A $1000 stock gift from my deceased grandfather had done nothing for 10 years. It was still sitting at around $1000, or some less. At 17, taking a basic economics course in high school, I had a desire to do something and told my parents I wanted to drop the stock and buy gold. It was $160 at the time. They called some stock guy, who came by and talked circles around me, and promised to move it to some preferred category, keeping it in same company. Nothing changed.

While exercising in the MTC gym one morning two years later, some news on a radio or someone mentioned gold had jumped to $460. I was calculating the lost potential earnings while on my back doing leg lifts.....I figured letting an adult strongarm me had cost about $1800 in potential gains, or about 6 months of my mission expenses at the time.

A bitter reminder that adults weren't necessarily as wise as I'd been raised to grant.