Giving thanks and moving on

You know sometimes over your life, you will have moments where you feel that you know a concept but you only truly understand it at a much later time of your life. For example, when I was 18 , I read about Rich Dad Poor Dad and decided that Investing monies is the way to go in life. Think about it, put money into the right investments and let it passively grow. Sounds awesome to my 18 year old and I became very big on buying equities and I subscribe to Fundamental Investing because it's less volatile as compared to Trading. 

Very early on, I knew that Fundamentals growth rate is really slow and one does need a lot of capital to truly see the benefits and the gains ( if you are right). Over the next few years, I focus on investing and reading on stuffs about it. Macro, Market psychology etc etc. But at the same time, I only set aside a very small amount of capital to invest in due to a low salary or maybe because I like to spend on material items. So I focus on my investment skills and not so much about career skills all this while. So reading those financial vloggers/bloggers, they also mention the same theme...which is to grow your salaries before doing investment. However, I went the other way.

I guess over the past decade or so of investing, I would think my returns were decent (XIRR at 7.89% as of today) so its not bad..in % terms. However in absolute terms, its er not so great ain't ? It's kinda like that the saying " At the end of the day, it's the result that matters". So good % but when looking at the absolute, it's nothing to shout about. 

When I think back, maybe I was being naive as I wanted to believe that my way works for me and that's why I decided to just focus on investing and not look at career skills. Of course, there is some kind of regret because of what was I thinking previously to make that call and lost the most precious commodity that we all have, which is TIME. 

The past me would probably beat my current self up ( and I still do feel that side of me bubbling below in me now as I am typing this). Just read about a phrase from an investment book(Mastering The Market Cycle by Howard Marks) earlier "...success carries within itself the seeds of failure, and failure the seeds of success." So it's probably the universe wanted me to figure out this now and not later or earlier.

So to myself, it is alright for you to figure this out now and that it is ok to make the mistake that you did earlier in your life. So give a pat on your back and it's great that you finally understand this notion and you can move on to the right way that you should be moving.