A bit trading-related, a bit personal.
Do you have any anecdotes from your childhood, maybe from what you remember or maybe as told by your parents/siblings that gave a glimpse of what you’d be interested in when you got older? Aka that you’d end up staring at charts and making money from it? Ha.
I personally don’t have any, except that as a 6-year old, I wanted to be a cashier and scan barcodes. Does that count?
Looking forward to reading about your stories growing up!
I remember at ten years of age I saved my weekly pocket money to buy glass marbles for sixpence, then lost the lot to a better player. So I saved up for another week or two, practised a lot, and this time I was ready to compete. Which turned into a whole bagfull before my next birthday.
Savings and money management, and opportune risk was key to my embryo start to being a stocks investor, and eventually full time into the financial world.
I think you were thinking about scanning all that candy!!
As for me, I had no inclination. Well, nothing that comes to mind at the moment.
As a kid, I always thought stocks were for rich people. No one in my family ever spoke about anything related to business. They’d talk about saving and working.
No one taught me anything about money.
I had to learn on my own. And I had to unlearn everything I knew. I’m still shaking some of those habits.
As a young adult, I could survive on very little money, but I didn’t know how to save. My siblings are just fine. I’m the oddball, I suppose.
Does 18 years old count as a kid? To me it does. I was a freshman in college and got swamped with credit card offers circa 2001. At this time banks were offering crazy cash back programs if you’d use their card. Chase freedom rewards was 4% cash back on all purchases. It got my wheels turning… I hopped on usmint[dot]gov and noticed you could buy the dollar coins (Sacagaweas) and orders over $50 qualified for free shipping. I had a $2k limit at first which was quickly increased to $15k after a couple months of on time payments. Here’s where the magic comes… I would order 15k Sacagaweas with my chase freedom rewards card and would list my local chase branch as the delivery address. Packing slip instructions had “pay off credit card account xxxx” So I just kept getting 4% cash back for buying 15k Sacagaweas and never saw a single one. Made a lot of beer money that year. Then the C&D letter came. Then chase got rid of their rewards program. Then usmint[dot]gov stopped allowing credit card purchase. Yup, I did that! Lol.
I was very analytical as a child and a quick learner but I’d be lying if I said that meant anything relating to where I have ended up. My initial route was in science and then I’ve found myself in trading and financial education.
I had no clue and no interest in trading. I wanted to go to school to learn coding so that I could eventually work for a video game company but something came up with the student loans and I never went. Didn’t even consider trading until I was an adult!
Well, as a kid, I knew I was too lazy to wake early and prepare for work just to come back from work to tired to breathe 
… So I began looking for ways to make a sustainable living with my cellphone. Came up with Forex trading and saved up to invest.
Now, at 18 I’m a Forex trader, not made my millions yet but it’s a gradual process.
In 1996 my brother was making R40 a week delivering newspapers after school.
Jealous and bored I asked him to speak to his boss and get me a route as well.
To which he did.On the 1st day of work after school I picked up my allocation
of papers which was in a huge bag that weighed more than me.I put the bag down
and quit.My brother laughed did his usual route and completed mine as well.
Determined to make my own pocket money but not cut out for hard labour I bought a very
popular game back in the 90’s called Tetris.I took it to school and rented it out to kids
during the lunch breaks.I used 10 % of my profits to buy batteries each week and
still finished R5 ahead of my brother.I realised back then that for me working smarter
sure beat working harder.It’s held true for me to this day 26 years later.I’ve chosen to
work smarter from home Trading…while my brother has preferred working successfully
yet harder for a logistics company.
I traded baseball cards as a kid, but what really did it for me was a trip to the New York Stock Exchange as a 12-year old. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a trader to see the big board, the sites, and the sounds of the trading floor (when there still were traders on the floor).
I have always been into numbers and statistcs.
and I have always enjoyed sitting in my pants staring at a screen for hours…
I used to play or gamble with glass marbles if that counts…
Love stories like this!
Haha, honestly!
Yup, same. Learning about money is such a privilege. I hope younger people today who aren’t surrounded by personal finance literate relatives now have way more opportunities to learn about it.
Oh my goodness. Genius! Did your parents find out? What did they say?
Which branch in particular?
Ugh, student loans. Which video game company/ies were you looking at?
Love how this story ended well for you both. Also, very smart renting it out! Some of us just aren’t meant for physical labor. Ha.
My masters is in Applied Exercise Physiology and I was specialising in environmental physiology in endurance sports. Looked to try and do a PhD for a few years but needed the scholarship to afford it so had to make some decisions about where I went from there.
I was really interested in working for Bethesda because I loved their games, especially Skyrim and Fallout. Just wanted to work on similar projects, but I would have also looked into Rockstar and other companies if that didn’t work out.