How Do I tell My Wife?

The following (unedited) email was received from a user on Thursday, August 27, 2015. d-seven's response follows.

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"My wife and kids do not know how much money I lost yet."

Hi d-seven,

I have been following you on Youtube for the last month.  I did complete your 101 course.   

I am new to trading and I really screwed up.  I wish I would have found you earlier.  I started trading in July with $17000, now I have less than $7000 left.  I wish I would have known about you and taken a few thousand and got training from Grok Trade first.  I really blew it.  I had some folks training me on how to trade options and I did pretty good picking trades.  Almost every trade would have made money on if I had know how and when to exit, but I left them too long each one lost large amounts of money.  I played Facebook and Apple on earning and got burned big time! I did not know any better.   I am a Mechanical Engineer so I am very use to analyzing data, but this kind of analysis was not as easy as I thought.   I really need to turn this around, a large chunk of this was borrowed from my 401K.  I can't seem to catch a break lately.   I want to be a turnaround story but now I am tapped out.  My wife and kids do not know how much money I lost yet.  It took years to save this money up.  What can I do? 

Best regards

Brian G. (Last name removed)
(City removed) Georgia  
(Phone removed)

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"Some say that “trading is the hardest easiest thing to do.” "

Hi Brian,


By no means are you in a boat all alone.  We all have taken a hit in our trading accounts when we began trading. As we delve into the world of trading, we quickly realize just how expensive "market tuition" can be. It's NO fun to lose, but sometimes losses are necessary as the pain delivered by drawdowns tend to awaken us to the very real risks that we face as traders who trade the live markets. You broke some major rules (i.e. trading leverage (options) before you are a proficient trader, playing earnings, not having a trading plan, etc.) Amatuer mistakes.


As a former mentor for Rich Dad, Poor Dad and being the owner of my own education company, I have personally mentored over 800 traders. You cannot begin to imagine the horror stories that I would hear from my new student mentees. By the time these traders had their own "coming to Jesus" talk with themselves to finally get mentoring, they had unfortunately already relinquished their hard earned capital to those more savvy traders who were opposite their losing trades. If I had to guess the tally of losses before their mentoring, it might be between $50-75 million in losses.  


Like you, virtually every student would confess to me, like a parishioner to a priest,  that their losses were due to their own "stupid mistakes" and hard-headed risk taking. It was seldom lost with a student that their losses were a derivative of their own negligence of failing to first establish a basis of education. If I had a nickel for every time I heard a student say that they had wished that they came to me for mentoring before taking their relatively large hit, I would have much more capital to trade.


Oh, the dreaded disclosure to the wifey. ouch. The fear of telling your wife how much you are down in the markets is very real. Back in the day, before I got trained, I had more losing days than winning days. EVERY DAY, my wife would ask me how I did in the markets. After the markets had concluded for the day, I dreaded walking out of my office. It was excruciating to divulge the truth about the constant losses. Just confessing my gambling sins, in dollars lost, was like salt in my wound.  I was hard enough on myself, but having to tell my wife (whom I had to previously convince that trading would be a great side business) was nothing short of gut wrenching. Coming clean with your wife will not be easy, but its the right thing to do. Again, I (and the rest of us) all have been right where you are today and it can be both maddening and frightening at the same time, but you can overcome.


Some say that “trading is the hardest easiest thing to do.”  This is right.  Trading really is not overly complex or taxing for most traders, BUT it can be very difficult to master.  Because you are new to trading and have much to learn, can actually work to your benefit.   You see, some of the more seasoned traders who come for mentoring have a hard time applying new principles due to the difficulty of being 'rewired.' You, on the other hand, are fresh and there is NO rewiring necessary to slow you down. You just need to learn the rules, strategies, principles, concepts, and calculations that significantly stack the odds in your favor when trading in the live markets. Boom. The you're golden. 


Please hear me. Do NOT beat yourself up too badly. This is the time to have a "coming to Jesus" talk with yourself. Maybe trading is not for you and this hobby is just too expensive and its time to put your time into something else. That's OK. 


For me, I knew I had to either quit trading altogether, or go get formal training the right way to work through my mistakes and trading deficiencies.  I chose the latter, and that was one of the best business decisions of my entire life. When I first began to trade (17 years ago), I blew through two small accounts ($2k and $8k). Because I was only 25 and that was all my trading cash at the time, it was hard to stomach. Today, on the other hand, things are much different. For example, the recent volatility the past few days made me some nice profits. Yesterday, I ordered my broker (Interactivebrokers) to cut me a check for $20k of those profits. It's funny how differently the norms are compared to what they used to be.


Before progressing further, ask yourself these questions:
1) Do I want to be a trader?
2) Should I be a trader? (Too lazy to learn, a gambler, etc.)
3) Can you trade slow with minimal risk for minimal gains?

(If you answer NO to any of these, find another less expensive hobby.)

4) What will your wife say when she finds out about your problem?
5) Will your wife want you to fix your problem?
6) What will you do to fix your problem?
7) How much money will your wife want you to spend to fix your problem?

Regardless what you do next, stay positive and do what's best for you and your family. We care about you and your tomorrow.


Future successes,

d-seven


PS.  What is it that we can do to help you? I (strongly) suggest taking our mentorship in Vegas in November (see here). We also do online mentorships monthly, too.