Lost My Savings as a Student
I’m 18, a college student, and I had about $40K saved up. Most of it came from sports betting on cricket, playing for local clubs, and some pocket money my parents gave me over the years. I’ve been betting for a while now, and I’ve always won more than I’ve lost—enough to cover my bills and get by.
But last week, things took a turn. I came across binary trading, where you bet on whether an index will go up or down in a set time frame. It seemed like an easy way to make money, so I jumped in without thinking too much.
I put $10K into a trading account, started betting $500 per round, and won a few times. My balance went up to $12K, and I thought I was on top. But then I hit a verification process that would take hours before I could withdraw. Instead of waiting, I thought, “Why not keep playing and try to double up?” But it all went downhill from there. I started betting $2K, $3K per round, and though I won a few times, I eventually lost it all.
That loss hit harder than I expected. It didn’t feel right—like I was being reckless with money I worked hard for. So, I decided to gamble the remaining $30K of my savings on some online games. One of them was a penalty shootout game, and I managed to win back $5K, which felt good. But then I got greedy. I started making higher multiplier bets and the losses piled up. I ended up risking $20K on one bet, thinking I could win it all back, but I lost that too.
Then came the coin toss game. I thought this would be my chance to recover everything. I threw $10K into the game and won. I was feeling confident, thinking maybe I could turn this around. But I got desperate and made another $20K bet, hoping to win back what I had lost—and of course, I lost that too.
Now I’m just sitting here in bed, feeling like everything I worked for has slipped away in the blink of an eye. I’m trying to process it, but it’s hard. I don’t even know where to start. All that money, gone in a few days. It feels like I’ve lost everything, and I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to pick myself up from this. I’ve spent the whole day reading about other people’s losses, and I can’t stop thinking about how stupid I was. This experience was driven by pure impulse and stupidity. I kept chasing after losses without thinking clearly or considering the consequences. I feel like there’s no point in trying to figure out how to move forward—like the damage is done. This whole experience just feels… unreal. I don’t know how to make sense of it, or if I ever will.
TL;DR: it’s too hard to process and I’m stuck in a rut