Growing up, I was under the impression that there were two options when it came to saving money: Either give your money to an investment firm and hope they do well, or major in finance, become a stock broker, and invest money yourself. I didn’t really see a middle ground. This premise may have been due to the fact that I was brought up with somewhat of a bitter taste for the stock market.

My grandfather loved to play the stock market, and while in the end he was able to come out on top, it led to some stressful times for my father when he was growing up. Possibly because of this, my father was never really directly involved with his savings; he had a money manager that he trusted, and pretty much left it up to him. My father had actually majored in business with the intent to become a stock broker himself, but had an epiphany of sorts after an interview for an investment job one day

Skip forward to 1999, as I was preparing to start college, the stock market started its downward trend that would last four years – my college career. All the interest gains set aside for me slowly dwindled away.

All was not lost though, and I was still able to go to the college of my choice, which is also where I met my wife. My wife’s father had also been heavily invested in the stock market. The funny thing one, her finances survived that bear market without a problem! We both had almost equal amounts set aside for us, and neither of our parents were involved in anything having to do with finance. Yet we came out of that early 2000’s market with drastically different finances. I am still writing off capital losses, while she was able to put a hefty amount of money to start an IRA.

It was at this point that I began to realize that having knowledge about investment strategies wasn’t something limited to just finance majors. At first, I had assumed everyone lost money in 2000, except for the investors in the trenches of Wall Street. Yet my father-in-law, a minister, had come out on top.

Why? Well, it could have been simple luck. It could have been that he was overall a more conservative investor, and that allowed him to profit during the unstable market at the turn of the millennium. Or maybe it was that, by applying simple investment fundamentals he had learned, he was able to beat the market.

It was this third possibility that made me consider, for the first time, that maybe I should try learning about finances and investing myself.