How I learned most from my errors.

By Hannah Rounds

I started investing when I was 13. I learned about compound interest at school, and I figured that I would become an eventual millionaire if I could just invest my entire life savings ASAP.

I initially started looking into stock market investing, but I heard only reports of doom and gloom thanks to the dot-com bubble.

In retrospect, the crash would have been a great time to invest, but I had the attention span of a flea (or a 13-year-old girl who needed to get back to AIM), so I asked my dad where to invest.

My dad and my grandfather (both experienced real estate investors) were going to buy a plot of land that was available for commercial development, and they welcomed me in with a 3 percent share (equivalent to my life savings of $3000).

Less than three months after we bought the land, the city closed off the road access to my beloved investment which rendered it worthless. No, wait— it’s less than worthless because I still have to pay property taxes on it every year.

Buying that plot of land was a bad investment, but I hate to say that it’s not my worst ever. That would be the condo that my husband and I bought at the height of the housing market. Between home improvements, homeowner association dues, mortgage interest, and the decrease in value, we lost nearly $40K on that unit before we were finally rid of it.

And then there was my foray into individual stock picking and volume trading which mercifully lasted only a year before I lost a few thousand dollars, and learned about portfolio management.

You see, when it comes to investing, I’ve made tons of mistakes. I’ve lost plenty of money. However, my mistakes are a low price to pay for an early financial education.

Thanks to my mistakes, I know something that most investors never learn. Investing is hard.

It is hard to stick with an investing plan when you aren’t committed to your goal. It’s hard to shy away from attempts to beat the market. It’s hard to admit when you’ve made a poor investment and you need to cut your losses. It’s hard to predict the next market correction and to be reasonably certain that you’re getting a good deal.

It’s hard to be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy. It’s hard to develop an investing strategy that doesn’t waver even as the markets and my own emotions waver. It’s hard to admit that I’ll make more mistakes in the future.

However, the fact that investing is hard doesn’t keep me from investing, and the fact that I’ll make more mistakes doesn’t stop me from investing either.

If anything, these are the facts that help me get back in the saddle after each investing failure. These are the facts that led me to learn about the intersection of financial markets and emotion. It’s how I stumbled across concepts like modern portfolio theory, disciplined investing and index investing which have shaped the investor I’ve become.

I’m no expert investor, but over time, I’ve become more philosophical and more goal-oriented in my strategy. I’ve committed to receive what the market offers and to act as a buy-and-hold investor. I’ve learned that constantly switching strategies is worse than sticking with a strategy that was a loser this year.

Even in my state of relative investing maturity, I find investing hard. It’s not that I find it difficult to create rules that should maximize long-term, risk-adjusted returns. It’s that I find following my own rules difficult because it’s nearly impossible for me to predict how I will react emotionally to changes in my circumstances.

For me, investing is hard, but it’s also worthwhile. It’s worthwhile for me to know that I’m doing what I can to set myself and my family up for long-term financial success. It’s worthwhile to know that given a long enough timeline, even mediocre investors can become wealthy.

Learning to invest doesn’t yield an immediate sense of financial peace like paying off debt or learning to budget. Rather, learning to invest helped me to connect my actions today to my opportunities tomorrow.

This excellent article was originally published here – https://centsai.com/best-investing-mistakes-ive-ever-made/

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