Its all about focus.

[james.hendrickson]

All,

So, a lot of the people on the saving advice forums are significantly richer than me, BUT I wanted to share an update on the my stock market performance over the last couple of years.

I'm up, by a lot.













There are a couple of things that I think are going into this.

First, market performance. No doubt, the stock market has done really well in the last couple of years. This is a major driver of the returns.

Second, focus. This is probably more important. Why? Focus is a controllable factor. Its hard to impact the performance of the stock market, but you have total control over where you put your money.

I made a mental decision to focus on improving my retirement situation and just executed on it. So any time I got family money, I dumped it into my retirement accounts. I also decided to stop funding a lot of the smaller fintech projects I'd been involved with, like Prosper.com and SMBX. I like SMBX and believe in their mission - its just I had to make a decision about what I wanted and all the data supported the idea that stocks are a long term driver of wealth. Also, all my side hustle money (surveys, selling bandwidth, etc.) went into the stock market. I also did some basic budgeting and opted not do some home improvement projects. So, I focused on dumping money into the market.

So - focusing on a single goal - which for me is hitting 100k in assets - has been helpful.

If you find that you aren't making financial progress, thinking about more focus might assist you.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Woah! Congrats james and that's a huge change in 2 years!

[james.hendrickson]

Thanks Living, I'm still working on the focus piece. And honestly there may not be any way around grinding out the results. I think I just have to put the years of saving and hustling, and avoiding bad decisions to get my retirement in good shape.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I've found a lot of success by investing in sector ETFs and going aggressive. Buying stuff not only VTI but VGT, QQQ, SOXQ, VEU, IWY, etc. Maybe if you wanted to increase risk but without going all in on single stock picks you could do something like that.

I have a friend who does moonshots. She will take like $5k and stick it in a stock she believes will 10x. I start playing with moonshots. It's payed off very well. Another thing she does is look at 52 week low bottom feeders and buy it and then hold. It seems to work she's grown her parents from $200k to $2m in 20 years. I've done the same but gone more aggressive with sector ETFs for my mom. Even now i've split her between VTI, VGT, QQQ. Which is a very aggressive investment for a retiree.

Just throwing stuff out there to help maybe supercharge the investing. I think dividends can be great, but sometimes buying things that 10x works better!

[cypher1]

You are basically up 600% to $94K in assets within 2 years? I don't mess with individual stocks for picks, but that's crazy good performance and timing. Great job, James!

Are you going to let it ride beyond 100K or do you have a different strategy once you hit that number besides retirement account(s)? Either way keep at it!

[james.hendrickson]

You are basically up 600% to $94K in assets within 2 years? I don't mess with individual stocks for picks, but that's crazy good performance and timing. Great job, James!

Are you going to let it ride beyond 100K or do you have a different strategy once you hit that number besides retirement account(s)? Either way keep at it!

Cypher - so, I'm going to take a pause on investing after 100k, and the focus a bit on debt reduction and building up my cash savings. I find I do better when I focus on one big goal at a time.