Against the strong advice of her parents, she cashed the IRAs. That action cost her more than she knows. But she has not yet learned that after she cashed out the IRAs, her father changed his will. Instead of leaving her a sizeable bequest, his estate will create a trust that will pay her annual income but no principal. After her death, the principal will go to charity.
Most investors underestimate the importance of dumb luck, or the random nature of the market.
For example, you may have lived in the Seattle area in the mid 1980s and invested a bit of money in Microsoft soon after the stock went public in 1986. You could call that a smart decision, but it was just luck that you happened to live near where Bill Gates was founding this company at a time you had money to invest. You could have concluded that since you had been so successful in picking Microsoft, you could invest in other promising technology companies. You might have been fortunate enough to invest in America Online or Dell Computer and hang onto them through the 1990s. But you might have just as easily invested in CompuServe or Apple Computer, the stock of which traded in a relatively narrow range for a dozen years before it finally took off early in 1998.