How did you first learn about investing?

[brucethebroker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Callitaday2022 Money, Kiplinger's, and Louis Rukeyser 30 yrs ago

+1. Still miss Ruyeyser....

[flintnational]

My parents were careful with money but never owned stocks. As a teenager, I remember realizing that money could compound and grow exponentially. While in college, I decided I would save and try to retire in my 50's. The knowledge of money's ability to compound and the desire to retire early led me to research investing. I began to read books and magazines and studied stock, bond and real estate investing. In my case, the study of investing turned into an enjoyable life long pursuit.

[Badger]

My first real investment was buying a house when I was about 25 on a teacher salary of $7k and wife at $5k. I figured that in the future I would have a free place to live except for taxes and insurance. Took everything we had to make the payments. It was only years later that I had enough income to make small investments in MF. That was when I started to read Money, Kiplingers and a few other publications that I could understand (for the most part). No one to help me so it was a little bumpy at first until I realized I didn't have the educational background and stopped trying to beat the market for something more conservative and steady like index funds etc. Eventually I found this website.



It worked out better than I expected and I still don't understand most of the technical conversations here. Just goes to show that you don't always need to be a financial expert to come out ahead. But you do need to listen to those who are that can be trusted.


Cheers!

[pb4uski]

Dad dabbled in stocks when I was growing up... I suspect unsuccessfully playing the latest "hot tip" from friends and acquaintances.

When I took my first job out of college my employer shared the floor with a Dean Witter office. I had "my guy" who recommended various stocks for me to buy timing the market... I recall buying Western Union and Public Storage Properties... anyway, lots of winners and losers.

Then I subscribed to Money magazine and they put me on the trail to no-load, low-cost mutual funds before it was fashionable. Once I got married and my career progressed and I was making more I started regularly making 401k contributions and the rest is history.

In my second job... about 4 years out of college... one of my colleagues regularly traded tech stocks... researching tech stocks was his hobby. I recall that one year he made more trading tech stocks than we earned from our jobs... and another year he lost it. he actually did quite well and ultimately started a successful tech investing newsletter... and I recall seeing him featured on an ad in the WSJ as one of the speakers for their tech investing conference.

[atmsmshr]

It started with parents showing how to save. DF and DM came from frugal families and we lived like that having no unmet needs. Hand me downs and home made clothes were a lot more common in the 60's and early 70's in my rural hometown than today. Wood stove for the winter, no summer AC and lots of DIY projects. DM would occasionally joke that DF would earn a nickel and then save a dime.

First job in the grandparents family restaurant at 14 came with a passbook savings account and regular bank trips to deposit cash pay. DF was a high school teacher who regularly talked about the ups and downs of stocks with his parents and brothers in front of me. DF also talked to me about the plus and minus of whole life policies and pension annuity. He also taught accounting which helped me pick HS and college electives in accounting and economics. Topped that interest later with an MBA. (DF retired at 59 with a million and still dabbles in stocks)

401ks were kinda new when my corporate job started in 1986, and I jumped in with both feet to 100% stocks. Fidelity Magellan and Janis Funds were 'hot hands' then. Switched to S&P 500 after a few years driven by DFIL Money Magazine and Forbes articles repeatedly stating that index funds with no load and low annual fees were the best chance of long term gains. Sadly, DFIL did not follow the articles and went bankrupt in 2008 while in retirement. My human capital is ebbing, so to avoid DFIL's fate, last year DW and I went to a very conservative AA.

Passed my micro economic learning to the kids. After less than a year in her post college first job, DD has saved $13k and we regularly discuss money. DS is in last year of med school, so his human capital is gaining but at this point the net worth ledger is skewed to debt.

Got lucky on many fronts and gave my retirement notice last week - age 58. The anxiety of stopping a regular paycheck immediately dropped away and I new it was the right time.

[Ready-4-ER-at-14]

Around 5th grade, we studied stocks and had to pick a couple. Seems I picked Wrigleys chewing gum, and Brunswick who did bowling stuff and eventually got Zebco fishing poles.

When first married father in law got me hooked on the idea of buying dividend paying stock to pay my bills. I bought enough stock in a media company to pay my newspaper subscription. I did this for several utilities before I decided money was fungible (interchangeable) and did not care where the $$ to pay the bills came from.

[mrfeh]

Started investing 25+ years ago - used the financial adviser provided by my 403B. Wife and I managed things ourselves for maybe the next 10 years but didn't really know what we were doing...

Saw that we were a few years away from FI so we hired a professional for 1% AUM. After 2 years of that, we asked ourselves, "why are we paying this guy 5 figures every year?".

End of 2013 I found bogleheads and finally educated myself. Been doing things ourselves ever since then, using low cost index funds.

So, for most of our lives we were fairly ignorant, although we were never frequent traders/reckless. The thing that allowed us to be successful anyway was our very high savings rate.

[street]

Investing started with my career job. I learned the value of saving from a very early age from my mom and dad. They taught me it, went from there.

[aja8888]

We lived in a housing project when I was growing up as mom and dad were not educated and came from Pennsylvania coal mine families. We were just living from hand to mouth and dad was a serious alcoholic. The family fell apart about the time I left home at 17 after high school. Well, things got a little better for me after that and I joined the Air Force at age 20 (Vietnam was really heating up at that time) . It was there I learned about investing from a pal who was in like me but knew about "mutual funds".

