How many people actually understand the fiat monetary system? I suspect more people understand Bitcoin, than understand the realities of Fiat currencies. Certainly Bitcoin is talked about far more. Fiat operations and creation is kept a secret as far as possible.

I worked for the London Stock  Exchange for a while, and I've made money in the past from share dealing. I don't think I could do it now. I don't respect most of the big corporations, and I have no empathy with, or understanding of the modern consumer. I think you have to be stupid to buy a Tesla, but it is the fastest grown, and, I belive, the largest motor manufacturer now. Why anyone would want to purchase a limited use, environmentally damaging expensive vehicle, that can be bricked at the whim of the manufacturer, I cannot understand. I have much the same opinion of Apple products. As you can see, you shouldn't take any financial advice from me. I hope this thread has been helpful for members though. There are many suggestions that you can apply  to  your personal financial situation.

If I could make any suggestion, it would be to get out iof the shackles of a bricks and mortar life style. Get yourself a large van, and convert it into a comfortable living space. You wouldn't believe how much freedom it gives you, and how much it increases your health by reducing stress related to government controls and restrictiuons. I wasn't locked down during the Covid panicdemic, and I avoided the crippling injections.

I received this marketing image in my email recently. Now I'm not a treansvestite or trans gender, and even if I was, I wouldn't want to look like this. Does anyone think it is attractive?

@Broadanbig
Thanks for the kind words, but Bitcoin and Bitcoin Talk were very different when I first joined. It was much more experimental, and there were more security risks when making online fiat payments. I don't remember there being signature campaigns either. The forum now seens to include many members who see it as an income source, and will sell any Bitcoin they may receive for fiat currencies. Many of the former members have become extremely wealthy, and have left. I don't think my experiences as a not very significant newbie would be of much interest. They would be about as useful as my experiences with my first "computer" ( an IBM 421 using plug boards and punched cards ), or my first motor cycle - A Matchless 350 with girder forks and a magneto.

For those who haven't heard of the UK premium bonds, here is a link to the government site.
https://www.nsandi.com/products/premium-bonds
The interest rate is 3.3% at the moment, and it is tax free. This interest is put into a prize fund, and prizes are awarded  in a monthly draw. They range from £25 up to £1,000,000, and 2 million pound prizes are awarded every month. The odd of a £1 bond winning a prize are 1 in 24,000, and that is repeated for every month that you hold bonds. You can see that it isn't free money, but money won from gambling with the interest. I hold a few thousand bonds, so I am hoping for some more wins this year.

As has been mentioned, I am 81 in June, and have hit middle age now. I have had a clourful and rewarding life, and as a result I have managed to dispose of ( read lose ) several million pounds, and I think it is time for me to behave responsibly. I am a true green environmentalist, and not one of the new green deal proponents who want to turn every green into an inert brown or grey mass. Every government "green" initiative is designed to destroy the planet, and to raise taxes or increase control over the population. Just look at the CO2 obsession. The real causes of global warming are nothing to do with CO2, but are caused by solar activity and sub-marine volcanic eruptions. That is why the arctic is warming, and the antarctic isn't. My goal is to raise a £million to buy somewoodland with a stream, and to preserve that for the benefit of the wildlife, the planet, and my health. A  million pound win woulkd be spent on this, but I accept that my chances of winning this must be north of !:100,000,000. The appeal of Bitcoin and the Premium bonds are that they both give me the remote chance of winning a million, and preserving my capital at the same time. I have looked atr some other options, and I may post about them sometime. I'm also trying to build slowly towards my million with a few side hustles. I bought a couple of Volvo 740 cars for example. I paid £350 for a 1988 saloon with engine and other problems, and I have fixed the engine problems, and I use it as a daily driver. It's still a bit of a rat rod, but it's probably worth about £1,500 now. I bought an estate (wagon in american) for £850, and that is in almost concours condition. It has a stearing problem which I believe is caused by failing rubber bushes. I'll replace those wil more reliable neoprene ones. Once I have done that, the car should be worth around £5,000. The problenm is that I love both cars, and I want to keep them. I've got far too much stuff in storage, and I need to do some serious disposal work, but I enjoy lying on the beach admiring the bikinis too much.

So why did I start this thread? I love Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Talk foum, and it is a sadness to me that so many of the valuable members from the past have left. I even enjoyed the street fighting posts of Tman. It is obvious from this thread that there is an incredible diversity of experience and wealth in this forum, and I hope that my readers will be able to draw on this to help them to make their own financial decisions. Almost all of the replies have some elements of good advice, and I am encouraged by this. My own circumstances are extremely uinusual, and I wouldn't really expect anyone to empathise with me, but I do consider all of the opinions. Bitcoin is unusual in that it is a resource that can be beneficial whatever your wealth may be. It ranges from the purchase of a few Satoshi up to over 1,000 Bitcoin, and that can help almost everyone to gain some protection from the impending financial collapse. Just be careful, and don't overstretch yourselves, and I don't believe in gearing ( leverage ), Bitcoin is too volatile for anyone but professional speculators to indulge in that.

