Honestly - I'm only sitting on about 20 btc --- the rest is cashed out once a month and put towards purchasing new hardware, paying bills and letting my wife shop.
I'm also planning to drop between 40 and 100 grand on more hardware after ASICs are in the wild and we can see what the real world numbers are.
that's cool
I'm sitting on 200.. i bought them... i don't mine cuz i figured i got in the game to late.
Why is EVERYONE so fucking rich!?
![Angry](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/angry.gif)
I'm in my mid 30s I work a regular job - I invest in things I both like and think will make me money. I've had some failures and some successes. I've made some good decisions and some bad ones. I've only been in btc since june. I looked at it briefly - mined for like a day back when btc was worth 0.02 usd and decided it wasn't worth the electric cost. Took another look during the bubble and decided I'd wait for it to break. Then I bought some btc (20) and spent about 3 grand on hardware for mining. I've been re-investing about 50% of my mining profits into growing my gpu/fpga farm. I didn't start buying BFL hardware until their ship times came into an acceptable range (between 6 and 7 weeks). But my invest there is on track to earn itself out before asics hit.
I've already paid to have 1 bfl single upgraded - the other 2 will be ordered after I have that one in hand. I'm in the process of getting some bASIC stuff funded (will probably wait until it ships tho). If nothing drastic happens to bitcoin once ASICs hit, I'll be liquid enough by jan or feb to make that investment, it will depend on ship times / real world specs what exactly I buy... but I'm leaning towards BFL SC rig(s) at this point.
I guess the answer to your question is this: If you're diligent with what you have... manage it well, make good goals (like getting debt free and having good savings/emergency funds) then when you come across the 'chance of a lifetime' you'll have to option of investing.
The road to financial freedom is a hard one, but it's worth the effort. But if you're planning on using bitcoin as your vehicle then the best advice I can give you is simply 'invest then reinvest' you've got a keep upgrading your income stream via reinvestment in order to make a long term profit.
If you aren't in mining right now - it's not the time to get into it - you won't hit ROI before things change. If you want to get into it - start small or wait until you can start big. If you look at it like a monthly bill, 150 > bfl for a jally or 100 a month and you buy a bASIC every 6 months... then you've got the right idea. Before you know it you'll have an income stream to rival your day-job (and that's when it gets really hard). Frankly scraping up the desire to goto work every day is a huge problem for me, since I'm making slightly more than my wage from mining atm. I've chosen to keep my employment for the time being, for the simple reason that ASICs and the halving are going to introduce some instability in the next year and I'd hate to have to deplete savings to pay bills.
Bitcoin may or may not be the chance of a lifetime - it might or might not turn out well for everyone involved - but I'm glad the way I live my life has put me into the position to choose how much and how I invest. Because if bitcoin doesn't make my fortune, something else will.