So, what are you going to do with your life?
And welcome to the forum.
I'm doing well with poker and I don't really see it going significantly downhill anywhere soon unless some sort of legislation destroys me. I play online at the moment but even if they made it illegal I could probably crush games in the casino well enough to make a healthy living. I intend to stay very productive with both my time and money. Socializing, networking, investing (I consider poker investing from my perspective), working out... pretty much anything that I believe will help me enjoy my life. Is that you in your avatar?
Yes, make sure you diversify properly soon, that is a huge amount of risk having so much in one stock. Especially when you haven't developed any experience with investing. Look into index funds, if you have low costs, and just supplement in about 1-2M in income, you should be set for a decent retirement (which means only using around 3.5% a year of your investments). So don't go buying an extravagant house and multiple and/or really expensive cars unless you actually DO want to have to go grind out a paycheck in the workforce.
Pretty much if you learn to handle your money wisely, meaning learn what LBYM is and how to do it, you won't have to work at a low paying job later in life because you blew through your money. (3M is barely enough to retire at your age, it has to last 70 years, and that is if you don't marry or have kids, you aren't a 65 year old who only needs it to last 20-30 years).
I don't really see myself buying an expensive car EVER because it is probably the worst "investment" imaginable. Thinking about it grosses me out. I have a $23k '04 Honda Accord right now and I will stay very content with it for a very long time. Even the $23k I think is a lot.
I could see myself buying an enormous house but I still have another year in college before I can even consider it. I would think it through pretty thoroughly before doing that though.
Welcome.
People like you are the reason I never got involved in serious poker games!
Haha, if you are looking at it from a monetary perspective then it isn't really something you go half way on. It takes a lot of effort to get through the learning curve and up to the point where you are making significant profit, so if you don't plan on going all out you have to be very gifted to make steady money or be playing somewhere with very soft games.
Of course, if you are playing low-mid stakes games for fun and it isn't having an effect on your standard of living then that is fine too.
Welcome to the forum.
Sounds like you are in the drivers seat of life.
At this point your poker earnings and inheritance combined sound sufficient to keep you comfortable for life.
What exactly do you want to retire from?
Honestly, I don't really want to retire. I just don't want to get stuck working an unenjoyable 9-5. I could see myself working a 9-5 if it was somewhere where I had a lot of flexibility (IE if I started my own business) but aside from that I want to do everything within my power to avoid it.
I come from an upper-middle class neighborhood and one of my roommates came from a lower class area. I've been struggling to find a way to make $100k/year since I was ~15 years old. My roommate is working for $9/hr and is really excited about making it his career when he gets out of college. I try to surround myself with people who are going in the same direction I am (although my roommate isn't a good example of this) and this community seems to be headed that way.
You'll probably want to read a couple books on asset allocation. That will get you pointed in the right direction. You can search the forum for titles.
I probably will eventually, but I feel very inactive while reading books without interacting with people and it drives me insane. I'll probably start reading thoroughly once I've figure out what I really want to focus on.
So, what's the natural history of a professional poker player? Do the good, young ones go on winning forever, or do they have cold streaks for months?
The amount of variance is dependent upon both the sample size and the winrate. If someone is having a cold streak for months then they are probably either a losing player or not playing enough games. The one exception to this would be the big multi-table tournaments (like the World Series of Poker) where there are thousands of people in the games. Being good will help you in those, but if you aren't lucky then you are screwed. I know someone who lives around here that plays MTTs for a living and has been on a downswing for a month (or a couple?). I'd probably go insane.
I can give you an idea with some graphs of how things are going based upon my single-table tournament games. This has typically been my main game, but it doesn't include any money from MTTs, cash games, or any bonuses.
While I was in high school I started playing when I turned 18. I turned $60 into $1600+ in the first week. I had no idea what I was doing but the players were pathetically bad.
