Quote from: Tungbulu on Today at 05:16:50 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on August 10, 2025, 11:50:23 PM

My example is largely to show that a guy might have a lot of things going on that causes him inabilities to have any assurances regarding the steadiness of his income, but he can still determine that he has enough discretionary funds in which he can choose to buy bitcoin with some of those discretionary funds, whether he continues at $100 per week or some other amount that he might consider to be adjustments to his weekly buys based on ongoing changes in his income and/or expenses situation.

Another example, might involve a guy who uses debt to help to smooth over his cash flow circumstances, and he might use some of the debt to buy bitcoin and other parts to increase his future income earning potentials. There can be good uses of debt, even though complicated, but if the terms of the debt are reasonably good, the guy could embark on using debt to bolster his finances and to get him through transitionary periods, and he may well even have ways to pay the debt that are based on future income that might not yet be established but he already has various ideas about where he might be able to get future income based on whatever he has going on or maybe some doors he considers that the capital might help him to open.

The scenarios you gave really did justice to your assertion that it's possible to have a discretionary fund and thus still continue to accumulate Bitcoin even without a stable income. I carefully read through every paragraph, and although I read to a point that almost conflicted with my perspective about not investing with one's backup funds, because from your scenario you suggested that in a situation where an individual losses his job and has no more income coming in, they'll live off of their emergency fund, and also get a discretionary income from the same emergency fund which of course makes more sense now because losing one's job is an actual emergency, and surely one can live off of their emergency fund until they get another job or called back to their previous job. And I love the fact that you also mentioned that it's entirely an individual decision to continue accumulating Bitcoin at this point, even though it is very possible to have a discretionary fund and thus, still continue Investing in Bitcoin.

And then I have just one question, or maybe a scenario that I'll need to be clarified on.
A situation where an investor has successfully accumulated enough emergency fund, let's say 3-4 months of their living expenses, and then they lose their current job and starts living off of their emergency fund and of course continued Investing in Bitcoin, while they hunt for another job, and then unfortunately they exhausted their emergency fund, even though they managed to cut down their expenses to the minimal, because surely there are countries, especially the third world countries that have not too many job opportunities and thus folk happen to be in one of this country and he's unable to secure another job for the next 4 to 5 months, or let's assume a dispute broke out in that country that led to war and it affected the country's economy and job market, thereby making it even more difficult and challenging for the individual to secure a new employment. In such scenario, what would be the next step to take, giving that their emergency and other backup funds have completely dried up leaving him with his Bitcoin investment which is is determined never to touch.

You seem to be fighting a bit with the scenario that I gave, and giving your own version which seems a bit more desperate than the version that I had described. Of course, my version is one in which the guy already has a lot of back up funds in various forms, and even when he lost his job, he figured out some ways to cut down a lot of his expenses from $900 per month to $500 per month during his process of looking for a new job.

In my version, the guy has 3 months of emergency funds if his expenses were to remain the same at $900 per month (since he has $2,700 in his emergency funds), he also has $5k in other non-bitcoin investments and he has $1,800 in his back up. He is not short of funds, and maybe I made it a bit unrealistic.. since in my hypothetical he had been able to figure out ways to decrease his expenses from $900 per month to $500 per month (maybe he gets a roommate to share expenses?), and even though he is contemplating a trip that would cost him $700, he still has enough funds to do that, and the trip has some likelihood (75% I estimated in the example) to lead to a fairly lucrative job of $2,900 for 3 weeks work). The example does not need to be as extreme as mine in order for such a guy to be able to decide both to continue to buy bitcoin and/or to plan for some extra expenditures that he might undertake and/or even for him to not be desperate in his search for another position, since as I mentioned the guy in my example is seeking to improve his employment and his future pay, which might take some time to build such a thing.

In your example, you are painting a more desperate situation, so the guy is likely not going to have as many options, and surely, I had never suggested continuing to buy bitcoin if the emergency funds (or all that is left in the back up funds) is down to ONLY 3 months of expenses. By the time you get down to ONLY have 3 months of expenses left in your budget, you are getting to a pretty desperate situation, so you are going to have more urgency in regards to increasing the income and/or cutting any further expenses, and from my own perspective it would not be a good idea to keep buying bitcoin in those circumstances, even if the BTC price were to dip.

Now in my own situation, as the guy depletes more and more of his funds and maybe he is not having luck finding better employment, so he might have to resort to doing something right away and taking whatever he can get to improve his income situation. There are degrees to these matters, and surely having decently high levels of back up funds would create more options, yet the more a guy is uncertain about his abilities to earn future income, the the more likely that he is going to have to cut his expenses and perhaps even reduce or completely stop buying bitcoin until his circumstances improve. Surely if he is running out of back up funds and even in my situation the guy had some other investments that added up to around $5k, so if he gets to a point that he has depleted all his cash, and he only has the bitcoin investment and the other $5k non-bitcoin investment, then he has to choose between which ones of those he would spend from next.

