The first thing one has to do when analysing past money decisions is to judge the decision based on the information available at the time.
I too watched from the sidelines as btc, nvda and others went to the moon. But with the information available at the time, investing in those was not a sound strategy.
Most reasonable people will not have enough conviction to make a serious amount of money even if they’re right. I think a better question is how much would you have invested to make $500k/ $1mn (or whatever a life changing sum is for you) on the investment then you can consider whether you had the stomach to do that.
Why stop at financial loss? I did https://whentheywere.com - enter your DOB and get a feel on how you compare to Einstein, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs and others.
hindsight is 20/20. If I'd known that Nvda, Aapl, Amzn etc. would go up, it's easy to now to regret how much money we'd have. Same thing with "RSU's" we get at FAANG. I often hear from coworkers that if they wouldn't have sold them when they got them, they'd be rich right now. Yes, they would be - but in an alternate universe, they'd have little/nothing and wouldn't have bought the car/camera/vacation they got out of the money when they sold the RSUs.
I added something related to this idea to my life-planning app: what if for projections. I track all my expenses/incomes/investments in my app. I then can with 1 click run a scenario where I move certain expenses to investments. I.e. cancelling netflix for 10 years, or xbox gamepass etc. and seeing what it would actually do to my 10 year projection (which already accounts for ETFs/Stock with variable return rates etc.). i.e.:
Exclude Recurring Expenses
Simulate cutting these expenses and investing the savings
Redirecting €19.99/month to investments
Then I see black on white what would happen if I get rid of all the 'small' subscriptions, on a visual chart. It's eye opening when one selects items that add up to a ~100 Euro ++ a month.
I tracked every single daily expense for a few years, until I hit a point where I realized I already knew exactly where my money was going and how much I could realistically save. It just comes down to discipline.
I really appreciate the idea and saved it for potential future features! My only hesitation is that adding practical projection tools might make shouldhavebought lose its fun, curious spirit and turn it into a serious financial app.
This is quite a fun website, what have you used for the backend, i've been wanting to get more deployments for small web tools but the hug of death always worries me
Oh good grief. $2.5m. That’s pretty funny. Hard to imagine I would have held through the ride but a pretty penny nonetheless. Not as bad as my buddy who sold his $200k grant in 2017 to buy a San Jose townhome that costs exactly the same today hahaha!
I too watched from the sidelines as btc, nvda and others went to the moon. But with the information available at the time, investing in those was not a sound strategy.
In my experience, you'll be able to evaluate the correctness of your actions today in about five years, when you have more data and results.
Here's one for 01/01/1990: https://whentheywere.com/?date=1990-01-01
You can subscribe to a calendar and get notified when you are exactly the age someone was, when they achieved something.
I added something related to this idea to my life-planning app: what if for projections. I track all my expenses/incomes/investments in my app. I then can with 1 click run a scenario where I move certain expenses to investments. I.e. cancelling netflix for 10 years, or xbox gamepass etc. and seeing what it would actually do to my 10 year projection (which already accounts for ETFs/Stock with variable return rates etc.). i.e.:
Exclude Recurring Expenses Simulate cutting these expenses and investing the savings Redirecting €19.99/month to investments
Then I see black on white what would happen if I get rid of all the 'small' subscriptions, on a visual chart. It's eye opening when one selects items that add up to a ~100 Euro ++ a month.
I really appreciate the idea and saved it for potential future features! My only hesitation is that adding practical projection tools might make shouldhavebought lose its fun, curious spirit and turn it into a serious financial app.
When I use it, it tells me that the form was incomplete. I tried to figure out how much I regret having bought 0 bitcoin so far.
Perhaps needs a better error message? I think it actually doesn't like the zero, but prevents it doesn't like incomplete data. Zero is also a number.
> CAUSALITY_ERROR: You cannot SELL before you BUY.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)
Needs at least a better error message that short sells aren't supported, instead of trying to be too clever by half about causality.
Fair point on the shorting - I definitely prioritized retro drama over actual market mechanics there!