Very early in my career, I was a financial adviser. Straight out of college and still working as a cashier at Schlotzsky’s Deli, I was the quintessential financial adviser off the street: A know-nothing mouthpiece who memorized a presentation to recite to as many people as I could find who were willing to listen. See, there are no actual qualifications to call yourself a financial adviser. Conversely, Certified Financial Planners are qualified.
Meanwhile, I was 23, and this career choice was a lot tougher than I had imagined. Who knew that no one eating at a fast food restaurant wanted to listen to their friendly cashier for financial advice? Just like the greener grass in other yards, other people had more success getting people to listen to them, mostly older people (in reference to both my colleagues and to their clients – albeit, I was only 23, so virtually everyone in the work force was older).
It was May 2000, and I was just starting out in finance. I knew nothing. Well, almost nothing! I remember my mentor telling me the story of his clients who were nearing retirement, but they had not saved a large enough nest egg. These bullrageous market conditions were a blessing, and he said that, although those clients were hesitant to put a lot of their money in the market, when they saw how quickly and how high the amounts that they put in had grown, they finally agreed to follow his advice and put a lot more of their money in these fast-rising technology mutual funds. Remember, this was May 2000. As we know now, putting more money in the tech bubble at that stage was the modern equivalence to 1912 contemporaries buying non-refundable tickets on the Titanic’s next voyage.
Unfortunately, I did not know any better then. It is humbling to think how I got from there to here, except that it was a day-by-day process. I got here because I lived each moment in between the two. I remember after the 2009 recovery saying I felt far more confident in my investing knowledge because I had experienced a full cycle for myself. Truly, I had.
My first investment was on March 11, 2003, an insignificant day in history to investors but a truly ideal day to start investing because it was the absolutely lowest point of the stock market that calendar year (the markets were recovering from their 2002 lows, but the incline hit a minor correction in February and March). My investment was the Vanguard 500 Index. I still have that investment in my portfolio, and I have never added another penny of my own money into the fund, but I have let dividends reinvest. It allows me to see how large a little amount can grow in the course of 10 years. Likewise, I can see firsthand how quickly a setback can wipe out numerous years of that growth.