Tough decisions, and guys are not necessarily going to choose in the same way or even make the right choices when they are trying to figure out how to pay their expenses when their income might have had completely dried up or maybe it had just gotten reduced and became more sporadic.. since there still sometimes could be jobs that a guy could do, yet if they guy had gotten hit by a bus, and so maybe he is recovering from his injuries, he might not have as many options as a guy who had not suffered some health event and/or injuries.

Another thing with the situation that you describe, the guy does not seem to have as many options, and he is just seeking whatever employment that he can get and hoping that he can get employment before his money runs out, so he may well not even be in a position that he can seek higher paying employment and he may well not be in a position to continue to buy bitcoin unless he gets someone telling him that he is going to start his new position next week and it will be x, y or z pay, and so at that point, even though he had not gotten paid yet he has higher levels of certainty that his income is going to continue to come in.. yet I personally don't have a lot of confidence to count on money being in available to me if it is dependent upon various actions of other people or various events in the future that had not happened.. so sometimes we need to be careful in regards to spending money that has not yet reached us, even though there are some circumstances that we might have more confidence that the money will be coming on the date that it is expected to come.

Quote from: Humblevirus on Today at 09:50:45 AM

Quote from: yixichloro2xx on Today at 01:28:50 AM

I get the logic behind having an emergency fund before buying Bitcoin, but in reality, it is not always practical,especially for someone with a small or irregular discretionary income. Waiting months to build a fund before getting any exposure can mean missing out entirely if the price moves significantly in the meantime..........imagine someone has $100 left after covering basic needs each month. If they spend five months saving $500 for emergencies before buying any Bitcoin, they risk sitting on the sidelines while the price rises 30 to 40%. Instead, they could put $20 into Bitcoin right away and use the remaining $80 to start building their emergency fund, adjusting the balance as they go. This way, they are in the market early but still working toward financial security.

An emergency fund is still essential because it stops you from panic selling Bitcoin when life throws you an unexpected bill. But it doesn’t need to be fully built before your first satoshi. A balanced approach is buy small amounts of Bitcoin early, build the fund in parallel, and never dip into it for investments... that keeps you both protected and invested.

I understand that emergency funds are very important in Bitcoin investment, but that should not shift our focus away from starting well with our Bitcoin investment. We should give our Bitcoin investment more power than our emergency funds. So, I don't think it's a good idea when we have $100 left over after our basic needs are solved, to just invest $20 and put the remaining $80 into emergency funds. I think we should first start our Bitcoin investment with $60 or $70 and put like $30 or $40 into emergency funds. For me, it makes more sense to focus on building our Bitcoin investment first, rather than focusing solely on building emergency funds. If someone can't invest more of their discretionary funds into Bitcoin, then they should split it 50% each for emergency funds and Bitcoin investment. But I am not in support of investing very little in Bitcoin and pushing more funds into emergency savings.

It is possible that some persons had bad cashflow management practices prior to coming into bitcoin, yet I imagine many folks had already been in the habit of maintaining some kind of a financial cushion, whether 2-6 weeks or some other amount. So it is likely that few folks are starting to invest into bitcoin with absolutely no cash cushion. So then like you suggest, Humblevirus, there is a choice regarding how fast to build up our back up funds as compared to building up our bitcoin holdings, and even if your ultimate goal is to get your back up funds to 3-4 months or more, there still can be some differences of opinions regarding how fast to build each of them (the bitcoin investment and the backup funds) and what are the reasons for building each at a certain rate... Question of what is being protected and how certain is the income and what happens if the income dries up what are various back up scenarios, and yeah sometimes there is importance to prepare for extreme scenarios, yet maybe we start out not as prepared for extreme scenarios yet as our bitcoin holdings get larger and larger we have more motivations to protect it, yet at the same time our total wealth is continuing to grow too and we are hopefully making progress in building in a variety of ways that we would have back up funds that we could tap into upon differing scenarios...

and yeah maybe in the first 3-6 months or more while we are in the initial stages of building our bitcoin and our back up funds, we may even understand that our bitcoin is serving a bit like an emergency fund because all of our back up funds are not going to get us through a variety of scenarios that could happen, yet we consider our ongoing building of both the bitcoin and the back up funds to be reasonably balanced including that we consider that our odds of getting through our first 3-6 months and even longer is good since we are ongoingly putting ourselves in better and better financial and psychological circumstances as compared with our practices prior to bitcoin, so we are little by little getting stronger and stronger and yeah, if we have some really big uncertainties regarding our income, then we might have to emphasize the back up funds more than the bitcoin, and if we have stronger certainties regarding our income (or back up income that we could get if we were to lose our job) then we would emphasize more on the bitcoin side of the building of our finances.

And even you, Humblevirus, by your forum registration date, you may have had been investing in bitcoin and building your back up funds for 2 to 2.5 years or maybe more, and you likely realize that the beginning stages might be the more difficult for any guy, yet surely each of us start from differing places regarding what kinds of back up resources we have available to us, and also some of us might have started out our bitcoin journey while screwing up with our cashflow management, or trying to trade, or shitcoining, or even lack of conviction (overly whimpiness) so we might have had started with bitcoin and got distracted and then maybe having to restart at a later date with better practices.