I had part of my Airman's meek pay sent to Hamilton Funds each month. I had no idea who they were, but it seemed like and easy way to put aside some money. And I was not sure about my future at that time.

That investment helped buy me my first house about 10 years later. The rest is history.

[Aerides]

Honestly mostly here, mostly in the last 5 years before I ER'd in 2016.

Before that, I basically had my 401k, split into target date funds, stuff that looked good based on past performance, gut feel.
My taxables were pretty conservative, based on my direction to my FA at the time, mostly bond funds. Picked my FA because he worked for several work friends.
Did ok (pretty hard not to do OK from 2010+)
Set myself a savings goal for each paycheck - maxing 401k, and putting large chunks of the rest into taxables.

Stopped adding to my FA stuff and dabbled with VTSAX myself, then directed my FA to do the same pretty much with all the stuff we had there (to IVV). Once I finally realized my FA was simply pulling the triggers at my direction, I moved everything to Fido and picked off the bogle lazy list and we self-manage everything now.

[Unpaintedhuffhines]

In high school, had a few extra $ and wanted to invest. My best friend's dad was a chemist at Mary Kay Cosmetics and suggested that I invest in them, so I did (this was late 70s when they were still publicly traded). Made a decent return, which got me hooked on investing.

Subscription to Money Magazine, along with Megacorp offering financial assistance. Didn't invest in retirement plan for 3 years until 1986, when I invested $1,496. Told the financial adviser I wanted to retire before 60. I still have those financial statements.

My investing stepped up a few notches when I found out my Dad was 50 and had virtually nothing saved for retirement. Scared the s*** out of me. Now I have plenty. Whew.

[googily]

When I was in 6th grade, there was some after school class or some such that taught kids how to read newspapers, and one of the parts was how to read the stock tables. We had to pick one stock and follow it every day--I chose National Semiconductor, presumably because I had heard my dad mention that he owned it. This would have been 1975ish.

There was also a family joke around the same time that revolved around repeating my dad's lament about some other forgotten stock, "I shoulda sold at 80!"

So clearly it was instilled from an early age!

[CyclingInvestor]

Started delivering papers at age 9 and proudly buying CDs.

Introduced to 401k's in 1983, always maxed out into their high-fee SP500 fund equivalent. Other savings in CDs and bonds. Started reading Money, Forbes, watching Nightly Business Report, going to library to read Value Line (my biggest influence).

Started buying individual stocks in 1993, small at first, then big in 1997 when my 14 year 401k rolled into an IRA, mainly dividend growth stocks with Value Lines help. Have not really changed my investment approach since.

[athena53]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Souschef I learned from my dad at the age of 15, when I bought mt first stock.

I also have Dad to thank, although both Mom and Dad preached thrift, LBYM and paying your bills on time. Dad started investing in the late 1960s, before the Internet, discount brokerages, etc. He made a few mistakes (wrote naked Put options on stock that then went up) but it was with money that could be put at risk, not the grocery money or our college funds. I was fascinated by the charts and Dad answered my questions and talked a little about the trades he was making. I bought my first stock at age 20 (Republic Steel, where Dad worked at the time) but didn't really get into it till a few years out of college when I got connected to a broker who was a technical analysis junkie. (She'd started out as a Ballet major, had a degree in Psych, and had a highly successful career at Merrill Lynch and then Dean Witter.) Later I switched into more mutual funds, and now have a mix of bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. I've always loved watching my investments and have learned valuable lessons through the down markets.

Dad is alive and solvent at age 88 although he's failing physically; I have thanked him MULTIPLE times for those early lessons.

[thepalmersinking]

I had a Merrill Lynch broker, who charged me 2% in 1998. Take my money and promptly lose 50% in the dot com crash. He always sounded so concerned and worried. He was in both Worldcom and Enron at the peak and rode hem both to $0. He never once thought it would be a good time to take losses. I just sold a small company and was young and ignorant. It cost me $400K. I said I can do this on my own. I have ever since.

[Moemg]

I was in my early 30's and a single Mom when I woke up and realized I was responsible for educating my children and retirement for me . I started saving every raise I received in CD's . I then started reading everything I could about investing and got into mutual funds .By the time my children went to college I was able to pay for their education and I was well on the way to a secure retirement .

[kcowan]

When I started work with Megacorp, they offered a stock purchase plan, investing up to 10% of gross pay and getting a 15% discount on the stock. Even better, the price was frozen at July 1 or current whichever was lower.

After a while, the stock holding got very large so I got a stock broker to help me diversify.

Shopped around for different brokers until I found one that was to my liking. By the time discount brokers came on the scene, I was ready to do my own stock selection. I now maintain a portfolio of 25 stocks and a couple of mutual funds for international markets and small caps.

[timo2]

My Father was a Naval Officer who played a little in the stock market from the 1960's until early this century. I learned a lot from him. Thanks to his investments my now widowed mother has enough money to live well.

[Dawg52]

Louis Rukeyser and his guest probably influenced me the most early on. Also investment advisors with the company 401k plan were very helpful. And I read Money Magazine and Barrons for a while.

[WestUniversity]

My dad and a subscription to Money magazine years and years ago...