stephenson
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 1,610
Working, family ... just watched and continued to save and invest.
on paper i lost 375K BETWEEN SEPT 2008 AND APRIL 2009.Took a breath and invested all of my cash, maxed out my 401k in May 2009
I retired in Sept 2018 primarily because of my net gain from 2009-2018
I bet this thread only has the good stories in it because it would be too painful for the people who lost money to write about it. Is that what's called selection bias? (Real question, as I never understood that term.)
I rode the wave down to the bottom while invested 100% in stocks. In September of 2006 I looked at DW and said we can mortgage the house and double down because this market is coming back, She agreed and we left the debt free life and put the money in TQQQ. It went down another 45% after that and I must say it was hard to take. But our motivation was that if we win this bet we retire early and if we lose we work a while longer. We won. By September of 2007 we were 38% ahead on the mortgage deal and cashed out. The rest of our investments we had tripled down in early 2007. . We quadrupled our net worth in under a year with a little help from our continued heavy savings and a good year with our side business. DW retired in 2011 after 25 years teaching school and I retired in 2017 after 25 years with the same company. Now we are loving life. Before the Trump/Clinton election we had enough to last us our lives so I pulled everything out of the market and we are still sitting and waiting for the market to correct.
Well, as I understand it, it depends on the intent of the OP and forum. If the intent is to get a randomized sample of the population, then yes, these stories won’t be very representative and will suffer selection bias.
If the intent is to gather round and pat ourselves on the back, or to give assurance to nervous nellies, then I think it’s something else. Something like, “case studies of success.”
What was your experience through recessions? Did you buy more? How did it work out for you gains wise? Any regrets?
I rode the wave down to the bottom while invested 100% in stocks. In September of 2006 I looked at DW and said we can mortgage the house and double down because this market is coming back, She agreed and we left the debt free life and put the money in TQQQ. It went down another 45% after that and I must say it was hard to take. But our motivation was that if we win this bet we retire early and if we lose we work a while longer. We won. By September of 2007 we were 38% ahead on the mortgage deal and cashed out. The rest of our investments we had tripled down in early 2007. . We quadrupled our net worth in under a year with a little help from our continued heavy savings and a good year with our side business. DW retired in 2011 after 25 years teaching school and I retired in 2017 after 25 years with the same company. Now we are loving life. Before the Trump/Clinton election we had enough to last us our lives so I pulled everything out of the market and we are still sitting and waiting for the market to correct.