Prior to Firecalc, Who did you kick around ideas with?

B

Blue Collar Guy

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Messages
2,838
Location
New York City
I used to read money magazine, and listen to guys that always bragged about making a killing in the market. Then in early 2000 I jumped blindly into NTAP at 226 a share and some now defunct apply on line mortgage broker. This was from the precinct stock Guru. I lost my shirt. It didnt make me feel any better when he said he lost over 100K of his father in laws money. I apologized to the bride and told her we cut food coupons for years to save that money. She gave me a pass telling me we thought it was good advice. I promised to research things better and thats when i read every Bogle book, and the rest of the heavy weights.
 
I don't know if I ever "kicked around ideas" with anyone since I didn't know anyone remotely interested in investing or retiring early except as a fantasy, whimsical thing. (I'm sure that I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place.)

As a young adult I read Money, Kiplinger's and similar stuff along with the financial sections of big city newspapers and kicked the possibilities around with myself

As a lad I remember hearing Thurston Howell III say: "People don't understand how hard other people have to work just to make me rich." And mentioning his holdings in this company and that company.

I remember Gomez Addams reading his ticker tape machine and getting excited about: "Sell Consolidated! Buy Amalgamated!"

Then there was The Dreyfus Fund Lion from the subway and the deadpan voice saying something about "growing your money" and "ask for a free prospectus."

Twenty years later I was in a position and had enough money to follow up on these ideas.
 
Last edited:
I learned about investing from my father. I started buying stock when I was 16, and have continued. My Dad was more interested in dividend paying stocks at his age. Two stocks I remember him owning was National Gypsum and US Pipe and Foundry. When the dividend check came, we kidded about being a piece of drywall or sewer pipe
My big break was when I worked overseas as a Field Engineer, living on my Per Diem and banking my salary tax free.
When I got home I put it all into the market.
I took advantage of IRA's when they first came out and continued contributing until I retired.
 
Last edited:
No one really. Everything I know about personal finance is self learned.

I opened an Etrade account back in the late 90s and started fiddling with trading. Spoke once in awhile with guys at work, but they seemed to spend their money as fast as they made it...which was bizarre because I worked in a very well paying industry. "What are you going to do with your bonus check?" "Buy a boat!" Etc. Okay...

But there was one guy who had a similar mindset as myself and we'd talk, look up stuff on the web in each other's cubicle etc. Beyond that it was reading books and websites. He's now retired early too. Everyone else I worked with are still working.
 
Only discovered FIRE Calc a couple of years ago before that would talk general investing with some family members. Most of my taxable portfolio is blue chip stocks like JNJ, MMM, HD with 1 or 2 speculatives thrown in. The company I work for now, the president and I got talking about stocks one day. He stops in my office once in a while and we talk about what speculative we are holding and how they are doing. Nice to get a different perspective.
 
I spent a lot of time on Morningstar discussion forum as well as their articles. I knew about the Trinity Study and that helped me figure out if I had enough to retire. I also spent time on a "21st century investor" site by Frank Armstrong that had a really good tutorial on asset allocation, so I learned a lot about asset allocation and how to design my own investment portfolio, etc.

Well before I retired I figured out Money Magazine was just a flashy journal with little useful information, so I stopped reading it. It was OK for entertainment on a flight (before the days of tablets or smartphones), but little that really helped for the long run.

I had already been retired over five years before I stumbled on Firecalc and this forum.
 
I had no one to talk to about these things. That's the principal reason I love this forum.
 
I read WSJ religiously since I graduated from college. Then Money magazine for entertainment, Kiplingler for tax, and Barron's, but Barron's can be dreadful to read so I stopped. But I buy a lot of books about investment and retirement.
 
Last edited:
I started on Motley Fool. They had several retirement forums about FIRE. There were some lively discussions, but as time went on, many turned political.
 
A month or so into my first "real" job, one of the managers advised me (in passing, she wasn't even my manager and didn't know me very well) that I should be putting at least the match amount into my 401k. I looked into it and started contributing the max amount I could. That was 20 years ago, and I'll be forever grateful to her for planting the seed in my mind so early even though she probably wouldn't even remember me. If not for her offhand comment, my oblivious 20-year-old self would've missed out on many years of compounding.
 
Lots of resources - work colleagues including professional portfolio managers, friends whose financial knowledge I respect, our CPA, various FA's, a few financial newsletters, WSJ, and Fidelity website. It helped me to get input from diverse sources.
 
I was a federal bank examiner in my first career, so I was "around" financial stuff all day long. DH and I stuck our toes into investing back in the mid to late 70's with some spare cash largely with the advice of a broker. Had some wins and some losses. Circa 1982, enter the existence of 401K's which exposed us to the world of mutual funds. Then a bit later the ability for an IRA to be opened as a brokerage account rather than just a bank CD, enabled us to make investing decisions with few constraints. More mutual funds were purchased at that point. Sometime around 1993 I started purchasing Personal Finance books and became a devotee of Asset Allocation modeling. The final transition was our embracing of index fund investing. That was the departure point for us when in 1994 we left Paine Webber and our broker who pushed high cost and proprietary funds and opened a discount brokerage account. We've been DIYers ever since. We largely stay away from individual stock purchases but do own some legacy issues purchased back in the day that have large capital gains in our taxable accounts, with names line MSFT, ORCL, INTC and VZ. We primarily try to replicate market returns with our AA in low cost index funds.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum
 
Last edited:
I began watching Louis Rukeyser (Wall Street Week) on PBS on Friday Nights in the early 1990's. He had a number of panelists that were heavy hitters in the Financial Services industry.

