You might consider my sustainable withdraw thread to be helpful in terms of the kinds of ideas regarding how to consider withdrawing bitcoin and valuing it, and my fuck you status thread for how many BTC you might need to have by certain points in your journey.
Of course, if you end up retiring 20-30 years prior to your normal retirement age, and maybe we can use 60 as that age (since that is what you mentioned), then surely you would have to have bitcoin retain you for the time that you stop working and the time that those other sources of income (cashflow) start to become available to you.
I personally attempt to consider that we should be attempting to value bitcoin in terms of today's dollar value, so we should be attempting to presume that any future projection of how much we need is accurate in terms of today's dollars, but at the same time, it is quite likely that the way that the dollar (and other fiat currencies) have been so heavily debased in the last several years, there are vary low odds that various kinds of hyper-inflation are not going to kick in at various times, so surely it may well be better to be earning money during those kinds of times rather than being stuck with cashflows that come from various kinds of fixed income sources.. and perhaps bitcoin might be one of the ONLY assets that have any kind of decently good chances of both being able to keep up with inflation (and the ongoing degradation of money) and being able to have some sort of price appreciation on top of it.
There have been many assessments of both stocks and property values that likely show that they have not really gone up in value over the past 20-30 years, but instead have merely been keeping pace with the ongoing degradation of the dollar, so it is kind of a misconception and even a lopsided way in which the ONLY people who have not lost as much are those who are invested, versus anyone who has been relying on cash and income and other ways of saving (not talking about bitcoin) have not really been able to keep up at all, and so bitcoin so far seems to be one of the ONLY ones that is regularly outpacing the degradation of the dollar.. and sure there are some stocks and properties that outperform the others, so there are some ways that you could have had selected stocks that generally outperform index funds and the rest of the market.. but we know that many times asset managers do not even have much luck in terms of just being able to out perform index funds.
I appreciate the feedback and insight. I did read through your posts that you mentioned and found some helpful information.
Explaining to other people that keeping large sums of money in a "savings account" is actually resulting in them losing money over time is a struggle I run into. They ussually say something like but, "I get a 2.5% interest rate so I'm actually gaining money." They fail to understand inflation and its affects on their buying power.
Well yes. There is a difference between real and nominal, and so one of the incredibly deceptive aspects of money printing comes through when we see people who are actually believing that they are getting ahead because they are earning higher and higher interest rates, and we even had some of those same kinds of dynamics with member(s) trying to sell the idea of US Govt bonds merely because they are earning 5% or 6% annual interest, and so these are not even dumb people who are lured into these products because there can be a lot of uncertainties regarding where to put your money.. and surely those people who had been sucked into US Govt bonds in 2022 and even this year, while bitcoin prices were either in the low $20ks or in the sub $20ks can now see that they would have been way better off to put that same money into bitcoin.. and sure, no problem if you have a lot of money and you want to diversify into a variety of kinds of investments(savings), but some people do not have much or any bitcoin and they get lured into those kinds of inferior products that might not show themselves as inferior until way down the road..
Similar to much of 2020 when there were a lot of opportunities to get into bitcoin below $10k - and surely a lot of people could have still gotten into bitcoin below $8k, even if they might not have had been able to time some of the greater BTC crashes into the lower $6ks and even the March 2020 crash that got as low as $3,850... but even if we take $10k as an average price that someone might have had been able to get into bitcoin at various points in 2020 and perhaps even making several mistakes along the way, they still would have preserved a lot of purchasing power in BTC even if we are not going based on the higher spot price fluctuations that brought us up to $69k, but if we look at a more steady assessment of average BTC price, we still see that the
200-week moving average went up from around $5k in early 2020 and currently showing itself at $29,306.. and yeah, the 200-week moving average seems to be a decent way of valuating bitcoin in terms of bottom prices (even though it is not an absolute bottom)... right now it is going up at a rate of about $24 per day.
I got funny looks from the account manager at the bank the day I went in to close my savings account and withdraw all of it.
Personally, I believe it is better to try to keep some of those kinds of accounts open, as long as they are not costing you too much money in terms of minimum deposit sizes and/or fees for keeping them open... so what is the threshold? and are they more problems than they are worth? I am not sure..
She told me I have the highest interest rate possible because I was grandfathered into a high yield account. She said we dont even offer that high of a rate anymore so why would I want to lose that. I asked her what the rate was and she said 3%. I told her that's not enough please close the account. She was in disbelief.
Yes.. in real terms it is not likely earning any interest.. and may even be costing you, but many accounts do not offer any interest at all... and so in that sense either way it is costing you to keep very much value in those kinds of accounts.. so yeah, I am not sure of the balance, and I am not sure if it necessary to close those kinds of accounts, but maybe to be careful in how much value that we hold in those of accounts and recognizing that they are costing us money to maintain value in them.