I don't really know why it seemed to level off. Anyways, they passed a legislation that made it illegal for credit card companies to process transfers into online gambling sites. This didn't make online gambling illegal in the US (which is a very common misconception) but it scared off a lot of the sites. This is why you don't see Party Poker advertisements on TV anymore - you can't play there from the US anymore. For the next year or so imagine my graph being like that but upside down. I was doing well in live games but they didn't have my main type of game on other sites so I had trouble adjusting.
In September of '07 I tried switching to heads up (1 on 1) games. This for the most part is what my learning curve looked like:
I ran pretty hot and moved up in stakes very quickly. It probably wouldn't look so pretty for most people.
Anyways, I was beating the games pretty significantly so I made a new account. This one has a sign up bonus called rakeback. I'm basically getting 30% of the money I pay the site back at the end of each month. I play the site $5-$30/game so this is very significant. The rakeback is completely independent from the graph:
Along the way I've been coaching people (charging them, not for free) as well. They have improved their game a lot but it has been a bit of a struggle to keep them all moving in the right direction. I can go into it more if you guys are curious, but I'd rather not make it seem like an advertisement. I would strongly advise against it for anyone who isn't playing very regularly anyways.
Hopefully those give an idea of what is going on. I'm probably up 2x as much as that lifetime from things that aren't factored in, but 50% of my total winnings has been in '08. This should give you an idea of how much of a pain in the ass it is to get through the curve but also how much it can pay off if you really push the limits.
On anther note, the typical pro player probably has a lower winrate but plays significantly more games than me. This probably doesn't mean anything to you but I don't want to be misleading.
$2 M could generate an income between 40k and 80k per year.
40k in income could come from earning 2% in dividends per year. The pro to this approach is the $2 M will grow at 2-4% per year in addition to the $40k in dividends, the 40k in dividends will increase each year (at around a 2% rate), and the dividends will probably be taxed at 5% assuming your earned income is below 32k (15% tax bracket).
80k in income is with a 4% starting withdraw rate, that suggests you need to learn about asset allocation and do other research.
I can support myself without the $2m so I don't intend to take any of it out unless I buy a house. Isn't 4% kind of low? I say this because I see CD funds which as far as I know are risk free that offer ~4.5%. Is the 4% after taxes?
Aloha Xsoup and welcome from the 2+2 poker forums.
I'd recommend checking out two FAQs
How much do I need and
stocks vs mutual funds
You'll get lots of suggestion for advanced books on investing. I'd recommending starting with a fairly basic one
Investing for dummies.
$900K is a huge amount for a single stock. 5% is the typical maximum amount suggested so $100K in your case. Certain stocks like General Electric are more diversified so holding 10% or 15% isn't crazy, but 45% is way too much. I'd recommend selling most of it over the next several months. BTW what is the stock?
With that type of money, you'll have tons of people wanting to help you invest. Unfortunately, many of them are far more interested in buying that Mercedes with the fees they'll generate from you than making you money. You may want to hire a financial adviser, but I'd recommend becoming smart about investing instead. Winning poker players have somewhat of a leg up, since you understand about risk vs reward (i.e. Pot odds), variance, and making decisions with imperfect data. On the other gamblers make lousy investors.
Finally Checkout
FIRECalc (FIRE is Financial Independence Retire Early) which using data from 100+ year of investing to simulated withdrawing money from a nest egg.
I was wondering what your name was on here. Do you play for a living?
The stock is UPS. When my father started working there the company didn't even have enough money to pay his checks regularly. He stayed there from the time he was 19 until he retired at 55 in the upper 1% of management. My parents have been divorced for a while, but my mom never followed through with his advice to diversify the stock.
Welcome to the boards.....just put the inheritance away in good funds/stocks and don't use it for the poker games!
Haha, I don't think there is much (any) chance of it going towards poker, but if it did it I would know very well what I was doing first.
You're all set, unless you get involved in something risky such as gambling.
I hope so.
