Maybe an example might be helpful?
Go back to my earlier example. My hypothetical guy had variance in his income and expenses, yet I also mentioned that many times his income was $1,500 per month and his expenses were $950. So that means he ONLY has $550 left for all of his discretionary income for each month, which I thought was more than a decent income, especially if we might be hypothesizing someone who might be somewhat relateable to folks in Nigeria.. even though sure, this guy might have a higher income than what is typically expected.. but still he ONLY has right around 36.7% total for all of his discretionary income that is left after he accounts for his expenses.
Omo, JayJuanGee… you Dey write shah, to read all these thing way you just carry yakata for here like this no be small kind reading but the thing be say, you make certain interesting points them. I no see you write pigin but, I believe say you understand am via we naija yarn. Oya make I follow up for English!
I don't understand the pigin very well... so I might lose the context when trying to figure out the pigin.
Given that all that it’s stated in quote is hypothetically, if someone is earning $1,500 in Nigeria as his monthly income, you are well living somewhere above the middle class and could be said to be a reach man. That’s over #2.3m in our local currency with exchange rate at #1,560 and that’s money for months, even with kids to feed.
I understand that there might be some aspects of my numbers that were unrealistic, yet I believe the main importance stuff is to attempt to see how the hypothetical guy is attempting to figure out his bitcoin allocation (and even his building of his back up funds) from his discretionary income.. and then in the end over several years he may well build his bitcoin investment to such a level that he might be able to start to draw from his bitcoin, especially if the bitcoin starts to become valuable enough (and I tend to use the 200-WMA to measure value) to be able to replace the guys income and even to cover all of his expenses at a similar standard of living so that he might start to feel justified to either discontinue working or to reduce the demands of his work or even to spend his time on the kind of work that he would prefer to do rather than having to do it.
Should you have expenses to be covered at #950 for the month with a discretionary income, you’re doing so well and it could cover both for financial security and Bitcoin accumulation very well. Using same rate at #1,560 would mean, $550 is well around #850k which is close to a million. That’s a lot of money that can well go into build a portfolio and also do your fiat savings if you care about such things.
Of course, if you think that I am not being sufficiently realistic with the numbers, then you could reduce the numbers or adjust them in one way or another to make them seem like they are more realistic to your situation or to some hypothetical person(s), even though I tried to describe both a variation in the income/expenses and also some ideas of the most regular/common levels of income/expenses so that it might be easier to present ideas about the situation in a thread like this while trying to avoid overly complicating matters... and sure there may be guys who have a lot of erraticism and/or uncertainties in both their income and their expenses so that they have difficulties figuring out on a month to month basis what the levels of each of those are going to be each month, yet there likely would still be abilities to look back at history and figure out best case and worse case scenarios to get some ideas about the variance and/or the patterns that might exist, even for guys who have erratic income and erratic expenses.
It seems to me that if we were to grab any person off the street or run into them in the isle of a grocery market or we meet them at a birthday party or at an outdoor festival, and if we start to talk with them about their personal budget and the extent to which they have discretionary income. Off the top of their head, many of them likely would be able to tell us if they have some discretionary income or not and they might even be able to tell us how many weeks it would take before they completely run out of money for their monthly expenses if they were to immediately lose their job or their main source of income suddenly dried up due to some force outside of their control (or maybe even if they were struck by a bus or some other kind of surprise event caused them to not be able to work for some amount of time.. then how long would it take before they run out of money and what would they do regarding housing, food, transportation, and/or various essentials.. and perhaps if they were trying to stay self-sufficient and only relying on their own, or if they might have family that mmight step up to the plate for part of those expenses for a few weeks? or maybe other contingencies.
I totally understand where you're coming from and I absolutely have reasons to agree with you, but looking at it slightly from a different angle, I'd say that I honestly think that you're being too optimistic about how many people actually have a clue or handle on their personal financial position.
You might be correct, and I am not sure if the data is out there in regards to basic levels of math and/or common sense and/or abilities of normal people to learn these kinds of matters.
I hate to presume people as retards, and I would rather presume people as generally capable, even if all of us are somewhat flawed with emotions and impulsiveness.
Yeah, it's true that some folks wouldn't have a hard time rattling off their budget, emergency fund and other areas of their finances, but that doesn't mean everyone can, because I'd bet that a lot of people wouldn't have a single clue as many folks out there are only trying pretty hard just to make it to the next paycheck without having to overdraft.