I have several bank accounts and most of them don't earn any interest, but sometimes it is going to be difficult to do certain things without some of those kinds of accounts, and it can be problematic to lose your banking history or your credit, and sure some people cannot even get credit and we are likely transitioning away from credit systems, yet it could take 50-200 years to really get into a bitcoin standard, and even in the next 10 to 30 years, it is likely going to remain valuable to have some abilities to transact within traditional systems.. and some systems are not going to allow or recognize bitcoin transactions.. and if those are the kinds of limitations that you want, then that's your choice.. There are bitcoin pioneers who want to push limits and ONLY have their value in bitcoin (or mostly), but I have my doubts about the practicality of that way of living especially for the vast majority of normies.. unless you really are able to do it without suffering too much.
By the way, the vast majority of normies know fuck all about bitcoin, even if they might have had heard the word, and even a lot of bitcoin HODLers do not know very much about bitcoin... so it seems way better to try to get more and more people holding bitcoin and even to transact directly in bitcoin. I have a system in which I have been giving quite a bit of bitcoin away even in recent times (to friends and relatives), so one of the requirements is just to have a bitcoin address.. and at the same time, I talk about the power of having your own wallet .. and so many people gravitate towards various custodial services. and opt for the easy way out.. so it can be difficult to interact with these kinds of people and even some people refuse to get a bitcoin address.
I had a friend contact me recently. He is in his late 40s.. perhaps close to 50, and he has a family and likely terminal or close to terminal illness.. even though he has quite a bit of hope and surely is not a dumb person in terms of his education level and abilities to understand complicated topics (and nuances), and so much back and forth with him about my willingness to send him way more money if he gives me a bitcoin address, and so far he has refused and I am getting ready to give up.. but there still is some value in going back and forth and never really giving up completely, but maybe from time to time pausing in the intensity of the back and forth communications.. I even told him that I give no fucks about if he even holds onto the bitcoin, he can cash it out right away, but I am ONLY going to send him higher amounts of value (I already sent some value in dollars) if he gives me a bitcoin address.
Cost of living is another factor that varies greatly and is impacted by inflation. That is part of the reason why I mention becoming an unofficial expat. I do not have some sort of great patriotism that ties me to any one country. I am perfectly happy hopping around to what ever country fits my wants or needs at any point in my life once retired. There are obviously factors such as standard of living, cost of living, political climate, and Healthcare system that must be taken into account though.
I can relate. I do those kinds of travels myself, and sometimes it can become quite challenging.. so surely if you are not yet up in age, then you might be imaging some of the matters in terms of age, but there surely can be some challenges when moving from place to place.
The value of my "over 60 assets" and its buying power is definitely something that concerns me as they are tied to the US economy and USD strength. The world is an unpredictable place and the only thing certain is change. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision not to empty those accounts, take the early withdraw fee, and buy BTC with it. I have a friend that did this in 2017 and it obviously worked out for him so far.
I was very tempted in 2014 to the same thing, and surely I would have had done way better with my bitcoin investment had I cashed out some of my dollar based funds and put them into bitcoin, yet in the end, I suppose i am glad that I did not do it, even though they would have had been way more valuable.. and I think that there is some value in keeping some of those accounts active, even though they are largely melting icecubes... and they are not appreciating even close to as much as bitcoin.
Largely I like to suggest that I was already financially independent by the time that I came to bitcoin in late 2013, and so part of my motivation in getting into bitcoin was to be able to hedge my various dollar based investments, so I considered that it could take me close to 15 or 20 years to be able to get my bitcoin side of my investment to be somewhere near the same size as my dollar based investments, but largely it seems to have had ONLY taken around 3-4 years.. and sure I tell variations of this story, but if you take all of my dollar based investments and you might see that they grew around 80% or so over the past 10 years, but my bitcoin investment grew more than 40x (depending on how you calculate the matter), and I say that I could completely live off my various fiat based investments if bitcoin were to go to zero, so that is part of the rationale to just keep the fiat based investments in place, and at the same time, maybe we could say that if bitcoin is valued around $3k to $4k, then my bitcoin investments are valued about equally to my various fiat investments..
so either one could go to zero (and maybe we have to use the 200-week moving average as our way of valuating the bitcoin investment), but if we also look at bitcoin from a $3k to $4k valuation, then if the 200-week moving average is getting close to 10x that size, and so there is almost like a 10x (or would it be 9x?) cushion?.. and so is that too much value to have into bitcoin as compared to the fiat side? I am not sure, but it still seems that I could completely live off the fiat side of my investment if bitcoin were to go to zero, but there still could be various points in which some additional shaving off of the bitcoin side could be considered as prudent practices to make sure that not too many eggs are in one basket.. even though the fiat side is not really doing that great in terms of holding its value relative to bitcoin and even relative to maintaining purchasing power, so it seems that putting bitcoin value into some of the fiat side is like throwing that value into a bit of a dark hole in which the bitcoin side bails out the fiat side.. just to maintain the fiat side as a kind of functional system.. just in case the bitcoin side might not hold up.. Seems like low odds of such, but it is not non-zero odds.
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