There is no such thing. Tailpipe emissions are just a small part of the equasion. It is grossly inefficient to chop down ancient forests using diesel powered equipoment, and then after chipping, transport it across the ocean in ships burning the incredibly polluting bunker fuel. Those chips are then burnt in generators like Drax, which is the most polluting plant in England. The electricity is then distributed via cables with a loss of power as it is distributed. It is then used to charge batteries with a further loss of power, and the batteries are used to propel vehicles, and yes, there is even more loss of power. It is far more effiucient and less polluting to generate the motive power directly in a vehicle with an internal combustion engine, Especially if nano-particle combining addiutives are present in the petrol.

I am starting to see a move away from virtue signalling with electric cards, as people start to realise they are accelerating global warming, and the destruction of gardens to provide charging spaces reduces cxarbon sequestration. What will happen to all those electric vans that boast about their electricity  consumption, when their customers and the public realise that they are contributing to blackouts and increased domestic electricitty prices.

I'm starting to get a feel for the variations in prices around the world. I'm in Hampshire in England, and that is a fairly prosperous county on the south coast. It includes Winchester, which is the former capital of England, well when it was largely Wessex. It also includes Winchester college which is one of the major public schools ( remember that in England public schools are the expensive private boarding schools like Eton), and the second most important crown court after the Old Baiuley. A single room in an out of town motel costs about £100 per night, and a decent bottle of wine in a good restaurant is likely to cost more than £50. It looks as if a Big Mac costs £4.79 according to a delivery company, although that isn't something thatr i would buy. A cleaner in the local supermarket earns £10 per hour before taxes. Petrol is currently £1.55 per litre in the cheaper supermarkets. That is for the lower calorific E10 variety, that the government is trying to get us to use under the guise of saving the planet. E5 petrol that gives me more miules per gallon, and is thus cleaner in reality is about 6 pence more expensive. Have you noticed that the green initiate that is supposed to be saving the planet always seems to result in the destruction of green trees and vegetation to be replaced by concrete, glass and other inert surfaces. I think I will start to refer to it as the grey new initiative.
Anyway back to the topic of this post. I am now certain that I will use the £50 to purchase a few Satoshis ( should the plural be Satoshii ). And I will use that to test my new Bitcoin node when I have downloaded the whole blockchain. It will be interesting to see how efficient an internal NVME M.2 will be. With the way things are going it will probably need to be a 2Tb version, and I hope this machine has a second slot for such a drive.

You left out - It isn't real money

People seem to think that because they have bits of paper with promises that say you can change it for another biut oif paper, or a bank account book entry, fiat currencies are real. If someone inverted a Bitcoin note that could be used in payment, then it would gain rapid acceptance in my opinion. I don't think that this is possible, as there doesn't seem to be a way to prove the coin hasn't been spent. Of course you could check online, but then why would you need the note? Actually maybe a QR code with a blockchain checking app might work.

I'm impressed with the diversity of replies in this thread, and almost all of them are sensible and reflect a consideration for the varity in members income, wealth and work demands. It made me realise how lucky I am to be retired with sufficient income to choose  the quality of food that I eat. I know I post about eating nettles, dandelions amd other hedgerow foods, but that is because I believe they are healthier. The fact that they are free is jast an added bonus. I prefer to buy wild caught north Atlantic salmon, rather than farmed salmon even though it is much cheaper. My concerns for the current farming practices and food preparation makes it difficult for me to eat in restaurants.

One thing that posters don't seem to have picked up on is the fact that, hopefully, this win is not an isolated instance. With premium bonds it is rather like buying a season ticket to a lottery, and, as long as you continue to hold a ticket, you are entered into a monthly draw, and when you want to withdraw your funds, you get the whole amount that you paid refunded. I have a few thousand tickets, and hopefully that will give me a continuous, but erratc, income stream. This is the alternative to the interest that is normally paid on a savings account. If I decide to use the £50 winnings to purchase Bitcoin, then I will do the same with all future winning up to £1,000. I'll review the decision at that point. In many ways it a variety on the pound cost averaging investment policy adopted by several Bitcoiners.

I try to build my Bitcoin savings by a variety of indirect means, and at the moment I am endeavouring to sell a domain name for 0.1 Bitcoin, but I am having problems in persuading the buyer to use Bitcoin. I did send him a link to this forum, and I even started a thread about it, but there is still a lot of reluctance to use Bitcoin. Silk Road and the dark web still seem to be colouring the public perception of Bitcoin, and that is why it is beneficial if forum members can publicise legal and reputable uses for Bitcoin.

Just to clarify a bit about my savings. I believe in diversification during these uncertain financial times. I have a few secret hoards of cash in case the banking system shuts down. I have an interest bearing savings account for minor emergencies, and a current account for daily use. I also have a credit card which I use to try to preserve a good credit rating. Not an easy task when you are a van dweller. I've also got a quantity of old silver coins in case fiat currencies lose all credibility, and I save scrap copper as another hedge against inflation. Despite Bitcoin's volatility, I believe it is one of the best hedges aginst inflation, and that is why I am considering the purchase of more coins. This is despite its ( to me ) current high price and volatility. I did try a bit of ungeared scalping, and made small profits, but I spent a lot of time in MacDonalds drinking coffee to do this. It was educational, but I've moved on.

