Pain…and…Confusion

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Dear Readers,

Thank you for coming here!

Went through my financials again.

It is nothing but Pain…and…Confusion!

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

PAIN!

I have made so many mistakes — and those mistakes are so expensive that I can barely afford them even now.

The combined financial costs alone of those mistakes are easily 2x my total net-worth now.

So I experience very negative feelings, pain, regret, self-blame and sometimes anger.

But I am kind of still repeating some of those mistakes.

Time to learn, dude!

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Compared to PAIN, CONFUSION is even a more serious problem, because it directly impacts the actions I take.

CONFUSION 1: How to get past the past?

I realize three reasons why I cannot get past the past:

1. It is hard to ignore the heavy losses — I would have hit my retirement numbers if not for these mistakes
2. I do not want to take easy on myself — I would like to retain these as painful reminders so that I learn
3. I have not got rid of my legacy portfolio — Honestly, I am not sure what to do with them.

Part of me wants to clear them and start over. These are individual stocks that I do not know and I do not have interest in researching them either. Also, they are not generating returns.

On the other hand, if I clear them, paper loss will turn into actual loss. And even though they are not generating returns, they are not tanking much further either. I have lost 98% of the value for some stocks. How much further down can they go?

Also, I do not know if I clear them and invest the money elsewhere, the return would be better. Actually, I am secretly hoping that some of these will bounce back, hopefully faster than the world index. But I understand hoping is not a strategy.

Closing my eyes and following my gut, I guess I am a little inclined to clearing them and investing the money in World index. After all, I can hold world index for 20 years. I do not know how many of those individual stocks I currently have will still exist in 20 years.

But it is much harder to pull the plug than logically expected. 

If you are reading this article and have advice for me, I would be grateful.

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CONFUSION 2: What is the right way to build wealth?

I am struggling to keep up with my yearly target on Total Net-Worth growth, which I set a few years back before Covid. And that was a very conservative target.

Our expenses largely stayed within our estimates. So the problem is the income.

Our salary income has grown faster than planned, partly due to inflation. But the investment losses are really holding us back.

As you can see from my monthly updates, investment losses just erased our monthly salary for some months.

Needless to say, I am still very far away from my 40/40 goal.

So I am not exactly doing well here.

And I am not sure what the right way is. Investment outcome is just so out of our control. I can see no path to wealth with enough certainty.

I thought of taking investment courses, but I do not want to spend the efforts and I do not really trust them — part of the reason we are in this deep loss was due to my wife taking some of these courses and following some of those “experts”.

The three things I can figure out for now that might work is:

1. Work hard for promotions and pay raises — Still out of my control, but less so than investments I would say
2. Cut expenses — This does not make me feel good. We are always frugal people. Sometimes, I do feel that my family and I deserve better. What’s worse, the expenses saved is nothing compared to investment losses
3. DCA into World index — Outcome is out of control, but activity is controllable. This time, I will stick to it — I do not have any better ideas anyway.

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Lets see how it goes and as usual, I will post weekly, monthly and yearly updates.

Till next time!