Investor · Midwest, USA · Member since 2012 · 204 posts · 33 votes
My worst loss was $100,000 trading foreign exchange. I made $100,000 one year then lost $200,000 the next.
My worst real estate deal I lost about $25,000 on. Paid too much, rented to dirt bag tenant for way too long, cost me a ton to rehab after I got rid of him, and sold it for a lot less than I projected.
You never know. Worst investment I made was one in which I made a nice profit. Put $30 k in, but at the same time I was offered another investment for the same amount of money and took the safe route. Ten years later the investment I did make was worth $150 k The one I didn't make was worth $300 million. Definitely bet on the wrong horse, but that was all the cash I had at the time and decided to play it safe. My gut was telling me to gamble and risk everything and go with choice number two but with what I had been through the previous 5 years I went with the sure thing., and so as far as I'm concerned it was my worst investment.
@Anthony Gayden absolute worst investment? Surely, there must be a worse investments than precious metals. Although I understand, weaknesses, just a suggestion.
@Bill
@Bill Gulley you are absolutely right. I have a degree in civil engineering which has treated me well career-wise. The various analysis courses and job experience I had along the way certainly helped in analyzing investments. And there are a lot of intangibles of how my time at college shaped me. I am just a little bitter that I had the wealth building mentality as a teenager and it took me 20 years to get back to it, I kind of blame college for distracting me as it kind of trained me to get a job and work hard at it and increase salary. It wasn't until I was pursuing my PhD (in order to be better at my job) that I read rich dad / poor dad and got back to my dream of building wealth.
My worst investment was either a gold mine, or a video rental business, the best was my education. I would have been easily $150, 000 ahead if I had worked and not gone to school, but the knowledge I gained opened up so many doors and helped me see things I would never have seen without my education.
A $4,600 website by land hub.com and Bent Media of Birmingham, AL... DAMN YOU TO HELL BEN TANGYE...
Literally robbed me... Guess you could classify that as a bad investment.
I spent a 6 months waiting on him to build the site. Another year harassing him trying to get my money back, and all the while missing out on thousand of $$$ from not having a proper online presence.
March 10th, 2009. Back in college, I was owned about $3k worth of puts in various financials and a few calls on a bear financials ETF (s&p was at 715 ish when I bought), which net me like $40k. There was no end to the pain in sight. I had to run to class, noticed the market was still tanking and left happy thinking by the time i got back (about an hour later) I could sell and buy something nice.
In class, my P/L reached somewhere around $60k and I was about 2% away from hitting my closing order on about half my position. The other half was still OTM and was pennies away from going ITM and thus giving me a double wammy in profits. I couldn't concentrate but I had to attend. A few minutes later I notice a HUGE spike up in everything and I panicked. Citi had posted profits, some congressman was talking about the uptick rule being reinstated. I went from a $60k gain to a loss of like $500.
Worst day of my life. I ended up pretty much flunking that semester.
The worst part was that I later found out that my orders did get hit, but because of the huge amount of order flow happening at that same time, the broker I was using was unable to fulfill the order until 2-3 mins after the price was hit. A couple order were hit and NEVER filled. By the time they could route the orders, the market had gapped up and I may as well have not even made those orders.
I was part-owner of a real estate office with 4 other people for about 5 years.
After getting out I went from 4 rental to 28 units within 2.5 years. I can show on paper where I actually lost around $50k but I prefer to say that the business cost me millions. This is due it distracting me for 5 years from building a portfolio.
What's done is done and now I'm coming up on 3 years out of the business and I've accomplished more than I had planned on at this point.
My college education was a bad investment, I think. It is possible I would have worked some crummy min. wage job and blown all my money if I had not gone to college. But basically I busted my but for seven years to get back to zero. I was an 18 yr old with about 5k saved up, to a 22 yr old with a degree but 25k in debt, to a 25 yr old with debt paid off. If I would have worked as hard and lived as cheap as I did during those year, but worked (even a low paying job) I could have been a 25 yr old with 100k to invest.
I feel the exact same way. I am 6 years out of college and just now paying off all my school debt, not to mention the credit cards I rang up in college as well. It was a great experience, but not worth the money. I wish I would have just started vigorously researching real estate investment when I was 18. I could have saved a ton of time and can't even imagine where I'd be now if I'd have gone that route!
We bought this house in Grandview that wasn't in the best neighborhood, but it was dirt cheap. We knew it needed a big rehab, but things just got out of hand and just about everything crumbled in our hands and needed to be replaced. To make things worse, the basement was about 2/3's finished, so we just decided to finish it. But then we ran into a problem with water getting in and all the electrical in the basement was done wrong. Project creep turned into project explosion and well now we're really upside down in it. On a side note, usually, with partially finished basements, unless you're in a really nice area, don't finish it or do so in the cheapest way possible (paint the floors and walls and do basically nothing else).
@Anthony Gayden One thought is to move your money to your brokerage account and set it up for margin. Then if you need to access your savings you can write a check and "borrow" against your account value for between 1/2 to 2/3 of the value without having to sell anything that day. I can ACH funds tom my account and have them available next day or wire them for same day if needed.
If you stay conservative on your investments you should do OK over time. I like Master Limited Partnerships (MLP's) like Kinder Morgan (KMP) currently yielding 7.3% way better then anything you get in the bank and they have a history of growing their dividend over time too.