If I win again next month, I'll bump this thread, and hopefull that will continue for the rest of the year. But I've just had 4 months without a win, so I am not optimistic.

It is a government bond. In fact each bond is worth £1, and entitles you to one entry into the monthly draw. If the government does create a CBDC, then the bonds willl no doubt be converted into the new currency. Of course because the bond is a non-interest bearing instrument that is redeemable at par, you are losing purchasing power because of inflation. I hoped that I would be lucky, and the prizes would beat the inflation rate. I believe that lucky people make their own luck by exposing themselve to potentially lucky situatiuons. Secretly, I hope to win £1,000,000 to buy some woodland to preserve  and help the environment. Being realistic, it probably won't happen, but I still have the basic purchase price of the bonds as an emergency reserve fund.

The concept of fiat currencies will never die. It is too advantageous to the banks, the elite, and the government. Specific fiat currencies will be repriced, and issued as a new variant of the same old concept. 1 Bitcoin=1 Bitcoin, but equally 1 pound Sterling= 1 pound Sterling. What a Sterling pound doesn't equal is one pound of silver, and this was its oriuginal value.

Never let it be said that I don't accept the advice of Bitcoin Talk members. I've decided to invest £2.50 on a double scrambled egg on toast in the Sainsbury's cafe.

What I will probably do is the see if there is a UK member here who wil sell a few Satoshi to go in the new wallet I have created for my archival node project. That is on hold at the moment, as I haven't checked inside this laptop to ensure that it really does have a second NVMe slot that will accept a 2Tb SSD. This is the thread, which is really aimed at digital nomads -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5450377.0

@humanvelocity
I gave you a couple of merits, because I thought your post was a great idea. However, I'm now a retired pensioner, and I'm not short of money for the odd special meal. I'm a bit phobic about food at the moment, and I think I would prefer to fry a nice steak and eat in on the beach.
I guess I'm not really asking for financial advice, but I'm more interested in social opinions. Both of my suggestions are gambles, and I guess your suggestion is more of a lifestyle reward. If it had been a slightly larger sum, I'd be tempted to try to find another classic car to restore, I enjoy the challenge in this.

Although I am a Bitcoin maximalist, I believe that you should diversify your savings as an additional security measure. It is also important to keep some savings in easily realised assets. Bitcoin is great as a long term hedge against inflation, but I don't cosider it to be an easily realised asset. Of course it is a simple matter to sell coins for cash, but its volatility means that it is important to time the sale. The law of maximum perversity states that when you need to sell Bitcoin, its price will be at its lowest ebb. Bank savings accounts can enable you to withdraw funds almost immediately, but the interest rates are low. In view of these facts I decided to purchase some UK National Savings premium bonds last December. These are government bonds that don't pay any interest, but the interest from all of the savers' bonds are placed in a prize pool, and prizes are awarded each month. The prizes range from £25 to £1,000,000. I won £50 in this month's draw, and the money will be paid into my bank account, and it is tax free. Now what should I do with the money? I could use it to buy more bonds, as the minimum purchase amount is only £25. Alternatively I could buy a few Satoshi, as I believe that we will see a sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin later this year, or perhaps early next year. The million pound prize is tempting, but so is the doubling or tripling of the Bitcoin price.

The merit system was created to help the forum to cope with some  members. It was not created  for members to cope with the forum.

You can merit yourself, but only by creating an alt, and your action will appear in the merit history of both accounts. There are a few members who watch out for these abuses of the spirit of the forum, and such action willl almost certainly result in both accounts receiving red untrusted flags. Whilst alt accounts are allowed, it is the established practice to announce the connection, and include an attribution in the alt profile. There are several reason for registering alt accounts, and I have several. For example, I registered Kuffy to protect one of my other board sobriquets. I even registerd Flash Cunt to emulate the posting style of one of our more colourful retired members.

I thought we were trying to reduce the size oif transactions to speed up confirmations. Loading a load oif detritus onto the blockchain seems to be damaging to the future of Bitcoin. Can this rubbish be moved onto a sidechain.

I think there is an important consideration here which seems to be ignored. Bitcoin is a virtual asset, and you can't store it anywhere. The records of your holdings are published publicly on the blockchain. The only thing you need to record is a list of the coiuns you own, and the way you can release thgem in oirder to "spenbd" them. As has been mentioned, there are numerous ways to record addresses, keys and passwords, and the safestr and most effective ways will vary from persoin to person. For example, I could use paper hidden in the van for my records. That would be protected agaiunst theft, but would be usekless in the evenb of a file, and may also be lost in a damp atmosphere. You will also need a method to access thge blockchain if you wish to spend your coins, but not if you just want to receive them. My choice is to use Bitcoin core, but there are many other optiuons that can be used safely and securely.

It mnight gain more credibility if the image duidn't contain a bunch of plonkers wearing masks, and under the control of a raised fist. I'm a free spirit, so I reject all of that. I bet they all had the covid injections as well.

I've always thought that US sanctions were designed to weaken the US economy and destroy the dollar. That is the only way they can get out of their massive debt crisis.