how did you find the silver spoon?

[livingalmostlarge]

How did you learn about stocks, bonds, investing? Investing vehicles? Especially if you weren't born with a silver spoon. If you parents had no investments and no idea what it was? What happened to change your course? And how did you learn live below your means and invest?

My friend asked me that yesterday most seriously and she talked about how her husband and her learned nothing from their parents. Their parents had middle class jobs and now retired with SS and pensions but no investments.

So they were savingbut didn't see meaningful growth until a friend (not me) told them to invest in QQQ and SPY. I mean i do that and alluded to it since i'm a bogelhead mostly.

But my mom was the same as her parents and still couldn't tell you the difference between a stock and bond. And she isn't even sure what a roth ira and 401k is. Except you put money in and let an investment guy handle it (it's how my parents got ripped off and they even had a lawsuit and settlement for the advisor who got censured, fired, and sent to jail). So my mom and dad were not exactly financially savvy and they didn't start with spoons either.

But luck and interest and tons of reading for me. Just reading books (before the internet).

 

[Midpack]

My parents emphasized saving and thoughtful spending but never mentioned investing. As an adult I came to learn my Dad was the stereotypical orthopedic surgeon/doctor investor - a very smart human who didn’t bother to understand investing.

I took an elective course in Personal Finance in college during my sophomore year. Liked it so much I also took elective courses in micro and macro economics. All three were a revelation to me, and affected how I handled our finances ever after. I held on to those college textbooks long after I threw away all my engineering textbooks.

I just looked and my Alma Mater still offers all three courses now 52 years later. I’ve always believed PF should be required in high school, but to my knowledge it usually isn’t.

 

[MarieIG]

My father emphasized budgeting and not spending beyond my means. I learned a bit about savings over the years through Money Magazine, radio, television shows, books, and later online reading. It was a very slow process. My parents discussed stocks a little bit, but not much.

I had a savings "gene" and loathed being in debt. I also had an inherent fear of ending up living in a cardboard box under a bridge, and I preferred the feeling of being financially secure than not.

Oh yes, I attempted to get my kiddos started with the basics. I seems to have stuck with some of them.

 

[sdawson]

As someone who also was not educated by my parents (who never had money to invest) or in high school, I just picked it up by reading articles over the years. I was in my 30's before I starrted saving for retirement though. Before that spent nine years buying savings bonds for the down payment on our (first and only) house. I was 34 then, and that is when I turned my attention to retirement savings.

It doesn't have to be complicated for young people. I've encouraged my children (only 2 of the 4 of them are able to save). Talked to them about low or zero fee index funds within a Roth IRA to start them out, and grabbing any 401K company match if they are lucky enough to have one, then hey can learn more in the future. But get a foundation going.

It's quite hard for young folks to come up with $583 / month to max out a ROTH today. I know I would not have been able to do that in my 20's. But I encourage them to do what they can and grow to that baseline contribution.

 

[Sunset]

My parents idea of savings was it was done at the bank and earning interest was the way. Also they never bought a house.
They did promote "penny saved is a penny earned" and a lot of other frugal sayings.

They had a warning horror story of how my Dad's mother wallpapered her bathroom with worthless stock certificates from 1929.

It was largely my curiosity that made me read about home ownership (after all the landlord must be making money renting to my parents, as he owned a lot of units). I also branched into reading about stocks as the newspapers would keep mentioning them in some story.

 

[EastWest Gal]

In chronological order:
1. 1970s-Bob Brinker's Money Talk.
2. 19702-2009. My dad, and especially managing my dad's estate. He invested in company stock for with every paycheck for 40 years, instead of a pension. With stock splits, he ended up with 22,000 shares of company stock, throwing off enough dividends that he sent that money into treasuries. Then when IRAs were created in 1975, he talked and talked about them. By the time he passed, I knew the importance of diversification from #3, so most of that stock got sold and moved into index funds. But I've kept about 2000 shares of the stock, as it gives me 25% of all my dividend income each year.
3. 1993-California Medical Association partnered with financial advisor company. I saw a presentation and was intrigued. It started us down the path of opening a brokerage account and we sent money to that account on a quarterly basis for years.
4. 2014-Early Retirement Forum. All of you.

