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When I was 17, my Dad told me he was "investing" the near million dollars that was my share of the sales of software I'd written. When I was 34, he passed, and

When I was 17, my Dad told me he was "investing" the near million dollars that was my share of the sales of software I'd written. When I was 34, he passed, and I had to wrap up his estate. Discovered that I was on the paperwork for several corporations I had never heard of; that there was no money left, and some of the details of how he spent it all. We apparently contributed to Nashville getting their hockey team, among other fun diversions having nothing to do with the business we had been in. Still aint got over the bitterness.

networkchad 3y ago
[dead]
geraldhh 3y ago
otoh most 17 year old's would probably not do any better. is the morale here that nobody should have "invested" it anywhere?
- kiba 3y ago
  Stick it into an index fund.
- tinco 3y ago
  Not sure if they wouldn't. The sort of companies 17yr's hear about and are excited about in the past 20 years have all done extremely well. Perhaps that's a quirk of the past 20 years, but I wouldn't dismiss 17yr olds investment strategies out of hand. They would do a lot better than what sounds like shady angel investments and sports team sponsorships.
  - kiba 3y ago
    Have we not forgot about the fraud and scams of the last twenty years? There's also the huge issue of hindsight bias.
- huytersd 3y ago
  Nonsense. If my son did that it would go straight into a low risk index fund or bond.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    To be fair, 20 years ago low cost index funds were much less common and knowledge of them was also not as widespread. But bond is always a good option.
- thinkingtoilet 3y ago
  You can put it in a trust and hire someone to manage it, but that has it's own complications. Other than that, an index fund. Dead simple.
- majormajor 3y ago
  The moral, if you want one, is that if you're going to "protect" your kid "for their own good" instead of letting them have a say in it than you damn well better not fuck up. A 17 year old who screws up can learn some lessons. A 17 year old who was screwed by their father? Less so.
- Bluestrike2 3y ago
  Considering the fact that the commenter's father lost or wasted all of it, he'd have probably been better had it sat in a checking account for the intervening years. Or under a mattress in wadded up dollar bills. Even if you're completely clueless about investing and you just walk into your bank and ask to talk to someone about what to do with it, you'd still come out ahead even if they push you towards mutual funds with excessive fees. Pretty much anything would have been better. I'm not a parent, but I have trouble imagining how I'd ever feel comfortable directly managing my (hypothetical) kid's earnings like that. It just seems like, no matter what you do, you're creating a dynamic that could undermine or outright destroy your relationship. Especially if some of those investments go poorly.
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    I was raised to believe that the entire reason I existed was to take care of my parents. Pops really didn't have a division between "his property" and "my property." One of the last things he did was sell me the land I'd built my house on. With a personal loan from one of his banker buddies with a 25% APR. I really shoulda known better as a teenager.
kevinventullo 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the software you had sold as a teenager?
- h2odragon 3y ago
  Bid estimating package for building earthen structures
zackmorris 3y ago
You just nailed why "nobody wants to work anymore". I grew up in the 80s and Gen X people like me mostly remember asking our Boomer parents for money and they would maybe give us $20 or tell us to get a job. Meanwhile many of them (not mine) were making bank. We grew up with the understanding that there would simply be no money for us other than what we earned ourselves. The minimum wage would never increase, working people's taxes would never decrease, rich people's taxes would never increase, social security would be gone by the time we retire, etc etc etc. It never made sense to me how the hippie generation that learned so much about consciousness and the human condition managed to unlearn all of that and revert to a greed-is-good gilded age philosophy of trickle-down economics. So I've come to equate deciding for others with sin. Because the ultimate sin is to look out for oneself and deny the agency of another under whatever mental construct floats your boat. That's what stuff like the golden rule and 10 commandments are about. We're seeing this today with center-right populist politics where its proponents call grown adults snowflakes for calling out exploitation. And even the center-left silently supports neoliberal colonialism if it supports its narrative. This is why I could never vote for a republican that thinks he/she knows better than me while undercutting me, or a democrat who claims to act in my interests while gentrifying my community to raise my rent for example. The elders currently in charge of government think they have some wisdom that comes with age, but they can't hear us when we tell them that there are no adults in the room. Because the world is literally burning while they obsess themselves with materialistic pursuits that will materially diminish the quality of life for us and future generations. Meanwhile Millenials and Gen Z seem to be rejecting this patriarchy. And Gen X largely wants no part of withholding resources from others "for their own good". I see two possible futures around 2030: a head-in-the-sand focus on the comfort of the family like in the early 2000s and 1990 where actual world peace is put out of sight and mind, or a silent revolution where the old guard retires and young people pay those inherited resources forward to automate the drudgery that consumes our waking lives so that we can move into the New Age. The odds say that the former future is most likely based on history, but I suspect that the incalculable rage that young people feel towards the rich and powerful may alchemize into a level of healing love that the world hasn't seen yet. In other words if you have children, they will self-actualize in the ways which you were denied, and that wind-in-our-sails shift from conservatism towards investment in the future will play out across the population at large and deliver rapid spiritual evolution and innovation like we saw during the pandemic. So we should probably maintain vigilance in the face of one last sabotage as the powers that be attempt to cement minority rule by the elites before they pass.
IncreasePosts 3y ago
Wait, so you've owned a slice of the Nashville Predators since the late 90s? I thought sports teams have been a great investment over the past 20 years?
- h2odragon 3y ago
  no, he got scammed by those folks for some amount. They did a Cayman Islands "carry trade" deal and i have no idea what happened there.

