@JJG
Tbh buddy, I need to buy a diary (I like paper records) and write down a few price/sell scenarios. I need to be much better prepared for the next parabolic bull run.
The last one took me by surprise & I was a little bit like a deer in headlights.
We all need to have a fixed sell point for a % of our bitcoin’s in my opinion. I might go out tomorrow & buy a diary then scribble a few things down tomorrow night.
Fair enough about the diary.
Different tools an work too.
I used to use diaries for a lot of my cash projection planning in the 80s and 90s, and in early 2000s, I really started to play around with Excel. I like Excel because of the ability to play around with scenarios and then to see how various scenarios play out - without having to re-input the data so many times.
With Excel, sometimes, you can create a couple of skeleton versions of scenarios and then copy and paste them, and frequently, I have figured out ways to re-jigger scenarios, and then cause some of the fields to serve as a kind of look back variable, so if I change one or two variables, then I will see how the whole projection might play out.
Don't get me wrong, paper can work out well, too, and I am not being an anti-paper snob.
I have made various kinds of disclosures of this before, but in mid-2015, I spent a considerable amount of time projecting various kinds of BTC price trajectories, and there were several people who thought that I was crazy, including some people with whom i shared my trajectories in real life.
When the BTC price began to go on its own little trajectory in late 2015 and moreso in 2016 and even moreso in 2017, I spent a decent amount of time to change some of my trajectories because I would see how the real numbers would stack up as compared with the projected numbers, and even by early to mid 2017, when BTC prices surpasses 4 digits, and then largely bounced around between $2k and $3k, I realized that my continuing to practice in maintaining a conservative and incremental cashing out all along the way, and not making BIG BTC cash outs along the way, was going to cause me to feel much better psychologically, and I did not need to generate more fiat than I had been generating.
By the time BTC prices got to supra $19k, I had only cashed out of about 12% of my BTC holdings rather than higher amounts that I had projected earlier. Sure, upon retroactive analysis, I see that I could have made way more money by cashing out larger amounts and then buying back BTC with those proceeds, but still I have almost NO regrets about the way that I played my incrementalism approach to cashing out.
Of course, everyone is going to be a little bit different in terms of timeline for cashing out and if s/he believes that s/he has some kind of purpose for cashing out certain higher amounts that might go beyond a steady incrementalist approach, like I had chosen to take.
My current projection is to stay with my incrementalist approach, but also, I am not going to be shy, either if I decide to cash out decent amounts of BTC, as needed, if some real world expense or desire comes along. Furthermore, I have also decided that at a certain point, likely within the next five years or perhaps less, I am going to begin to cash out 1% of the value of my BTC holdings every single quarter, no matter what is the then price. Cashing out 1% per quarter should be a sustainable practice, even though we know that there is no real guarantees in bitcoin.
I will admit that I have decent presumptions that by the time I start to automatically cash out 1% of the value of my BTC per quarter, that BTC prices are going to be higher than they are today (5 years-ish). It is also reasonable and prudent that I could set a BTC price floor on my plan, so for example, I could tell myself that no matter what the BTC price (as long as the price is above x - and for me x would be something like $5k), then I am authorized to cash out 1% of the value of my BTC holdings for each quarter.
Again, guys (and gal) here are going to be a bit different in how they calculate this, and in that regard, some piece of paper, an excel spreadsheet or whatever tools are within your comfort to use can help you to sit down and concentrate on various scenarios and possible ways to cash out some or all of your BTC... Personally, I think that it is NOT prudent to engage in any kind of 100% cashing out, but there may be folks who reasonably conclude that to be an approach that suits their own circumstances including their cashflow, other investments, risk tolerance, view of bitcoin, timeline and resources available to them, including skills.