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rombsix -> RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (May 30 2021 6:20:07)
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Stephen,
Sorry if I rubbed you or anyone else here the wrong way. My intention here was not to flaunt that I'm rich. I am in fact far from it.
I had to buy my condo with a special doctor's loan with zero down, otherwise, I'd have never been able to afford it. I had been refusing to buy and insisted on renting because I was always afraid of getting myself into debt. The way I was raised was that if one did not have cash to buy something, then one did not get to. The only reason I bought and got myself into a mortgage was because I learned that getting into real estate in the long run will help my financial situation, so I decided to go for it even though this now means I have to work very hard to make enough money to buffer that significant expense. I'm still paying off my car which is a 2013 used vehicle. I invest with two major brokerages because one of them is a free service through my bank, and the other is my mandatory retirement account through my job. Neither of them has minimum required amounts to open investment accounts, so I did because otherwise, I used to think the "right way" to invest was to put all my money in a savings account. I had to wait three years in the USA before I was approved to get a credit card. I was constantly afraid that if I got one I'd go into significant debt and end up in trouble.
My father never learned how to manage finances the way people in the USA do. All he knew was to never spend more than he had in cash, and he never bought anything with credit. He worked 12 hours each day for 40 years to put me and my brother through school because back home the kids go to school, the father is the breadwinner, and the mother is the home-maker. We lived in a 110 square-meter apartment in a building constructed in the 1960's for our entire life. My brother and I shared one bedroom with bunk-beds. We never went on a vacation or a family trip my entire life because we couldn't afford to since my father wanted my brother and me to have the best possible education, so the entire family sacrificed. We all lived in the Lebanese civil war, hunkered in bomb shelters. My mother would be pregnant and had to lug gallons of water up 10 stories daily because we had no running water. We had no electricity, so my father studied to become an electrical engineer and got his PhD in the USA in record time (only two years from start to finish) then got hired by NASA but refused to work for them because they wanted him to design their ballistic missile control systems. He returned to Beirut and started making Lebanon's first uninterrupted power supplies to help the country have electricity so people could watch TV and find out when the next shelling was going to happen so they would potentially avoid getting killed. My father spent all his money putting my brother and me through school because that's the only thing he knew to arm us with in a country that had zero resources. Private universities there had no financial aid, so all the money he made went into our tuition (which was expensive).
Throughout my adult life in Beirut, I still had to deal with wars, militia fighting, assassinations, Israeli airstrikes decimating the country, no more than four hours per day of electricity, polluted water, etc. I would often have to sleep in the medical school hallways because it was too dangerous to walk back home lest I get killed. I endured, and finished medical school, then went to graduate school so I'd stand a chance at the discrimination (against foreign medical graduates) I'd face trying to come to the USA. Despite that, and the segregation and unfair treatment here, I made it, and I couldn't afford to get furniture when I arrived in Nashville. So I rented an apartment that ended up being infested with spiders, and got my first brown recluse bite on day one of my arrival to the USA because I had to sleep on the floor.
My uncle endured the same things and escaped the civil war to get to the USA. He started his surgical training and became a surgeon, opened two clinics (one in NJ and in NY) through his blood, sweat, and tears, then got into real estate. He would buy houses, and redo them himself (he loves carpentry and is good with his hands - likely something in common with his surgical skills). He worked abroad away from family and never went back once to visit Beirut. After four decades of working as a physician doing 12-hour shifts every day, yes, he did become a millionaire.
My father saved all of his money in the hopes of finally retiring in his mid-seventies. Alas, the economy of our beloved Lebanon collapsed, and all his Lebanese Pounds he had in his savings account lost their entire value. The government forced him to not be able to withdraw more than 25 dollars per week when the cost of a can of tuna became 10 dollars due to the corruption. He and my mother thus were in shambles back home, so my brother and I took them in and they now live in Montreal where I am their sole provider. So, I have to manage my mortgage, my car payments, my tuition, my expenses, and I have to provide entirely for my elderly parents who have several health conditions but hopefully will be here for many more years. My uncle who is still stuck in Beirut because he has three disabled children that require 24/7 care is also struggling now that the country is going down the drain, but he can't go anywhere because his family would not endure a move. I also support them. In my culture, we take care of our family members, because they pay forward what they have to us, so if the tides turn and it is our time to give back, then we sacrifice ourselves to do so.
Of course, I am making money. I only went to school for 18 years to get to this point. But that doesn't mean that I am rich, or that I am not in debt, but I am learning that despite all of the above, I have to find a way to invest, because I realized from my father that putting my money in a savings account is not the right thing to do. I say that I can lose my money and not flinch because I can still work, not because I have boat loads. In fact, I work seven days a week, nearly year-round - no holidays, no weekends. Last year, when COVID was rampant and Tennessee had the highest rate of transmission in the entire world (per Johns Hopkins), I saw that as an opportunity, so when all psychiatrists at Vanderbilt were finding ways to avoid work, I actually was working 112 hours per week in the emergency department when there were still PPE shortages. I was taking care of psychotic, violent, agitated mentally ill patients with COVID and putting my life on the line because I had a strong commitment to remain productive so that I can support my parents just like they sacrificed and supported me during the war. That is why I'm asking others who have spent most of their lives in the USA how to invest because I want to set myself up for the future so that I avoid falling victim to similar issues as my father did so that if I have my own heirs then I can provide unto them.
I figured this was a community that I can trust (after 15 years of participation on the Foro) and that has people wiser and older than me that would be interested in lending me their experience so I could avoid some mistakes.
I hope that better frames my situation. And by the way, I still wear the same clothes from when I was a teenager. I also have shoes that are 20 years old that I still wear. They were passed onto me by my grandfather.
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