The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Two thoughts. One, every time you invest you should always (always!) have at least a rough timeline in mind. If your timeline is >3 years, great! You're still, historically speaking, probably going to be fine. If it was less, this is a valuable life lesson about stock volatility many have not learned and you might gain some lifelong net-benefit, even literally. Carefully evaluate your timeline and beware of panic selling depending on said timeline.
Two, sometimes it is emotionally easier to "structure" investments (and their sale as well). Although in theory, it is best to invest it all at once and sell it all at once, as soon and as late as possible respectively - this is due to the tendency of the market to go up - in practice as you have learned it can be difficult and full of self-doubt or recrimination. "Structuring" in this context means that you stagger any and all entries and exits into the stock market, effectively 'averaging' the price points. This means, maybe you have 30k to invest, you put in 10k one month, wait a month, 10k the next, wait a month, 10k the next, or something like that. This way, you can at least emotionally free yourself from trying to "time" the market, since the timing effects are diluted (they don't go away entirely, but it's a lot easier to stay convinced that your entry or exit was deliberate and rational). This also means your gains are averaged too, might be good or bad. Like I said, I personally consider it an emotional-management technique, but emotions are a valid and real factor in investing. You can always park the to-be-invested money in a high yield savings account temporarily while you wait.
My timeline is 7 years. I specifically did lump sum investing because it's clearly the best. I trust myself not to sell, which I was right on. I underestimated the emotional pain of it, though, I guess structured investing would have helped against that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link