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You are right Futurexxx that having discretionary funds is necessary from the start, and a discretionary income is needed to continue to invest into bitcoin, yet a discretionary income is not needed to get started, only discretionary funds are needed to get started.
Part of the reason that this is important is that people keep mixing up what is needed to get started and what is needed to continue to invest.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between discretionary funds and income.
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Part of the reason that I made that distinction is because members keep suggesting (or claiming) that newbie investors into bitcoin need to have a regular income in order to start investing into bitcoin, and that is not true.
All they need is discretionary funds.. which means that it is funds that are extra after they have accounted for their expenses.
The only difference with my use of the term "income" is to suggest that there is a steady flow of discretionary income every week or every month, and in order to invest into bitcoin you do not need a steady flow of income.
You just need discretionary funds at the time that you buy. So for example, if you have an extra $10 and you were considering buying a pack of cigarettes, but instead you decided to skip the pack of cigarettes and to buy bitcoin with that $10. That $10 is discretionary money since you had the option to buy cigarettes or to buy bitcoin with it. In this example, you chose to buy bitcoin.
By the way, a person will be better off if he has a discretionary income so then he can buy bitcoin on a regular basis, such as weekly. But it is not necessary to have such steady income to get started. The income can be erratic and irregular, yet whenever the guy has some discretionary funds, meaning money that is left over after he has accounted for his expenses, then he can choose to buy bitcoin with that.. or he can choose to buy cigarettes or anything else that he wants (which is the meaning of discretionary).
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Discretionary income is the money that’s left over after all your essentials bills are being paid. Let’s say, you’re being paid $4,000 and your essential expense is $3,000, then the remaining $1,000 is your discretionary income. While discretionary funds are money set aside for investments or non essential spending. Let’s say, you’re now left with $1,000 discretionary income, then you can decide to set $500 for your non essential spending or for investments, that becomes your discretionary funds. Therefore; you get your discretionary funds from your discretionary income
That is not how I was using the term "discretionary funds" I was merely trying to distiguish between money that was flowing on a regular basis and money that you must happen to have.
When you set some of your discretionary income aside, then you might be calling that back up funds, emergency funds, reserve funds. You seem to be describing reserve funds, even though surely these terms can be used in a variety of way and some times ambiguously.