Annually, the panelists would lay out their best predictions of portfolios for the New Year and their picks/results often exceeded the annual return of the S&P 500.

A very good show for those looking to learn about money management. As a 30 year old, back in 1990, I realized there was a positive correlation between those who watched the show with regularity and those that ended up having a nice nestegg.

Anyway, I hope old Marty Zweig eventually got those hemmoroids taken care of. :)

Michael
 
Our company had a great 401k adviser. I would kick around a few ideas with him, but that's about it.
 
Nothing growing up . Read everything that looked halfway interesting on the personal finance and investing shelves at local library my first year out of school. Began daily Wall street journal at that time and later added a Value Line subscription for a few years. Continued reading whatever looked interesting. Talked to father in law occasionally beginning in my early 20s; he's really the only one I ever kicked ideas around with in person.

Then came the internet. But still continue reading whatever looks interesting and still have the WSJ subscription.
 
My earliest piece of financial advice came from an episode of the Flintstones I watched as a kid. In that episode, Fred somehow becomes or is mistaken for some wealthy tycoon. When he is asked how he made his millions, he says, simply, Buy low, sell high!"


I never used Firecalc, but I did learn things over the years from other sources. One was from my mother who heard advice from Dr. Bernard Meltzer, who hosted a radio call-in show back in the 1970s and 1980s called, "What's your problem?"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Meltzer


His advice, relayed to me by my mom, led to my buying my co-op apartment in 1989 and my first foray into investing my after-tax money in tax-free muni bond funds in 1990 with Fidelity Investments.


Fidelity has provided me with (free) investment advice over the years, starting with a good stock mutual fund in the mid-1990s, in time to ride the 1990s boom. In 2008, with the help of one of their local Account Executives, we set up my financial picture in their RIP program which showed me in fine shape toward the ER I was getting very close to starting. (I would not find this forum until 2009, after I ERed.)


I remember watching Wall Street Week back in the 1990s now and then, but never became a regular viewer of it.


I remember hearing about the 401k when I was in college and how good it was, but I don't recall who or what told me about it.


For a few years in the mid-1990s, I received a gift subscription to The Bottom Line newsletter. It was interesting but not enough for me to keep up the subscription.

Then there is a funny line about compound interest from a Seinfeld episode ("The Junior Mint") I have quoted in this forum a few times:

"George: "Yeah, interest. It's an amazing thing. You make money without doing anything..."
Jerry: "Y'know, I have friends who try to base their whole life on that principle."
George: "Really? Who?"
Jerry: "Nobody you know..."
 
No one to talk to and no education in investing. I read Money and Kiplingers for a couple of years and finally realized they were mostly common sense and fluff. Made a few investing mistakes although not too bad and figured they were my tuition into the world of personal finance. Years latter I came across this website and although I get lost on some of the more technical posts it gave me some good reinforcement and ideas to consider.

Cheers!
 
I grew up in a mixed family. My father worked various construction projects and his only advice was - save your money. My Mom worked for a stock broker for 50 years and her only advice - never touch the principle. A combination of both is where I am today.

Despite all my number crunching with various calculators and endless reading I am beginning to realize it's probably not all that complicated. Pick your AA and take your chances. No matter what, if you LBYM you'll probably be OK.
 
In the 80s, I kicked around ideas with a co-worker. We're the same age, we were first year career back then. It helped to have a like minded person my age. Flash forward to today. He is not ERing due to a slight job interruption. I was fortunate to not have such, but I keep in touch and they are doing fine and he isn't too far away.

We both used something called "Mutual Fund Forecaster" for data. We discovered it in a newspaper article. We didn't so much use the forecast. It helped me understand the world of funds, fees, etc in a pre-internet age.

In the 90s, I moved away from my friend, dropped the fairly expensive subscription to that publication, and self directed based on earlier knowledge. I also read and took advice from the booklets put out by Megacorp for the 401k. The advice they had was really pretty good.

Then the internet, move to Vanguard, and one day, when Megacorp irked me, I typed in "Early Retirement" and found you and Firecalc. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
  • Locked
Right to farm law-dealing with idiot city worker
2 3
Replies
67
Views
4K
braumeister
braumeister
M
Whether to stay with Advisor or DIY...
2 3 4
Replies
83
Views
8K
VanWinkle
VanWinkle
T
Age 59 and more than ready! (Update from 2017 and 2019 posts)
Replies
19
Views
3K
Finance Dave
Finance Dave
L
25, 87K networth.What to do with 65K in cash? Need a plan!
2
Replies
32
Views
3K
letsdothis
L
D
Did we become retired by accident?
2
Replies
25
Views
4K
Gulfbeach
G

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom