Pizza, say it isn’t so, don’t tell me they got you too. We usually get enough spam for coreclient and I’m so tired of this “I don’t want to lay in the bed I made” attutude. Can I lay out all the bad stock picks I made over the years despite a broker telling me there was no way to lose, will they write article about my fantastic ETOYS investment. It made sense, the internet was the future, people with kids hate shopping, it’s easier to buy presents after the little ones go to sleep, I only forgot that a P/E of 100 violated fundamentals. How about doubling down with an 11 against a dealer face card, the book says to, everyone at the table said I should, WTF a four? How could I lose?

The point is that you should only invest or gamble with what you can afford to lose. It was an expensive lesson but if someone approaches you and tells you that you can make tons of money with very little effort, education or sophistication in that endeavor, please ask yourself “If this was possible, why aren’t people that are smarter, more experienced and richer than I doing it?” If someone approached me with a new way to make millions in the pizza industry with no effort or experience other than I know I like pizza, I would have to wonder why pizzaman isn’t doing this, he has years of experience in this field, he know’s what he is doing, if it were a sure thing he’d already be in the middle of it. Shouldn’t I start with working in a pizza place, maybe taking a stab at managing one. Then opening a single place and seeing how it goes. Screw it, I’ll buy seven pizza places, sit at home and watch the money roll in, yeah that’s the ticket.

The same theme is in every one of these and other stories of “investors” who lost it all. It was not their vocation, they had little or no experience or education in R/E investing other than owning their primary residence and they went big, too big. In any other scenario (gambling, stocks, opening a business), that same behavior would be called stupid.