Quote from: fredericktaylor on Today at 06:41:19 AM

Quote from: kanftka on August 09, 2025, 10:09:55 PM

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You are right, investing without having a discreet income after spending is risky, investing money that we can lose. If our income is low, we should reduce unnecessary expenses and pay close attention to our skills, as well as take some training that may not yield results now but will be in demand in the future. We should plan not for the present but for the future. It is normal that expenses will continue to increase over time, but as the amount of expenses increases, it would be wise to apply your skills through training to earn additional income. If our income is low now, it is possible to increase it in the future through your skills. Even if this plan does not yield immediate results, it will greatly help in properly planning future investments.

Generally speaking income does not keep up with debasement of the currency (as prices go up), except people who are younger are likely to be able to get greater and greater income by receiving promotions, and like you suggested there are some folks who have high skills and are able negotiate higher wages and/or promotions.

In other words, there are a lot of normal folks who either have fixed incomes (such as persons drawing retirement income and/or pensions that do not tend to adequately adjust for inflation) and persons who have low paying wages and their wage increases are way less than the increases in the cost of living.

It is wrong to presume that everyone is in a position to negotiate higher wages/income, even if it is possible for some. There are likely folks in dead end jobs and low paying positions that could put themselves into a position of building their skills and/or experiences so that they can get higher paid jobs and/or promotions.

Quote from: Barikui1 on Today at 08:46:34 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 05:17:01 AM

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).

You are really on point and i also share the same sentiment here sir, because their are some guys I know that doesn't always have a discretionary income, but anytime they have a discretionary funds from contract they won, they invest from it, sometimes it takes them five weeks to have another discretionary fund, sometimes six to seven weeks, but the key thing is that they never fail to invest anytime their discretionary income is available, so it all boils down to the investors will, if he is thinking long term and willing to accumulate consistently once he has a discretionary funds, so you are spot on when you said that discretionary income on a regular basis is for continuity, while discretionary funds is what's needed that particular time you want to invest.

Also, if we are taking a snapshot and looking at our financial and psychological situation. Maybe we can consider that we just got paid, so we are taking into account how much we just got paid. We might be able to see how much money we have in various forms like cash that might be within the money that we just got paid and also money that might be in various back up funds such as emergency funds and/or reserves, we can also see the status of our various investments (including whether or not we have bitcoin and if so how much..), what are our expenses for the next several weeks or for that particular month until we expect to get paid next (and there might be uncertainties regarding how much or when we will be paid next) and we can assess the extent to which we have enough money to cover our various expenses from our income, and from looking at each of these existing matters, we can assess how much money we have left over from the funds that we were just paid and that could be called discretionary income (if there is some certainty that it is coming in on a regular basis in the past and into the future) or it could be called discretionary funds if there might not be certainty in regards to the quantity or even the timing for when it might be coming in in the future.

Surely each of us knows our own situations and the kind of work that we have been doing and that we expect to be able to do, yet there could also be situations where we have a lot of uncertainty in our income in regards to the kind of work that we might be able to get, and surely many members have been proclaiming that there is a need for certainty in future income in order to be able to invest in bitcoin and implicity to even get started investing into bitcoin, which is not true... All a person needs to do is to take a snapshot of his current situation, and if he has extra money that he can spend on anything that he likes (also known as discretionary funds) then he can use some or all of that money to buy bitcoin.

Of course, a person who has less certainties in regards to his future income should feel himself to be in a worse situation in terms of committing to buying bitcoin with all of his extra money as compared with a guy who has higher levels of certainty in his future income. So a guy who has higher levels of certainties in his future income is likely in a better position to invest aggressively into bitcoin as compared with a guy who has uncertainties in regards to his future income, yet the mere fact that there are uncertainties in future income does not mean that a guy cannot or should not get started investing into bitcoin, even if they start with merely one purchase (whether it is $10, $100, $1k or some other quantity to get started), and in order to be investing that money needs to come from discretionary funds and not from non-discretionary funds.

If he puts money into bitcoin from non-discretionary funds (which means money that he needs for expenses) then he is engaged in trading or gambling rather than investing... including that investing in bitcoin should have an expectation of being locked up for a 4-10 years or longer time horizon and anything shorter than that would be trading or gambling. Sure it is likely that a decent number of folks are not in a mindset to be able to commit towards investing into bitcoin for 4-10 years or longer at the time that they first get started investing into bitcoin, so perhaps they will develop those kinds of longer term perspectives on bitcoin as they continue to invest into bitcoin and while they hopefully continue to study bitcoin.

Quote from: Cossyblack on Today at 10:25:19 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 05:17:01 AM

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Thank you Sir for the simple breakdown or definition on the words "Discretional funds" & "discretional income". It's not just newbies that will benefits alone from your teaching's but also members on this thread. it's now very clear to my understanding on the proper use of the both terms ''Funds" &"income" because before now, I used to think discretional income is what is needed to buy Bitcoin which I was wrong but after studying your explanation, my perspective on both terms has changed and has been corrected that what's is needed to start an investment in Bitcoin isn't our discretional income Rather what's needed is our discretional funds after settling our personal necessities.

Likely in the end, we should be attempting to focus on the various ideas rather than getting too much caught up upon whether we are using terms correctly, since those would devolve into semantical rather than substantive arguments, and I think that the main thing that I was attempting to clarify is that a guy does not have to have a confidence in regards to his stream of future income in order to get started investing in bitcoin, even though surely a guy with a stream of income and fairly high confidence in the continuance of such ongoing income will be in a better position to continue to invest into bitcoin and even to invest aggressively as compared with someone who merely has some one time discretionary funds and a certain level of uncertainty in regards to his future income and/or his future expenses.