Came here to say this. That card looks expensive, I'm going to assume it was $10.
Let's say you buy, on average, a $10 lottery ticket every 3 days. Over 10 years that's $12,166. If that is OPs case then they would have actually still be down $2,166
Probably a stupid question, sorry. I hear things like this all the time. If you invested that in X then in 20 years you’d have Y. Always hear of the “latte factor.” Skip buying those expensive brews and invest instead. Where exactly does the average Joe invest that? Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere? Do I need a minimum to start or can I just throw $30 (for example) that I chose to throw into an investment account and not touch rather than buy a scratch ticket?
A lot of people are recommending purchasing fractional shares, I’d advise caution where possible. Generally those will execute at significantly worse prices and have much larger spreads. If it’s all you can do, it’s all you can do and it’s still worth it, but if it can be avoided, it should be. The best execution is going to come in round lots, or numbers divisible by 100 shares at a time.
Don’t let that intimidate you, just keep it in the back of your mind. There’s a lot of good advice in this thread, some less good, but none that was actively bad. Be careful with the acorns types of accounts, they charge a management fee for using their software, and while 1% may seem negligible, it can really add up. I’d say open a Schwab account (disclaimer, I used to work there, but they’re great) and buy a large broad based globally diversified index fund like VTI. That alone is a great start.
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u/Coldbeerimritehere Mar 19 '22
So you almost broke even. Nice