I would make out a budget every month to make sure we didn't have more money going out than what was coming in. Being a mother and a nurse working full time, it was hard, and I knew I didn't want to work forever. By the time I retired, I felt like I was where I wanted to be. That was good. And about that time, my brother had just gotten into high risk tech stocks, they were just going up…great gains, you know? I wasn't a person that took a lot of risks, but it just seemed like, hey this is great, I can do this too and I can have it all too. I took all my money out of my retirement fund and put it into high tech. The market started to go down probably within the year. Not knowing that much myself about the whole market, I just didn’t do anything. I lost a good half of what I had in my retirement account. I should not have invested so aggressively in high risk funds in my retirement. I definitely should not have done that.
First thing I did was talk to my son Jeff, he helped me get the other money out of there and he told me what he thought about what I did. And that was okay, I deserved it. You know it’s not like I lost everything but I learned a big lesson from that.
I think as you get older, you do have to look at your funds differently than when you were younger. As you get closer to retirement, you need to be more conservative. I think it’s very important that people get guidance from someone who they can trust. I made a mistake, and if I could keep someone else from making that same mistake, that makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing.
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