 

[frayne]

My paternal grandfather planted the seed early about the folly of debt, the trap so many people fall into and never escape. He talked to me about it often and even gave me copies of his Kiplinger Letters back in the early 1960s.

It took until my mid-twenties for me to truly grasp what he had been preaching. Then, in my late thirties, I read Wealth Without Risk and began putting its principles into practice: carrying only term life insurance, making double mortgage payments, buying used vehicles, investing in index funds, and living below my means.

The proverbial silver spoon didn’t appear overnight. It took the better part of thirty-five years; working long hours, saving consistently, investing wisely, and exercising discipline for it to materialize. That said, a bit of luck helped with finding a good paying job that was challenging and marrying good woman who knew the value of money, definitely help put some shine on that spoon.

 

[Dtail]

My parents were savers and investors, so that initial knowledge was passed down to me. I learned along the way for more information. Lastly I discovered this calculator and thus this site and further knowledge was absorbed.

 

[Gumby]

My parents only went through the 8th/11th grades in school. They were perennially in debt while I was growing up and barely solvent after I left home. I don't believe they ever once invested or even saved. So I learned about saving and investing by reading for myself and then trying the things I read about. It was not all smooth sailing, but I gradually found my groove. As noted above, marrying the right woman was crucial.

 

[Lorenzo]

How did you learn about stocks, bonds, investing? Investing vehicles? . . .
. . .
But luck and interest and tons of reading for me. Just reading books (before the internet).

My (rhetorical) question would be, how did you learn about books on investing? That was not a section in the bookstore that I felt was of interest. People like me didn't invest, we worked and "saved." To me, the word "investing"--at least outside the context of one's employer's retirement plan--sounded a little unseemly, like casino gambling.

Just out of college, also in pre-internet days, my employer offered a 401k, which the HR person explained on my first day at work was a retirement savings plan. I was 22 years old and retirement was a million years away--if I even lived that long. My father died before reaching retirement age, as did his father. Retirement was as abstract a concept to me as Einstein's theory of relativity. I had never even given serious thought to saving, other than the general idea that you should have something in the bank for emergencies. As I recall, the 401k investment options consisted of four or five choices, ranging from aggressive to conservative. I think I chose "moderate" or "moderately aggressive" because that sounded more prudent than "aggressive." From that first day's meeting with HR, I got the impression that this 401k was all that any responsible person needed to do. I heard from others that I should "max" my contributions, so I did that. But it was years before I gave any further thought to stocks and bonds or anything else about "investing." When I left that company, I wasn't sure what would become of that 401k, so I contacted a financial advisor whose name someone had given me. He set me up with a rollover IRA at one of the brokerages and started taking his percentage. Over the years, new employers offered new 401ks, with more investment options.

By then, the internet had become more as we know it today. But I did not trust anything on the internet. Even after search engines came into being, I did not go searching for anything of consequence--certainly not for financial information. I have never listened to radio talk shows, though I now know a lot of us here got their start in investing by listening to investing talk shows. No one in my circle of friends spoke of investing. As far as I knew, most of my friends were like me--they relied on their 401ks for their financial futures and went on with enjoying life through their 20s, 30s and beyond, oblivious of additional paths. Oh, my financial advisor did have me open a Roth at some point, but he did not educate me in much detail about its benefits, and I funded it very sparsely. I felt I was too busy working or playing to look into any of this--my FA had my back, and I was paying him as a fiduciary to watch out for my interests.

What I did learn about the investing landscape came in dribs and drabs as I increasingly (though reluctantly) spent time surfing the web and happened across articles, as well as in print publications such as magazines. I had never heard the term "Boglehead," though I believe I had heard of Jack Bogle and his philosophy. When I started thinking about retirement, I had more conversations with my FA and also started reading up in earnest on this stuff. I had never looked at my IRA investments--I had no idea what they were. Now I saw that they were index funds. I became increasingly frustrated at my FA's lack of proactiveness in helping me develop a concrete plan. He had taken his percentage for years, doing little more than annual rebalancing, but when it came time to do the difficult work turning my savings into income, he seemingly dragged his feet. That's when I found this forum and, within a few months, fired that FA.

