Going All-In on Stocks with Even Unemployment Benefits

Freelancer A recently had a contract renewal fall through, and poured the unemployment benefits he began receiving into Samsung Electronics shares. He had originally planned to build up some stock-investing seed money out of his salary, but once the contract extension failed to materialize, he used unemployment benefits as the funding source instead. The roughly KRW 1.2 million a month he was set to receive went into what people call a “Samsung savings plan.” Since he had no immediate worries about making ends meet, A said, “I’m trying to think of it as having bought myself the time and money to study stocks and to invest.”

B used about KRW 1 million out of the unemployment benefits her husband began receiving after losing his job last year to buy stocks for the first time in her life. She initially started under the pretext of learning about stocks, but once the single Samsung Electronics share she had bought rose by around KRW 3,000, she found herself thinking, “If I had bought 100 shares, that would’ve been KRW 300,000.” The household already had fixed expenses, and with her husband’s unemployment dragging on, monthly household income had turned negative. B then took out a bank loan and poured about KRW 10 million into stocks, and stocks degenerated into the household’s primary means of income.