it was in my throat. Then the investment quickly recovered and all was well. It was a great lesson learned with a very modest amount of money. I don’t even flinch at market gyrations any longer.
HS, thanks for posting to the Forum. I didn’t learn about investing from my parents. Prior to my 30s, the only exposure I had to the idea of stocks was a 6th grade project similar to the civics class experience you describe. I remember checking stock price reports in the newspaper. But, at age 10 or 11, the lesson didn’t stick.
In my latest HumbleDollar article, I describe reading a book published by the Wall Street Journal with chapters on investing. I announced to someone at the time that I planned to become an “expert on investing.” That didn’t happen the way I envisioned, but I did eventually learn about indexing.
I share your sentiments about Jonathan and HumbleDollar, and we’re not alone. Keep reading and keep posting!
Thanks for the encouragement. Harold