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This has really opened my eyes, to be honest. I have always been hearing people say, save for emergency, but I never knew there were levels to it like emergency funds, reserve funds, and float..... As someone just starting out, because I used to think that saving a whole years worth was the only way to be safe, but now I see that it is more about balance and knowing your own situation.
My income is not that really stable yet, so what you said about not creating your own emergencies by not planning ahead really makes sense..... I still have alot things to figure out, but I am glad I came across your explanations. It really helped clear things up for me.
There are several guys here, including myself, who frequently emphasize learning through experience, which is also one of the reason why so many of us suggest to get started with your bitcoin investment as soon as possible, even if you are only able to start with $10... Once you have some bitcoin, then you will likely be more inspired to keep track of it and also to potentially clear up your cashflow so that you can figure out if you have more money that you can put into bitcoin from time to time, and if you get to a point that you are buying bitcoin every week for months and months or even into several years, you will start to see that the amount of bitcoin that you hold is adding up to a lot of money, and hopefully you are also able to figure out ways to increase your discretionary income by increasing your income and/or cutting your expenses.. which yeah, none of it makes a lot of sense in theory, and it tends to make way more sense when ongoingly practiced and reviewed and figuring out various ways to tweak, whether your investment into bitcoin is every single week or maybe it might end up having to be less frequent based on your own financial circumstances.
I really like how you explained this. I have actually started small, and just holding a little bit already makes me more interested in learning and managing my money better........ I amnot consistent yet, but I am working on it and trying to improve my cashflow so I can stack more over time. Thanks for the motivation....
Each of us likely realize that we can ONLY do so much at a time and within our limits and frequently we might feel that we are not making progress.
There are likely even guys here who have been stacking bitcoin for several years, and who might feel that their progress is slow, yet part of the challenge is to keep stacking even during times that the BTC price is going up... and each person has to figure out how to deal with how to keep stacking and dilemmas regarding the extent to which they might hold some cash in reserves for buying on dips... dips that may or may not end up happening.
Balancing your financial security is a good thing while investing in Bitcoin because investing in any business whether in crypto or any other business without giving much attention to saving is no a good practice as it will affect your financial stability and emergency fund should be as a matter of fact be compulsory for any individual who is ready to investing in Bitcoin because there are other things that will also need finance so putting all your money inyo Bitcoin accumulation will be harmful because Bitcoin investment is focused on a long term basis
It is clear from your quote that you are not yet familiar with the basic knowledge of Bitcoin investment. Here I will not blame you, but rather suggest you to gain basic knowledge about investment.
Basic knowledge of investment means that you should invest only the amount of money that you can afford to lose. That is, suppose your monthly income is $1000 and your daily expenses are $700. Now the remaining $300 that you have after meeting your daily needs can be called discretionary money which is not very necessary for you. Now you have to find money from that $300 that you can throw away or burn. I am not saying that you should throw it away, rather you should have the mindset of losing that money so that you do not need that money for a long time.
You have to choose the money to invest depending on your situation. Of course, it should be money that is beyond your needs and that you can lose. You have said a bit that investing without focusing on savings is not a good habit. The basic knowledge of investing is to invest with unnecessary money and keep backup funds ready.
I have a thread about the basic knowledge of investing, you can read it if you want. And if you want to read the details of it, you can search AI or Google about the use of points.
Long-Term Investment.Several of the ideas of your thread look good.. I will plan to look at it more closely at some point in the near future...
Surely back up funds can have different categories and even be loosely defined by some individuals, and part of the reason that I like to describe and differentiate three kinds of back up funds is in order to be able to show how they differ from each other, especially for someone who might be having to treat back up funds more seriously, especially if the back up funds might be for the purpose of protecting the bitcoin investment for 4-10 years or longer so that the bitcoin is not tapped into at a time that is not completely of the investor's choosing.
1) emergency funds are the last line of defense - so usually they should be at least for 3 months of expenses in local currency and used only for unexpected increases in expenses and/or decreases in income. Should be promptly replaced as soon as possible if used.
2) reserve funds - can be used for any reasons including emergencies, consumption, buying on dips or whatever reason.. optional whether to replace.. and surely the more erratic a person's income versus expense, then the more justification to keep more reserve funds.
