Ray, stop this with the stocks. As nicely as possible, do you like having a wife and a family? They don't know you've lost $50k in a few months. What's going to happen when it's HELOC repayment time? They will find out. I'm not sugar coating this:

This will kill your marriage and your family.

Stop this, and put all your eggs in poker.

If you took out 60k and lost 50k, that means you still have 10k. Why can you "not afford" to get your kids a gift for their birthday? Because you prioritize chasing a -ev get rich quick scheme over them?

Not a good situation and you need to be honest with your wife. I wouldn’t wait until the HELOC is due before dropping that bomb. I’d also not give your niece $100 when you can’t afford it. Give her $25 if you feel obligated. Need to start being real with yourself and everyone around you.

Unfortunately, you were in the best financial shape when you had The Melody. It was providing semi-passive income and you were playing more poker. You got lazy when you hit with ENPH and paid off your house. You were living the “semi-retired” life when you were nowhere near a situation to do so. You weren’t playing much poker and you had no additional passive income streams. It was as if you were intentionally putting yourself in a bad situation.

I hope, for you and your family’s sake, that you take what you have left in RH and grind your ass off until the HELOC is due.

yeah the decision to retire when your daughter graduates in a few years with big fat zero in her college fund is full-on lunacy

On the plus side, he only owes like 50k on a HELOC. No idea what the equity % is for Ray, but I wish I was well under 6 figures on my housing debt

This is a great point. Only having 60k in debt @ 41 makes him way ahead of the game. Hopefully this is a wakeup call for him to stop doing dumb stuff with his money and just grind things that make him money (poker/tennis/handy man work).

Man that sucks, you're a good man. I want the best for you, Ray, maybe you should sell and keep the 10 grand and start over with a real poker roll. You've demonstrated you can beat that game. Godspeed!

What I was thinking as well, being 41 or whatever BS age... and having 50k total debt is nothing. So many pretty easy ways out of it... just a bit of a grind for the lowest risk way... which is to get a job for a yr or 2... that's it.

BS, does your gf have retirement money or what is plan B for the next 40-50 years if your stock picking doesn’t work? Is it to live off of part time income with tennis/poker + your all’s social security in a paid off house?

I think everybody is jumping the gun here.

Nobody knows what the college fund or plan is for his kids, and nobody is entitled to know.

Nobody knows what their retirement funds or plan is, and nobody is entitled to know.

What we do know is Ray's poker results, and he parlayed that wisely into rental income and a winning lottery ticket in the stocks that allowed him to pay off his house. And that he then risked the lottery ticket on another one, and has basically lost all that, as many predicted.

I'm interested to see where it goes from here, and the same people (including myself) who pushed for him to quit with NIO, hopefully are pulling for him to quit with NIO and get on the grind.

Regardless I was pushing for Ray to bink with NIO when he decided to not follow the advice itt, and I'm pushing for him to crush it now.

His house is paid off, now just takes mortgage out to pay for stock difference and maybe 10k more for a bank roll and now he only owes 70k on house and still in better shape than most ?

Binking on NIO would have been the worst possible thing for Ray.

Anytime anyone comes into easy money they ALWAYS lose it back. It's happened to me before with bitcoin. Look at the guy in nvg who won $4M in the main and now he's back to being broke and scamming people. Greed is a mother****ing ***** and it can affect even good people like Ray. He made enough on his last stock to have his house paid off, he was in a position that 90% of Americans wish they could be in and that still wasn't enough for him, he had to go back for more. If he didn't lose his roll on NIO he would have just lost it on the next stock or the next one after that. It better that it happened now than later on.

Making $40k grinding out 1/2 >>>> binking 80k on a lucky stock

Wow I guess I feel lucky and will never complain having little money ever again. Top 10% I guess with $0 debt and a house at 35 (from Europe tho so different story I guess).

Not sure of accuracy but went through multiple articles that came up on google with different sources and it seems that between them all in your 40's the average net worth seems to vary between 50-100k on average. Having 0 debt and a fully paid off house at 35 is probably above average. It's probably above average for normal people and far above for the regular casino gambler though.

Ray, did you ever think to buy put options on NIO before investing like 90% of your cash into it?

As a Canadian (I think it's the same for most major city Americans) that is definitely NOT the norm. Most don't even blink an eye after landing their first half decent job $50-70k... carry about 25-35k student loans (Canadians have lower tuition than Americans), and carry a huge mortgage in the ranges of 300-400k... even more as a couple.

I don't know why you would even want to have $0 in debt or why you would be proud of that.

Depends how you leverage it obv

Yeah sure taking on debt to blow it in a volatile stock is a total waste, but other than that there is huge benefit to having debt.

Not sure I understand, either too early or sarcasm?

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Having debt if used properly is a good thing. Let's say I take on debt to buy a house and rent it out at a net profit then that is a good thing. Instead of paying off that house, I could use the profits to buy another house and rent it out, potentially using the business to increase my line of credit and free up my available cash even more.

Why would I not want to have debt in that case?

he's effectively saying that one could pay off the house with a **** ton of money, but most rational people could make better use of the money used to pay off the house. interest rates are super low right now, so you pay ~4% interest on the house, but historically the DJIA makes ~8% over time, so by not paying off the house, and having debt, it frees cash capital to invest in things like the stock market, which will out pace the interest you're paying on your mortgage.

Yeah that makes sense, didn't think about investing into real estate - too early. That's more or less what I do, but instead of loans we put a small percentage every year from current properties.

It makes sense if you can do it, I just prefer not to deal with loans.

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Rayz - I really hope you sold today as I imagine they’re coming for another margin call.

at this point might as well hold for the dead cat bounce and sell then (though i'm sure that it would be misinterpreted as the beginnings of a run up and he'd rationalize that to hold)