The 2018 Pisces Money Luck Experiment: Did I Beat the Odds?
Man, 2017 absolutely killed me. I gotta be honest, by the time December rolled around, I was looking at my bank account and seeing nothing but dust. I’d made some really stupid moves that year, trying to follow some internet guru’s advice on crypto—that whole thing went sideways faster than a cheap bicycle on ice. I was desperate, flat-out desperate.
So, what do you do when the numbers don’t add up and you’re staring down major bills? You start grasping at straws. And for a Pisces like me, that straw looked suspiciously like a highly marketed, glossy 2018 horoscope report. That’s why I pounced on that “Essential Guide to Your Horoscope” when I saw the headline promising big financial windfalls because Jupiter was entering the “abundance sector” or whatever the heck they called it.
I didn’t just read the free snippet, either. I forked over eighty bucks—money I didn’t even have—for the full, detailed, month-by-month breakdown. I figured, if this thing actually works, eighty bucks is nothing compared to getting rich. If it’s garbage, well, I was already screwed anyway.
The prediction report was thick, full of flowery language about “manifesting your true wealth” and “aligning with transformative forces.” But I ignored the spiritual fluff and boiled it down to three actionable items for 2018:
- Invest in the “Water Sector”: This was super vague, but since Pisces is a water sign, the report suggested things related to shipping, deep sea, or perhaps oil (which travels in tankers, I guess?).
- Network Aggressively in Q1: January through March was apparently the time to meet the people who would “fund my future dreams.”
- Avoid Quick Fixes and Stick to the Long Game: No gambling, no lottery tickets. Boring, steady growth only.
I committed myself to this plan. I treated that horoscope like a business mandate. I started logging everything. I dedicated a whole spreadsheet to tracking my actions versus the astrological ‘best days’ they listed.
First up was the networking. I absolutely hate small talk and industry mixers, but I forced myself to attend four excruciating events in January and February. I bought expensive coffees, nodded aggressively, and tried to sound smart when people talked about their startups. I documented every single contact, the date, and what ‘opportunity’ they promised. Result? A massive pile of business cards and two leads that went nowhere. Total waste of time and about $300 in bar tabs and bad lattes.
Then came the investment part. The report kept hammering on “water sector abundance.” I looked at various things, but finally, in early March, I dumped the last $2,500 I had saved up from my tax return into an oil services ETF. It was volatile as hell, but it ticked the box. I remember thinking, “The stars can’t be wrong, right?”
The chart told me that March would be “financially stabilized,” perfect timing for this risky move. I checked the market every hour, heart pounding. The ETF wobbled for two weeks, maybe up 1%, maybe down 0.5%. Then, around the third week of March, some political nonsense flared up overseas, and the whole thing tanked.
I watched my $2,500 turn into $2,100 in about 48 hours. The horoscope said “stabilized,” but my account was bleeding. I panicked. I hit the sell button immediately, proving I definitely didn’t stick to the “long game” part of the prediction. I locked in a solid $400 loss just before April hit. I felt like a massive idiot for trusting some guy who wrote about Jupiter.
By the middle of 2018, I had mostly abandoned the detailed tracking. The horoscope was proving to be a bunch of meaningless platitudes draped in cosmic language. I was still broke, but now I was also tired of going to networking events.
But here’s the crazy part, the twist that makes me scratch my head:
Did I get rich in 2018? No. But I did get stable. And it had nothing to do with oil ETFs or fake networking. What actually saved my butt was a ridiculously boring thing I had started back in 2017: tutoring high school kids online on the weekends.
I never considered tutoring as “wealth manifestation.” It was just grinding for $35 an hour to cover groceries. The report never mentioned “tutor relentlessly.” But because I had been so desperate earlier, I had doubled down on the tutoring hours in Q2 and Q3 of 2018, just out of necessity.
By October 2018, the income from the tutoring side hustle had consistently covered my rent and paid off most of the debt I had accumulated the year before. I realized with a jolt that the “abundance” the horoscope promised hadn’t come from some cosmic investment alignment; it came from the most mundane, reliable, hard work I was already doing.
I went back and threw that expensive 2018 report in the recycling bin. My money luck didn’t depend on where Jupiter was sitting. It depended on me sitting down and working. The only thing the horoscope successfully predicted was that 2018 would be a financially defining year for me—but it was because I stopped reading the predictions and started logging actual work hours instead.
