Investing Poker Winnings

[Warren Whitmore]

"if you are smart borrowing money is unnessisary, if you are not it is poison" Warren Buffett

[moondogg]

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"if you are smart borrowing money is unnessisary, if you are not it is poison" Warren Buffett

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F$^#ing great line.

[LondonBroil]

Read this

I have it saved in my favorite threads.

[GeorgeF]

Paying down debt is usually a good idea. The only case it is not is if there is a currency devaluation/inflation.

As to investing you might consider keeping things simple and choose some bond mutual funds from vanguard and pimco.

Making 25k at poker is not like makeing 25k working at a reuglar job as you have risked your own capital. Earning 25k at poker is more like 10k at a regular job. Keep this in mind as you plan for the future.

Since you are 19 your best investment is likely to be anything that increases you future earnings. Investing in yourself doing things like learning Chineese or something might turn out to be the smartest thing you could do. Over 40+ years you might be looking at millions of dollars gained at fairly low risk.

Also since you are young if an area of investment interests you you can just get entry level work in that field. Be it real estate of oil wells. If it looks like there is something working in that field thats your career.

[namknils]

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Be careful with a Roth, though. If you're playing a hell of a lot of poker and counting each winning session as a income and each losing session as a deductable loss, the Adjusted Gross Income on your taxes (which would include your wins but not include your losses) might be high enough to disqualify you from getting a Roth. There was some discussion somewhere around here about whether you would really get screwed like this, but I don't think anything intelligent came of it.

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Crap, I never thought of it that way. A professional poker player can get screwed because of the way they make you report your winnings.

[moondogg]

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Crap, I never thought of it that way. A professional poker player can get screwed because of the way they make you report your winnings.

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Yeah, this is my first year of poker income, and my first year that I would open a Roth. I'm going to hold off on the Roth until Jan/Feb just to see what shakes out. The bitch of it is, even if I lost back everything between now and 1/1/05, it wouldn't lower my AGI one cent. At least those bastards can't mess with my 401k.

[theBruiser500]

Thanks for all the responses, I will respond soon. Trying to stay off the internet as much as I can and enjoy summer with my old friends before going back to college [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[theBruiser500]

I don't have any debt now except my student loans. For people who have told me to pay off my student loans, why? I don't play on using all the money I have now, I will save it and it will be available to pay off the loans when I have to start paying them off. These are interest free loans, I see no reason to pay them.

HOw do I find someone to do my taxes for me? Is there a preferred company for this that I should go to or what?

I plan to be cautious in terms of investing, ease into it slowly and start with the lower risk stuff. And when I say "gamble" I don't mean put it on 50/50 [censored], but I would be willing to invest it speculatively if I felt it was a good investment. Whoever said I should learn chinese or invest it in myself... I agree completely with that, I always used to spend a lot of money on books (though now I just use the library), I really like making that sort of investment in myself.

[JellyFishy]

"I don't have any debt now except my student loans."

Don't worry about the debt, shame to sound cheap but when I was in school I tried to get as much student loan as possible when I don't really need it just because it is such a good deal...zero real interest....no downside risk i.e. legal action, bankruptcy if I screwed up....and spare cashflow for my businesses, even sticking the loan into a bank will yield quite a lot annual compounded over a lifetime at that age.

"How do I find someone to do my taxes for me?"

If you want to get into business, ask an accountant for tax avoidance techniques, for free advice call up the IRS. Why are you worrying about tax when you are 19?
I totally evade paying any tax when I was still in school, there's almost no way they will waste time to audit you.

"I plan to be cautious in terms of investing, ease into it slowly and start with the lower risk stuff. And when I say "gamble" I don't mean put it on 50/50 [censored], but I would be willing to invest it speculatively if I felt it was a good investment."

Cool, smart move. Got to get an edge before you gear it up, otherwise you're gambling.

"Whoever said I should learn chinese or invest it in myself... I agree completely with that, I always used to spend a lot of money on books (though now I just use the library), I really like making that sort of investment in myself."

Learn what is useful for you, otherwise it is leisure not investment. Chinese is very difficult language, usually that means huge cost of time, effort, why do you need Chinese? Even if you need it, will it not be cheaper to outsource?

If you really like the challenge then I recommend Mandarin since it is official national language but the most economically active areas, South China, Hong Kong, Macau, etc speaks Cantonese which is extremely difficult language, luckily it is one of my first languages. If you need help ask me at my homesite forum.

I can help you with many other languages since I live in Europe and like to chase foreign girls, I pretty much can get a basic conversation going in most popular languages.

[Kopefire]

First, get yourself a stock broker. You don't need a full service account, but get someplace where you can get good information on the funds you want to invest in.

Get yourself started putting money away monthly in a couple of good funds. You're young, so high risk is ok, but keep at least 20% of your money in slow-growth/bond type funds for a stable base.

Get yourself an IRA. Make the max deposit every year.

Start researching one area of the stock market. It doesn't matter what -- it can be manufacturing, textiles, whatever. Just pick a sector that you find interesting and start reading about the companies in that area. This isn't an "all at once" type thing -- basically, just make a habit of reading about those companies when you go to the library for school. Each time you go in, grab the business papers/journals and scan for articles about your sector.

After a year or so of that sort of light research, you'll know which companies are the winners and which ones are the long shots. Pick a few winners and a few longs shots and go buy a couple of shares of each. Make it a habit to follow those companies, and buy shares in them every couple of months (read about dollar cost averaging).

Think about opening something like a sharebuilder account so that you can buy partial shares with low overhead.

Investing is neither hard nor time-consuming. It's also not nearly the gamble some people make it out to be. If you do your research you'll pick companies that are long term winners, and your speculations will pay off enough to make up for any losses.

Yes, you'll have the occassional down-turn, but all in all, it beats working as a way to make money.