Red Light, Green Light…Investments??
Took a swerve into unprecedented territory. Here’s the scoop.
While the world watched Squid Game, I spent October glued to my Robinhood account. Why? Because my stocks had finally, after much trauma-inducing swerving, put the pedal to the metal.
This is not a flex — indeed, Past Me is watching Present Me with a horrified look on his face, wondering where the hell he went wrong. Why? Because this self-identified English Major hath dabbleth in the Dark Artes (Finance). What tragedy! What comic irony! A liberal arts deviant, investing money.
Pshaw.
If you’re reading this and thinking, yeah, dumb move bro, then clickity-click your seat belt, partner, because it gets crazier. Six months ago, I dropped over 1000 dollars (that’s four digits, folks) on a service called Stock Advisor (can you guess what it does?).
Totally unrelated fact: six months ago, 1000 dollars is approximately how much money I had invested…in anything…anywhere…ever.
But that was irrelevant! Why? Because I was gonna get filthy rich, that’s why. Fuck the writer’s cardboard box — I was gonna hit it big with none of Stephen King’s glorious talent, and this investment service (more on that in another post) was gonna make it happen! Maybe even next month! MAYBE EVEN NEXT WEEK.
Lol.
Here’s the short version of what happened next: the market did amazeballs, I did amazeballs, the market flopped, and I flopped slightly less hard. One might call that a soft win. Except, 3 months later, I still had yet to recoup a quarter of the 1000+ big ones I’d dropped on my investment service.
Owie. Bandaid, please.
In the words of Ron Weasley, “Bloody hell, Harry.” I looked back upon the vile sorcery I had wrought upon my dwindling savings and, like a man staring down an Avada Kedavra, wondered what the hell I’d done to reach that point. My financial life flashed before my eyes (not really, but let’s pretend it did).
Holy shit. What was I thinking? I could have spent that money on 100 pairs of waterproof goggles! Or 200 bags of kale! (Gods, do I love kale. #kaleqween) Or I could’ve bought, I don’t know, 200 months of Medium subs.
And yet, this dramatized tale doth not end in tragedy. For at the end of the brief, three-months-year-old tunnel, I saw a light. That light has a name:
Future Me.
(If you’ve read WaitButWhy the blog or watched Tim Urban’s Ted Talk on procrastination, Future Me may be familiar to you. To recap, Future Me is always better than Present Me, in every way imaginable, with one all-important caveat: he doesn’t exist.)
Future Me is financially stable. He’s invested generously in stocks (thanks to the wise foresight of Past Me), and years later, the stock spirits float out of their Wall Street shrines and reward him handsomely with cold, hard cash. His garden of seedling growth stock has flourished into a mature grove of good, rock-solid businesses. He has bet on eco-friendly, people-friendly, money-friendly stocks, and he’s been right. He’d won. He’s beaten the starving artist stereotype.
All because he’d started investing early, when a single year’s worth of Stock Advisor was enough to throttle his bank account like a money farmer throttling a greedy, money-gobbling chicken…
Okay.
You probably think you know where this is going.
This is the part where I say something like, BUT I WAS HORRIBLY WRONG I AM SELLING MY CARDBOARD BOX FOR 99 CENTS, PLEASE VENMO IF INTERESTED.
Or, FREELANCE WRITER FOR HIRE, WILL SELL NUDES IF PRESSURED.
Or, shamelessly, NOW I AM A GAZILLIONAIRE AND THESE ARE MY FIVE HAWT TIPS, COPY ME NOW, SUBSCRIBE BI***ESSSS.
Spoiler: no. Still living out of a perfectly habitable basement. Still saving my nudes for that special someone (ohmygosh mom, I’m kidding — or am I??). Still four figures short of a million bucks, with nary a sponsor to my name.
Tim Urban’s right. I’m not Future Me. Betting on an intangible, murky, mysterious goo like the U.S. Stock Market does not guarantee future wealth. The Market follows Hammurabi's Law: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If you fuck up royally, uh — you’re royally fucked, I guess.
However.
And please, please don’t castrate me for saying this, cruel Fate—
*knocks on wood*
— I’m kinda-sorta fine with it? Having relearned basic algebra (-1000 + 20 does not = profit), my enjoyment, my investment savvy, and my database of Fun Facts have pulled a collective SpaceX and blasted the fuck off.
For the first time in my life, I’m enjoying something that has a very probable likelihood of eventually turning a sizeable profit. Researching companies — their goals, their struggles, their successes, their scandals— entertains me so much, I spend an average of 2+ hours a day Googling interesting businesses and reading their blogs, their press releases, and their white papers.
Who knew?
This post is all a very long way of saying, my interests have expanded beyond fiction, poetry, and random crap I Googled during lunch breaks.
Now, you get random investment-related posts, too.
*dramatic pause so my grandmother may clap politely*
Hopefully, posting milestone moments on my investing journey will serve as a lesson to me (and a guide to others) on what not to do with their hard-earned dough — because let’s face it. I am going to fuck up. Probably more than once. Probably big time. Probably publically. Probably gonna get shot by a giant robot girl. Probably I should shut up now.
Welcome to the revamped blog, friend. We’ve got half a year’s worth of Fun Facts to unpack.
Laterz.
Unrelated: I draw stick figures now???
