Perfect timing

Financial investments and me just have never gotten along very well.  My first dip into the realm was right around the Dot com bust of Y2K.  I jumped into a few tech stocks expecting to hop on the meteoric rise of basically ANY internet based company.  I got in just as the hill was crested and the market fell off a cliff shortly thereafter. I closed out my Ameritrade account in disgust after losing a good portion of the small lump of money I invested.

In 2003  I thought I would be really smart and invest in some land parcels in Lehigh Acres, about 30 miles north of us.  The vacant land prices had EXPLODED as everyone was ranting about how all the baby boomers were retiring and needed a place to build a house.  Lots similar to what we built the house on, which cost us 16k were now going for 100k or more and going up every week, it was insanity.

I didn’t have the money in hand to buy something outright so I came up with a brilliant plan to use my home equity line of credit which was opened to add a pool to the house, to also buy two small quarter acre lots in Lehigh.  For a short period of time I felt like I was an absolute genius as asking prices for lots continued to ascend.  At one point I could have sold the lots and basically doubled my investment. However I had visions of the prices continuing upward to the point where the profits on the sale of the land could pay off the remaining mortgage on the house.  So, I held and paid dearly for it.

Once the real estate bubble burst everything went into the shitter incredibly fast.  I actually did try to sell the lots on the way down but had zero interest as there were literally thousands of other people trying to dump their lots as well.  The end result was me riding the land all the way into the toilet where it has basically remained.  Even with the rebound in most real estate prices down here in recent years the two lots have only appreciated slightly.  As I sit now I am down somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-85% on each.  I try to not think about my disastrous investment outside of the one time a year I get to pay property taxes on it.

So anyway my most recent attempt at investing was utilizing the Robinhood app to buy some individual stocks once again. I started at the end of August when the market was still cranking out numbers.  Luckily I have been involving smaller amounts of money but once again my trend of missing the boat continued.  As I sit today I am down almost 20% of what I have put in so far.

Luckily the lion share of my retirement is automated mutual fund investing where luck is more or less taken out of the equation.  Instead, consistent, long term investing is rewarded where you reinvest your profits and continue to buy on the dips.  My overall numbers on that account are solid because other than selecting some funds years ago, I don’t make any decisions on it.

I just put in for Monday and Tuesday off next week, giving me a nice fat six days off in a row.