3) floating funds tend to be the extra income that is held until monthly expenses are resolved.. once the monthly expenses are resolved, if there are any floating funds remaining, then those would convert into discretionary income that can be used to invest, consume or to add to back up funds (reserve funds and/or emergency funds)
The way you divided the back up fund into 3 parts is really amazing. I have never thought of it in such a specific way before. You have said that having an emergency fund for 3 months is enough. Yes, I agree with you. Many people want to have an emergency fund for 6 months or 1 year, I don't think it's necessary. It is enough to have an emergency fund for 3 months. If someone, like you said , divides their money into 3 parts and saves it according to the theory of reserve fund and floating fund , then they will be able to continue investing in bitcoin, avoiding all kinds of obstacles in continuous investing, in any kind of situation. Investing in bitcoin consistently is one of the ways to get good feedback in the future. Now I want to know one thing, that is if someone has the mindset that I will invest in bitcoin regularly every month for the next 5 years. So will he fix a specific amount that I will invest 20% of my income in bitcoin ..or will he buy a specific amount of bitcoin regularly….. for example 0.00085 bitcoin can be bought for 100$. Will he fix it that he will buy bitcoin for 100$ or 0.0000085 btc regularly, no matter what the price is.
It tends to be best to attempt to adjust your BTC buying strategy to your income situation, so you could say that you will aim to invest 10% to 20% of your income into bitcoin, yet that might be too vague, so then when you get into the details, you have a certain amount of discretionary income each month, which is the amount of left over money after you have accounted for your expenses, and so within that discretionary income, you could tell yourself (in the beginning) that you are going to invest at least half of it into bitcoin, yet the discretionary income is likely to vary, since some times your income will be higher or lower and other times your expenses might be higher or lower, and in the beginning years, you may well have to make sure that you have some reasonable level of back up funds (emergency funds and reserve funds) to protect your bitcoin investment, and so maybe in the very beginning, you might already have 2-6 weeks of back up funds on hand, and so the amount of extra money that you have is already serving as a kind of emergency fund. You could also tell yourself that you will reassess your approach from time to time, and in the very beginning, you start out a bit more conservative as you are getting used to following your own system that you are creating and trying to figure out if there are areas in which you are making mistakes or where you could improve what you are doing... and as you practice more and more and more, you likely will become more confident in terms of how aggressive you are able to be without overdoing it, so you might even increase your bitcoin investment or find ways to increase your income and to cut some parts of your expenses.
It is o.k. to think about these matters in a variety of ways, yet as you build your own systems, you might realize that it is good to keep a certain amount of money as a cushion all of the time, and surely if your income/expenses are more reliable and simple, then you might not need to keep as much of a cushion as compared with if you have a lot of irregularities in income and/or expenses then you may need to purposefully keep more of a cash cushion.
I know when I was younger I used to project my income expenses out 3-6 months, but then as I got older and some of my finances became more complicated, I frequently would have to project my cashflows out 12 to 24 months, and surely the months that are closer are more important to have the specifics correct, and the months that are further out can be a bit loose, but as they get closer, they have to be more specific, and surely the month that we are currently in and/or the upcoming month are the most important of months to make sure that we have enough money and enough of a cushion so our planning of the months in advance can sometimes show us several months in advance the extent to which we might have potential short-falls of cash in the future. .and if we see that we have a potential short fall of cash 4-5 months into the future, we may well be advantaged to make adjustments in our current earnings and/or spending in order to attempt to account for that future short-fall in cash so that it becomes a non-issue and we may well end up addressing it during current times rather than just leaving it and not addressing it in advance.. so then when we get to that point 4-5 months into the future, we may well end up not feeling any stress because we addressed the matter early..
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It all depends on your discretionary income and not your income mate. After you have received your monthly income, you are to take out money for your monthly expenses and basic needs. The leftover is your discretionary income, that's is the money that you are yo use part of it and invest in bitcoin.
You cannot buy a fixed unit of bitcoin 0.0000085 because bitcoin price fluctuates. If not, you will put your bitcoin investment at risk because you might invest beyond your discretionary income when the price of bitcoin pumps higher than what you bought. For example if you bought 0,0000085btc at $100 when bitcoin price was at $108k and now that bitcoin price is $117k, if you want to buy the exact quantity, the price will be above $100 which is more than what you budgeted for. At the end since $100 is your discretionary income, it will lead to you selling your bitcoin too early when your basic needs arises because you bought with part of the money for your important needs.
However, having a fixed amount in which you can use to be buying bitcoin weekly from your discretionary income is the best as long as it is an amount that wouldn't put pressure on you. That will enable you continue buying every week consistently and persistently for 4-10 years and above till you reach your bitcoin target. Even at this, there are some weeks that you wouldn't be able to buy with the same amount from your discretionary income due to increase in your monthly expenses. Some times, when your expenses is higher than the initial amount, it will affect your discretionary income which will make you reduce the amount that you will buy for that week and when your monthly needs and expenses his smaller compared to what it use to be, it will increase your discretionary income and you can also increase our DCA amount for that week.
These are all good points as well.