networkchad 3y ago

[dead]

geraldhh 3y ago

otoh most 17 year old's would probably not do any better. is the morale here that nobody should have "invested" it anywhere?

kiba 3y ago
Stick it into an index fund.
tinco 3y ago
Not sure if they wouldn't. The sort of companies 17yr's hear about and are excited about in the past 20 years have all done extremely well. Perhaps that's a quirk of the past 20 years, but I wouldn't dismiss 17yr olds investment strategies out of hand. They would do a lot better than what sounds like shady angel investments and sports team sponsorships.
- kiba 3y ago
  Have we not forgot about the fraud and scams of the last twenty years? There's also the huge issue of hindsight bias.
huytersd 3y ago
Nonsense. If my son did that it would go straight into a low risk index fund or bond.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  To be fair, 20 years ago low cost index funds were much less common and knowledge of them was also not as widespread. But bond is always a good option.
thinkingtoilet 3y ago
You can put it in a trust and hire someone to manage it, but that has it's own complications. Other than that, an index fund. Dead simple.
majormajor 3y ago
The moral, if you want one, is that if you're going to "protect" your kid "for their own good" instead of letting them have a say in it than you damn well better not fuck up. A 17 year old who screws up can learn some lessons. A 17 year old who was screwed by their father? Less so.
Bluestrike2 3y ago
Considering the fact that the commenter's father lost or wasted all of it, he'd have probably been better had it sat in a checking account for the intervening years. Or under a mattress in wadded up dollar bills. Even if you're completely clueless about investing and you just walk into your bank and ask to talk to someone about what to do with it, you'd still come out ahead even if they push you towards mutual funds with excessive fees. Pretty much anything would have been better. I'm not a parent, but I have trouble imagining how I'd ever feel comfortable directly managing my (hypothetical) kid's earnings like that. It just seems like, no matter what you do, you're creating a dynamic that could undermine or outright destroy your relationship. Especially if some of those investments go poorly.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  I was raised to believe that the entire reason I existed was to take care of my parents. Pops really didn't have a division between "his property" and "my property." One of the last things he did was sell me the land I'd built my house on. With a personal loan from one of his banker buddies with a 25% APR. I really shoulda known better as a teenager.

kevinventullo 3y ago

Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the software you had sold as a teenager?

h2odragon 3y ago
Bid estimating package for building earthen structures

zackmorris 3y ago

You just nailed why "nobody wants to work anymore". I grew up in the 80s and Gen X people like me mostly remember asking our Boomer parents for money and they would maybe give us $20 or tell us to get a job. Meanwhile many of them (not mine) were making bank. We grew up with the understanding that there would simply be no money for us other than what we earned ourselves. The minimum wage would never increase, working people's taxes would never decrease, rich people's taxes would never increase, social security would be gone by the time we retire, etc etc etc. It never made sense to me how the hippie generation that learned so much about consciousness and the human condition managed to unlearn all of that and revert to a greed-is-good gilded age philosophy of trickle-down economics. So I've come to equate deciding for others with sin. Because the ultimate sin is to look out for oneself and deny the agency of another under whatever mental construct floats your boat. That's what stuff like the golden rule and 10 commandments are about. We're seeing this today with center-right populist politics where its proponents call grown adults snowflakes for calling out exploitation. And even the center-left silently supports neoliberal colonialism if it supports its narrative. This is why I could never vote for a republican that thinks he/she knows better than me while undercutting me, or a democrat who claims to act in my interests while gentrifying my community to raise my rent for example. The elders currently in charge of government think they have some wisdom that comes with age, but they can't hear us when we tell them that there are no adults in the room. Because the world is literally burning while they obsess themselves with materialistic pursuits that will materially diminish the quality of life for us and future generations. Meanwhile Millenials and Gen Z seem to be rejecting this patriarchy. And Gen X largely wants no part of withholding resources from others "for their own good". I see two possible futures around 2030: a head-in-the-sand focus on the comfort of the family like in the early 2000s and 1990 where actual world peace is put out of sight and mind, or a silent revolution where the old guard retires and young people pay those inherited resources forward to automate the drudgery that consumes our waking lives so that we can move into the New Age. The odds say that the former future is most likely based on history, but I suspect that the incalculable rage that young people feel towards the rich and powerful may alchemize into a level of healing love that the world hasn't seen yet. In other words if you have children, they will self-actualize in the ways which you were denied, and that wind-in-our-sails shift from conservatism towards investment in the future will play out across the population at large and deliver rapid spiritual evolution and innovation like we saw during the pandemic. So we should probably maintain vigilance in the face of one last sabotage as the powers that be attempt to cement minority rule by the elites before they pass.

IncreasePosts 3y ago

Wait, so you've owned a slice of the Nashville Predators since the late 90s? I thought sports teams have been a great investment over the past 20 years?

h2odragon 3y ago
no, he got scammed by those folks for some amount. They did a Cayman Islands "carry trade" deal and i have no idea what happened there.