How I Became This Stock Obsessed Crazy Person I No Longer Recognize (in a good way)
My Life Before the Stock Market:
For my entire adult life, I’ve always had this overwhelming sense of dread when it came to my financial future. As a teacher, I’ve struggled to support myself and have had to work one or more various side jobs just to stay afloat. When the pandemic hit, I, like so many others saw it as just another financial setback at a time in my life where it finally felt like I was getting on top of my credit card debt and turning things around.
All of a sudden, I lost my side gig (serving at a restaurant) and my credit cards were back to being maxed out. It felt unfair, as if the financial gods were out to get me. And the kicker for me was, I did everything right. “Go to college,” they said. “It will pay for itself,” they said. “You’ll never be able to get a decent paying job without it.”
Well there I was in my not-so-decent paying job, which also required a masters’ degree (more money wasted) living in serious debt in the middle of a worldwide crisis, trying to support myself and my two dogs (see photo below for unbelievable cuteness) off of my measly teacher salary, all the while being crushed by my student loan and credit card debt that had somehow accumulated to more than I make in almost two years. Then a thought occurred to me. The money I was making was not a comfortable salary for me (especially living close to my work, just north of Boston where rent is stupid money no matter where you go) but there are a great deal of people out there living off a whole lot less than what I was making. If I was struggling to stay afloat off my paycheck, how were other people in less privileged positions faring? None of it was fair, for anyone (except those rich bastards).
The Day Everything Changed:
Until one day, my roommate at the time’s boyfriend was over and he was talking about this app called Robinhood. He said it was a stock brokerage app and he had sent my roommate a link that allowed them to both get a free stock. “I know literally nothing about stocks,” I replied but I let my roommate send me her link for a free stock anyway. In that moment, I had very little interest or intention of delving any further into the market than my one lone free stock. I was poor, I didn’t have cash lying around to play the market. The idea was ridiculous to me.
But everything changed when I got that free stock. It was like a light turning on in a dark room. And suddenly, I was hooked. I deposited a couple hundred dollars into my buying power (thank you stimulus), which would allow me to purchase more stock. But I didn’t yet. You see, I’m the kind of person that doesn’t dive head on into things. I need to know enough information about it first so I can feel secure in my decisions. I believe that it's important to continuously educate yourself as your life progresses and that if you don't know enough about a subject, then you have no business discussing it until you do (too many people do NOT share this view - hence the recent mass spread of false information). Must be the teacher in me though. Moving on, I did buy stock AS I was learning (I looked back at my history and I did buy a couple shares on that very first day after doing some basic initial research - I have since sold those shares).
Here is the part of my blog where I shamelessly provide you with my free stock link.
The Stock Market is NOT for the Weak Minded or the Lazy
So anyway, I did my research. I did A LOT of research. The stock market is not for the weak minded or the lazy. It takes time, and reading, and watching youtube videos (sometimes more than once because, math, ew). And it also takes being willing to take the L (loss) sometimes (not always easy for me). But what I’ve discovered in the last seven months on my stock market journey is that I no longer have that dark financial cloud hanging over my head. I can see the money at the end of the tunnel and there’s a lot of it, so much so that I can’t even see the light (oh well). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a poor teacher with a server side hustle and thousands of dollars in debt, but the few thousand I’ve managed to put in over the last seven months has now more than doubled (105% on Friday to be exact). And I’ve made a spreadsheet that shows me that if I keep on this momentum and the market stays bullish (you will understand later if you follow my steps), I can be out of debt by the end of this year if I want to (about 86k in debt if you’re wondering).
So, if you feel like I felt, beaten down by debt and hopeless about your financial future, then keep reading this blog. In the past few months, I have told ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN about the opportunities in the market and I'm almost certain everyone in my life is sick of my incessant droning on about it (they feign interest like the good supportive people they are). But there have also been young struggling people like myself who have taken a real interest and they want to learn too. So this blog is for them and for anyone else who wants to learn. In it, I plan to map out exactly how I educated myself on the stock market (including my new favorite stock play - options trading). I AM NOT AN EXPERT on the stock market, nor have I had any formal education on it (although I’d love to take some classes). I’m still learning about it myself and so I might make mistakes or use the wrong jargon and that’s okay. As close as I am to perfect, nobody can actually be perfect so you’ll just have to bear with me on that one. There are some things I will not do here though. I will not give you stock picks or tell you how to do it, but I will tell you how I did it. And if you follow my steps and you actually take it seriously, you too can see those bills at the end of the tunnel.
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