In the past couple of years I think I have learned more on this forum and from following links posted on this forum than from all the previous reading I had done throughout my working life. I have also read a few books on retirement that have been mentioned in threads. I'm trying to coax my wife into learning a few things, too.

Talk about being late to the party.

 

[SnowballCamper]

As an old army lieutenant ( six years older than most of my peers) I got shuttled into a presentation by a financial advisor. He sold us a fund with a 50% load. A few years later I got the invite to a class action lawsuit. By then there was good information on the internet and I started to read here: Reading Room

 

[stepford]

My parents were also smart folks who were dumb about money. I only learned what not to do from them (and, toward the ends of their lives, the unpleasant consequences of what not to do).

What I learned about investing I mostly learned from mistakes I and colleagues made. I spent my first 5-10 working years trying to pick stocks, hiring an FA to pick stocks for me and getting the expected results, not awful but significantly worse than the S&P500 index fund that was the only option in my 401k. I'd read about passive investing along with my study of all the supposedly superior active approaches. Only in my late 30s did I finally realize that either these active approaches mostly didn't work that well or else I and all my smart engineer/scientist pals weren't as smart as we thought we were. Or probably both. I've been a dyed in the wool index investor since.

 

[TheWizard]

My parents had little to do with it, being depression era fraidy cats.
My grandfather gave me small amounts of mutual funds on my birthday for a few years in the 1960s under the Gift to Minors act; that was my start, I suppose.

Start of employment at age 23, I had mandatory contribution to my 403(b) plus optional contribution to a supplemental plan, so I paid attention more.
Around then, the first index funds were started and I listened to Money Talk a bit.

Things got lots better in the late 90s when the Internet was developed.
No excuse now for financial ignorance...

 

[COcheesehead]

I really learned just by doing.

I bought a 13% CD with my busboy money at age 18.

Started investing in mutual funds at age 22. 401k right away with my first real job.

Bought a house at 25

Found Bob Brinker on the radio and learned of his concept of “critical mass”.

Got a full service broker in my 30’s and paid attention to his advice, but got to the point where I could predict every move he’d tell me to do.

Became a DIY investor in 2009. Found the Retirement Answer Man and Kitces around 2018. The rest is history.

 

[pacergal]

*Parents who lived and taught LBYM and savings, from Day one. Had to save 50% of all earnings/allowance (kind of hard to do at age 5 or so with a Dime--lol)
* Dad taught about stock market/investments around college or so
*Work offered educational seminars regarding pension and deferred comp, which often included a free FA visit/eval each time that you could schedule
*TV gurus--Suze Orman and Gayle Vaz Oxlade--watched their shows religiously, around early 2000's?, mostly for entertainment, but did learn a lot, especially about affordability, wants/needs, good vs bad debt. Daughter watched with me.
*learned by mistakes made, and luckily recovered from
*closer to retirement found MMM, then bogleheads and landed here, where I have learned much from all of you, your book recommendations, your life stories and experiences, along with advice.

 

[Keim]

I was 18 and went into a bank to open an account. Discovered they would charge me $1 every time i used the teller, and the interest rate stunk. Pissed me off! I thought there must be a better way.

I also knew my parents invested, but they never discussed it.

Oh, and my fil showed me a compound interest chart when i was 22 and recently married.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Parents were frugal, but were the type that thought a CD was investing.

I used to sit on the floor of places like Crown books, and read every personal finance book they had. Never bought any.

Then Barnes and Noble came and I did the same thing there. Sat and read nearly every personal finance book. Didn't buy any there either.

I retired at 45 thanks to what I learned.

 

[Lewis Clark]

I first learned about saving as a young teenager. When I got my first job delivering newspapers my parents made me save half of my pay in a savings account. I've been a saver ever since.

I first learned about stocks and bonds in a high school business class.

My first foray into investing was during college. I attended a training lecture on personal finance by the Marine Officer who was attached to the Navy ROTC Unit. It changed my financial life. So much so that I have unsuccessfully tried to find him online, so I could thank him.

While I was in the Navy Nuclear Power School as a young Ensign (junior officer), many of my classmates fell for the sales pitch from a company called USPA and IRA (now called First Command.) I felt sorry for them.

Fortunately, I fell in love with a saver. I would not have married a spendthrift.