I am painting the scenario of an hour or two discussion, but yeah, they might have to access some of their documents and maybe they might need help to write them all out, while at the same time, as long as they know basic math and common sense, I am presuming that most of them (like 80%, should be able calculate out if they have discretionary income and/or more income than expenses), and yeah, maybe they cannot do it without some coaxing, but they surely are capable of going through those kinds of basic maths and common sense processing of logic.. which means that that they are capable of learning and capable of figuring out whether they have $100, $10 or some other amount of discretionary income within this particular week). It is like an ability of someone who is feeling a craving to smoke some cigarettes or they have a friend that would like cigarettes as a gift, and within a short period of time, they can figure out the extent to which they have $10 to buy the cigarettes or not..... just meaning that the cigarettes are not a necessary expense but an extra optional expense.
And speaking of planning for unexpected events, so many folks out there would be flying blind. That being said, this is why I believe it's super crucial to first understand your financial situation as a newbie, and have a solid plan in place before getting started, even if it's really not that solid, maybe even just a rough idea would be more than durable. Because if we are to be real here, not everyone thinks about Emergencies or future expenses, at least, not until it's already staring them in the face.
I agree with you that most people probably suck quite a bit when it comes to their own cashflow management, and maybe even more than 50% of people are not very good at cashflow management, yet you don't need to be good at cashflow management in order to get started buying bitcoin. All you need is to figure out if you have discretionary income or not... which I am proclaiming around 80% of people are capable of figuring that out, and if they cannot figure it out or they calculate that they do not have discretionary income, then they cannot start buying bitcoin until they figure out that they do have discretionary income/funds.
It is likely 80% of people can learn how to manage their cashflows based on common sense, math skills and/or their ability to learn and prioritize within their own interests. Sure a lot of folks don't do it, but I am still presuming they are capable even if they have other priorities...and an overwhelming majority.. perhaps 99% or more (based on our already existing low levels of bitcoin adoption) do not prioritize bitcoin investing, which is another reason to show why we are so early in bitcoin, since there are quite great opportunities for anyone recognizing and acting upon the asymmetric status of the information about bitcoin.
We likely can agree to disagree in regards to our presumption of the basic knowledge of normies and/or their ability to learn cashflow management and bitcoin investing within their discretionary income.
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I cannot disagree with any of that... and sometimes when I hear people to suggest that newbies have some "technical knowledge" at the time they start bitcoin, and then they proclaim that newbies need to know how to set up a private wallet and to think about the trade-offs between various kinds of self-custody solutions and blah blah blah.. I think that is way too fucking much, even though surely there are going to be some newbies who already are fairly technical in their nature and they get excited about technical challenges, I think that there are not as many of these technical nerds as people would like to presume, and I really doubt that there are needs to know self-custody and even other various technical matters related to bitcoin that distinguishes bitcoin from shitcoins and blah blah blah..
and even if some guys might already be ready (and want to learn those things) it is not necessary to get into technical weeds in order to get started mostly by figuring out that the newbie has enough basic math skills to figure out that he has discretionary income and he has enough common sense to have a general understanding of how much income he has coming in and if it is greater than his expenses and various other common sensical basics of having some general ideas about month to month cashflows and how much of a cushion might exist. None of those are advanced (and I believe not very technical at all) in order to get the fuck started... even though surely getting started might have some cumbrances in regards to where the first coins will be sourced, and will there be a private transaction or signing up for some exchange and what options are available in the geographical area of this particular bitcoin newbie person.
That's right, I also think the idea that newbies need to be some sort of technical wizards or technically advanced to get started is just so lame and a major turn off. What Most enthusiasts really want is to gain some level of basic knowledge and then get started without having to go through the stress of jam-packing their head with all the technical jargon. Having the basic knowledge of Bitcoin, such as discretionary income and cash flow, is more than enough to get started with. And I agree with you that sourcing coins and having to choose the best storage method can be another pain in the ass as it requires lots of research, but it really doesn't have to be that overwhelming. It's important to keep it simple and accessible for newbies who wanna get started, and then they can worry about the technical aspect later on.
Even if we have some differences in our views, we are likely in the ballpark of similar, and so surely there can be differences in regards to approaches and even for individuals to figure out how much they need to know prior to getting started investing into bitcoin and which parts they can learn along the way. Practice likely makes a lot of folks better and smarter, but it can take discipline and focus to folks to prioritize within their own balancig of activities and interests.. including exercising activism within their own cashflow management (and investment) practices.