Timing, as they say, is everything. And if you took Jim Cramer's stock advice in February 2000, your timing was spectacularly, catastrophically bad.

A Reddit user posting under the name "SpellAccomplished541" shared a sobering story over the weekend about what happened when they followed Cramer's viral "10 stocks to own for the future" list from early 2000. This was just weeks before the dot-com bubble popped, and according to the investor, those picks didn't just underperform. They cost him an entire decade of retirement.

The Promise That Wasn't Kept

Back in 2000, Cramer was running his hedge fund, Cramer Berkowitz & Co., before he became the face of CNBC's "Mad Money." At the 6th Annual Internet and Electronic Commerce Conference and Exposition that February, he unveiled his list of must-own tech stocks. According to the Reddit post, Cramer claimed he was buying these stocks "every day, especially if they went down." He insisted their "valuations were old-fashioned" and the picks were "guaranteed" to surge 10 to 20 times.

Spoiler alert: they did not.

The Redditor invested $100,000 of their life savings, split equally among Cramer's ten picks. Twenty-five years later, that portfolio would be worth just $46,850. Meanwhile, the same $100,000 invested in a boring S&P 500 index fund would have grown to approximately $712,600. That's not a small difference. That's the difference between retiring on schedule and working another decade.

"Young people may not think this is a big deal," the investor wrote, "but having to work 10 more years is painful." They emphasized this wasn't a hypothetical exercise but their actual experience.

What Happened To The Stocks?

Let's look at how each of Cramer's "future-proof" picks actually performed. It's not pretty.

724 Solutions Inc. was eventually acquired by Mobixell Networks in 2010, long after the bubble burst wiped out most of its value.

Ariba Inc. limped along until SAP SE (SAP) bought it in 2012 at a significantly lower valuation than its bubble-era peak.

Digital Island Inc. was acquired by Cable & Wireless in 2001 for just $3.40 per share. The year before, at the height of the bubble, it had traded at $57.37.

Exodus Communications had the most dramatic collapse. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2001, with its stock price dropping to $0 from a peak valuation of $32 billion. Yes, billion with a "b."

Infospace saw a similar fate, acquired by Openmail for a mere $45 million in 2016. At its peak, the company had a market cap of $31 billion.

Inktomi was sold to Yahoo in 2003 at $1.63 per share, a fraction of its bubble-era highs.

Mercury Interactive was acquired by HP Inc. (HPQ) in 2006 for $4.6 billion.

Sonera Corp. was acquired by Telia Co. (TLSNY) in 2002.

VeriSign Inc. (VRSN) is the only company on the list that still exists as an independent entity. But even that's not much of a success story. After a steep decline during the dot-com crash, VeriSign only reclaimed its year 2000 highs earlier this year. That's a gain of just 5% over 25 years. A savings account would have done better.

Veritas Software was acquired by Symantec in 2004 for $13.5 billion, which sounds impressive until you realize the company was valued at $55 billion in 2000.

Nine out of ten companies were acquired or went bankrupt. The sole survivor delivered returns that barely beat inflation. "Cramer's choices were destroyed," the Redditor wrote, and it's hard to argue with that assessment.

The Birth Of "Inverse Cramer"

Calls like these helped create the "inverse Cramer" phenomenon, a running joke in investing circles that suggests doing the opposite of whatever Cramer recommends. The joke became so popular that Tuttle Capital Management actually launched an Inverse Cramer ETF, allowing investors to bet against his picks. The fund has since been shut down, but the meme lives on.

Cramer has defended his track record over the years. "As always, I welcome people betting against me. I have done this for 42 years," he said. He pointed out that people betting against him "would have been betting against Apple at $5, Google since inception, Meta at $18, Amazon at $10, Nvidia at $25 and AMD at $5. I welcome all comers."

Fair point. Cramer has made some excellent calls over the decades. But the 2000 list stands as a particularly brutal example of what can go wrong when you chase hype at the peak of a bubble.

The Real Cost Of Bad Timing

What makes this story particularly poignant isn't just the lost money. It's the lost time. Ten years is a long time to keep working when you planned to be enjoying retirement. That's vacations not taken, grandchildren's milestones missed while you're still in the office, health concerns that compound with age and stress.

The Redditor's post serves as a stark reminder that investment decisions made in your working years can echo through decades of your life. A 5% annual return versus a 10% annual return might not sound like a huge difference, but compound it over 25 years and you're looking at completely different life outcomes.

Neither Cramer nor Mad Money immediately responded to requests for comment on the Reddit post.

For younger investors reading this, the lesson isn't necessarily to avoid all stock picks or to dismiss every analyst's recommendation. The lesson is simpler: be extraordinarily careful about chasing hot stocks at the peak of obvious bubbles. And maybe, just maybe, a boring index fund isn't such a bad idea after all.