Shortly after getting married my in-laws gave me a copy of The Millionaire Next Door. I still have that book. The in-laws didn't know me well enough then to realize I was already living that philosophy.

 

[rk911]

When I was growing up in the 60's my folks and maternal grandparents were of the opinion that a bank account was safe and the market was not. They were Great Depression babies and although my grandfather was employed throughout the depression they all shied sway from 'the stock market'. And so that shaped my thinking...at least until the early 80's.

I married my wife in 1970 when we were 19 and 18 and, true to form, we shied away from the market. One day in 1982 an envelope from 20th Century Investments (or whatever it was called back then) arrived in the mail. It was a account statement with our names on it. Turned out that my BIL, who was a heavy investor, had convinced my wife to open an account and start investing, I was nervous, given my background, but I trusted my wife and BIL.

Well, it didn't take long for me to wake up and see the potential so we started investing in mutual funds on a regular basis. We added different mutual funds to the 20th Century account and added additional mutual funds to other firms such as Vanguard as well as bank CD ladders. I became a regular listener to Bob Brinker and worked toward the land of 'Critical Mass'. We opened IRAs (non-deductible since we were both covered by retirement systems) as well as Roth IRAs when they were offered. We both started contributing to pre-tax retirement accounts (457b for me, 403b for her) when offered. We did our best to diversify our investments.

We were saving and investing like crazy. I set aside $X each month for future major purchases/expenses such as vehicles, property tax, income tax, etc. into a pool account and tracked that in Quicken. When a purchase or bill was received I pulled that amount from the pool. It all paid off in 2005 when, as planned, we both retired with zero debt. Our net worth at the end of that year just crossed into 7-figures.

Net worth kept growing and we kept investing although that activity gradually tapered off over the next 10-years. Around 2015 we ceased contributing and focused on keeping what we earned. By 2020 our NW had tripled and due to an inheritance when my BIL passed in 2021 it doubled. At that point we decided to turn over mgmt of our investments to a pro. Since doing that our NW has continued to grow despite large contributions to charity.

My wife and BIL get all the credit for where we are now. Our SS and pensions are more than our usual monthly spending. Health issues have kept us from traveling but we're happy and secure.

 

[pb4uski]

How did I find the silver spoon?

Principally through an interest in personal finance and building wealth and reading every issue of Money magazine starting in my mid 20s.

My dad was more into land, rental real estate and small businesses (a landfill, real estate brokerage firm with my uncle and some self-service car washes). Family lore is that in the 1950s that he bought a service station that had a long-term lease with a major oil company without ever telling mom. He was a bit of a rascal that way, but times were different. Mom could put her foot down when she chose to but she chose carefully.

Dad dabbled in stocks but from what I hear it was more his broker or friends/colleagues passing on hot stock tips that generally didn't pan out very well. Luckily, he was in sales and general management and he make good money and as a family we LBYM and that I acquired that habit through osmosis (and they acquired it by osmosis from my grandparents).

Even though I did thieir tax return beginning in my 20s, I first became involved my parents finances when my Dad died unexpectedly in 2005. By then, their money was mostly in stock and bond mutual funds with Scudder, et al. Dad had a looseleaf note book with separate tabs for each mutual fund company and monthly statements three-hole punched and in reverse chronoligical order.

 

[NeilDH]

@MarielG reminded me that I was a saver in my youth, starting with my paper route like @Lewis Clark said. Not that it was a lot. I'm not sure it was about accumulating money so much as I enjoyed keeping track of it. It wasn't even like I was saving for a bike or anything.

My family worked in the trades or other blue-collar jobs, so wealth was a totally foreign concept. It was when I took a part-time job with a guy starting in college that I began learning about investing. It was a writing and editing job, but then he also had me doing his books (tracking the money thing again). I learned vicariously. Plus he had discovered the personal finance craze of the time (including Bob Brinker) and started lecturing me about it at lunchtime. It slowly seeped into my brain.

Meanwhile, I had started the 401K at work, almost feeling like it was an obligation but coming to appreciate it. My salary increased, my savings increased. When Apple stock dropped 65% in one day in 2000, I thought, no way, that's ridiculous, and I bought some. That started individual stock investing. I started reading the personal finance stuff myself. (Ric Edelman was another favorite.)

