Grand Rapids Business Journal
Procrastinating
Even though you know you will get older and eventually retire, a little part of you still believes you
might not. Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler, the founding father of behavioral economics, has spent much of his career exploring why so many Americans have difficulty saving for retirement. One thing he found is that people would rather enjoy what their money can do for them today rather than in the future.
Being too loss averse
We don’t like to lose money, so the notion of less money in our paycheck today to serve our needs in the future is a tough pill to swallow. The problem with loss aversion is that we keep delaying that uncomfortable feeling of a smaller paycheck. If you delay too much, you lose out on the compounding effect. For example, if you decide to save $5,000 a year beginning at the age of 35, by the time you’re 65 assuming a 4.5% rate of return you’ll have 43% less savings than if you had starte
Photograph by Gina LeVay
David Nathanson remembers the moment when the frenzied and risky world of day trading took hold of him. While working at home in late January during the pandemic, his phone lit up with a text from a friend: “Look what’s happening with GameStop!”
The 30-year-old software account exec from Brooklyn, N.Y., wasn’t totally new to investing when the troubled video game retailer became an overnight sensation earlier this year, going from a brick-and-mortar Wall Street laggard to a white-hot “meme” stock. In March 2020, to ward off lockdown boredom and stay connected to friends who were trading stocks on investing apps, he signed up with a discount broker.
Meet the ‘finfluencers’: The Wall Street novices shaking up the financial world
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By Tara Siegel Bernard
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In March 2020, Kiersten Crum was a stock market novice. The pandemic had forced her college classes online, her father’s bar was temporarily closed and she started working at a grocery store to earn extra cash. With $US500 ($641), she bought shares of the Carnival cruise line, her first foray into stocks.
Now she has a five-figure stock portfolio, she is in the middle of a gap year to focus exclusively on trading and her online presence be it on Twitter or TikTok is fully turned over to what she calls her stock market obsession.
Meet the finfluencers : The Wall Street novices shaking up the financial world brisbanetimes.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from brisbanetimes.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.