My late father would be stunned, almost insulted by my FIREing right now. But I owe it to that part-time boss. I help manage the money for my great-uncle and -aunt now; they're long retired starting at about age 60, achieving critical mass with CDs. I think they could have had triple the money with basic stock market and bond investing.

 

[Gumby]

.....

While I was in the Navy Nuclear Power School as a young Ensign (junior officer), many of my classmates fell for the sales pitch from a company called USPA and IRA (now called First Command.) I felt sorry for them.

....

Those guys made their way into my wardroom as well (on my first boat), but I couldn't remember the name. Thanks for the reminder. Like you, I didn't bite.

 

[Zona]

My parents never talked much about investing, but I had an aunt who educated me about savings bonds and how interest worked. I also took Economics in college so I understood a bit about the economy but not necessarily how to apply that knowledge. I knew the basics of making sure to save and live on less than I earned but I didn't understand personal finance or how to get started with investing.

I'm very thankful to two women at my first job out of college who broke the taboo and discussed finances. One was a manager (not my manager, but someone I respected) who advised me to participate in the 401k plan at least up to the match. And the other was a coworker on my first project who mentioned she was reading about the Motley Fool, Bogle, and the S&P 500. We would have some interesting discussions over lunch about personal finance, it really helped to discuss these things with a peer in the same situation as myself. After a couple years of viewing my 401k statements, I started to see compounding in action. From there I opened a DIY brokerage and as my income increased I was able to save the extra in taxable and watch it grow.

I'm really fortunate that my coworker had talked up the S&P (and not individual stock-picking) so I started out invested only in SPY, buy and hold. From there I just kept reading blogs, books, and this forum; I learned that FIRE was possible and made it a goal. So grateful to the helpful people I've met along the journey, both in my working life and here on this forum!

 

[athena53]

It was in stages.

Grandparents started out quite poor- maternal grandfather dropped out of college when he ran out of money and he and Grandma raised 5 kids during the Great Depression. Paternal grandparents both came from ridiculously large farming families- Grandpa had a 4th grade education because he left school to support the family. So, both parents were raised to be frugal and to save.

When I was a teenager in the mid-1960s Dad started investing in stocks. There were many more barriers back then- you had to have a stockbroker place the trades and pay steep commissions- but Dad subscribed to the little books of Value Line charts and educated himself. I was fascinated by those charts and Dad always answered my questions. Parents were adamant about not having any debt except a mortgage. That was back when the banks started sending out credit cards, unsolicited. I know they had credit cards but they always paid in full every month.

As a young adult I mostly saved through company plans. I did open brokerage accounts but the only one that did well was at Merrill Lynch with a sharp young woman my age (former ballet major!) who was a shrewd technical analyst. I sold it all to buy my first house. I also have to give credit to my Ex's sister and BIL who were investing in cable franchises at the time. They told me Comcast was "a good little company" back in the early 1980s. Boy, were they right back then. I also got a much better grounding in compound interest from one of the actuarial exams. I still use it.

Things really took off after a messy divorce, a few job changes and a second marriage in 2003 to a dear man who was a true financial partner even though he didn't bring much money to the marriage. We moved to a LCOL area for my job, he was 65 and started collecting SS and there was a lot more to invest, including IRAs rolled over from 401(k)s at previous employers. I started doing long-range projections and being more active in making investments rather than just mutual funds, with overall good results.

I retired in 2014 at age 61 and thanks to more spare time and all the information on the Internet, especially podcasts, managing investments feels like a hobby now. I'm not an active trader but stay aware of developments in the overall market and tweak things occasionally.

Fortunately I was able to thank Dad many times before he died for encouraging my interest in investing.

 

[audreyh1]

My parents saved mostly through work - pension SS and IRA/401K. DF ultimately used a brokerage to handle the IRA which was put into reasonably good quality mutual funds and thereafter left alone.

I reached FI after DF retired but was pretty much self-educated by then plus a few work presentations. Approaching a possible retirement date I spent a couple of years learning everything I could. Until then I had been heavily invested in company stock which made my early retirement possible.

DF ended up with a great pension and still very good SS benefits plus very good retirement healthcare coverage. Definitely the more traditional set up which was good since he was definitely not DIY. He invested his brokerage account for his heirs and passed it all on,.