You are largely correct that money that you can afford to lose could be up to 100% of your discretionary income, yet many times people do not think about their discretionary income like that, since an overwhelming majority of people (especially normal people) spend some portion of their discretionary income on things that they want, whether it is going out to a restaurant or perhaps buying name brand sneakers, or having a few drinks at a bar, or buying a bicycle for their niece, so there is some value in present consumption rather than future consumption that might not happen. There are also psychological components, so even if you have a lot of faith in bitcoin, you likely still need to take care of various psychological needs, so if you spent 2 years building up your bitcoin holdings, and maybe you are not really in profits, and then all of a sudden, the BTC price drops, 30% and you are pretty upset, and then it drops another 50% from the 30%, which then causes you to be right around 50% down, and then it drops another 40%, so then at that time, you are a total of 70% down, and you are supposed to be buying more BTC the whole time, and maybe you keep buying BTC, yet at the same time, you are feeling like you are running out of cash. Maybe you were investing around 20% of your income into bitcoin, but then once the BTC price started crashing, you started to put 25% to 30% of your income into bitcoin, so maybe you have invested the equivalent of 60% of your annual income into bitcoin.
You could even become psychologically weak from the whole situation, and some folks might have had been telling you not to invest so much in bitcoin and then now they are telling you "I told you so", and they are even telling your that you could have had 3x more bitcoin if you had not been so aggressive in buying bitcoin "at the top." Maybe it even takes 1, 2 or even 3 years before the BTC price starts to seem like it might have stopped dropping and staying flat... but you are still in the negative with how much you put in as compared with how much your BTC holdings are worth. If you can tolerate all that negative BTC price pressure, then sure maybe you have invested no more than you can afford to lose, but you are going to end up being financially and psychologically challenged if the BTC price moves against you... so you actually need to find some balance in which you are both financially and psychologically comfortable, which is also part of the reason that many people are not going to invest 100% of their discretionary income, and maybe they will find some way to be aggressive without over doing it, but maybe invest around 50% or 60% of their discretionary income into bitcoin.. so then they have the remainder of their discretionary income as a kinds of cushion.
Solid take, Liked ur perspective here, especially the way you broke down the psychological side of investing. The truth is this is something that does not get attention, and it plays a huge role in how we survive the ups and downs.
You misquoted me since you did not quote the proper location from which you took my quote.. which you should have had linked this one.
.....
Second: I am not going into detail about psychology, yet if we are trying to determine the difference between discretionary funds and "the amount that you can afford to lose," then there surely seems to be a bit of subjectivity and psychology involved when any of us are constructing those kinds of limits for ourselves. We likely will get ourselves into big trouble if we become too aggressive in one direction or another, so there frequently seems to be quite a bit of balancing that any of us ends up doing, and many times even folks with a lot of similar objective factors will end up balancing out their actions differently based on subjective considerations and/or comfort levels.
I would say while 100% of a discretionary income might be possibly “money you can afford to lose” it does not mean it is wise, at least not from a psychological side. As human beings, we are naturally emotional. We also have everyday needs and little pleasures that contribute to our mental balance, whether it is spending time out with our friends, buying something small for our loved one, or that feeling of just knowing you have a bit of money for the unexpected. These are not unnecessary expenses, they are what help us stay sane and steady. Haha..
If we get paid every week then sure maybe we can take chances that nothing is going to come up during that time that contributes to our needing to have some extra discretionary income available, and surely the extent to which we have emergency funds (and especially reserve funds available) then we can surely have that extrra money that could end up being used, especially if there are relatively short timelines between pay periods... and yeah, frequently, i had mentioned that the reserve funds tend to have quite a bit of flexibility to be able to absorb various kinds of unexpected expenses, and also we have had discussion of float funds which tend to be the kinds of funds that might not be classified since it is being held because of sometimes difficulties to know all of the basic expenses, yet it seems that once the basic expenses are taken care of, then that extra money that might have had been available would have had automatically converted into discretionary funds and or into reserve funds if had not been spent, but then if there is a desire to use 100% of discretionary funds on bitcoin investing as soon as they become available, then surely there is a bit of priority and purpose there that is not necessarily completely unreasonable since the devil is likely in the details regarding what other funds are available. Is the emergency fund already completely established and if there are also reserve funds available, then we may well be just telling ourself a bit of a fiction by proclaiming that we are investing 100% of our discretionary funds/income into bitcoin as soon as it comes available.
When someone put all their discretionary income into Bitcoin, they will for sure feel confident at first. But if the price drops 30%, then 50%, then 70% like you said, it then gets real very quickly lol.
It seems that no matter what we need to be attempting to prepare ourselves financially and psychologically for BTC price movements in either direction, and surely if we are fairly early in our bitcoin accumulation, then there likely could be quite a bit of focus on merely accumulating through buying no matter what the BTC price, and so that stage of our bitcoin journey could last a whole cycle (of 4 years) or more, and so maybe we might have approached our bitcoin investment in order to not care if the bitcoin price goes up, down or sideways, yet at the same time, there can be a lot of reasons to temper back our investment into bitcoin so that we are using our discretionary funds (income) for reasons other than just solely focusing on bitcoin accumulation.. but hey, in the end, these are personal choices, and surely harder to proclaim any kind of error in our ways, unless we end up accidentally overdoing it, and operating at 100% just seems prone to errors... and surely guys can play around with how much of a cushion that they feel that they need, and/or if they believe that their level of aggressiveness is ultimately working out for them..
I recall that when I started accumulating bitcoin starting in late 2013, I had set a budget up for myself regarding how much I was going to put into bitcoin for the upcoming 26 weeks, so largely I was attempting to stay on that budgeting schedule that I had set, which I had considered to be somewhat aggressive.. but still there was some premeditation, and even a guy who premeditatingly decides to invest 100% of his discretionary income into bitcoin for the next 2 months or 4 months or 6 months, he may well have had thought through his plan, and he might even have some expectation that he is going to review his carrying out of his plan from time to time to try to measure the extent to which it is working out for him or alternatively if he might be feeling some level of unnecessary stress by engaging in that high level aggressive bitcoin accumulation when if he reflects on the matter, he may well come to realize that even a 80% or 90% might still sufficiently serve his bitcoin accumulation purpose while at the same time giving himself a bit of flexibility to potentially enjoy other discretionary kinds of things in life (expenses) that might come up from time to time....and maybe even allow him to feel better to temper his level of aggressiveness, even just a relatively moderate amount.
Of course the guys who have $100 or more of discretionary income every week, are going to have more flexibility in terms of how they can employ their money as compared with guys who might ONLY have $10 or less of discretionary income each week, and so sometimes the guys with lower levels of discretionary income might rightfully come to the conclusion that they need to stay more focused on bitcoin as compared with their peers who might have more discretionary income at their disposal. And, they are not incorrect in coming to those kinds of conclusions about the likely need for them to be more focused and even more organized in their finances and focused in their thinking (psychology), yet there still can be ways to redirect focus and aggressiveness and/or perhaps figuring out ways to increase their discretionary income rather than potentially putting themselves into uncomfortable positions due to their seemingly maniacal focus on bitcoin accumulation that may well be ongoingly bordering upon overdoing it. which causes it to seem more like gambling rather than investing.
And even with the fact that they believe in the long term. And also with those folks and outside noise all piled, it does not matter how the conviction is it will affect our emotion, and if your emotions are unbalanced it would not be good in the long run..
You seem to be correct that sometimes we might believe that we are doing the right thing, and then we take actions that we believe are sufficiently correct in light of the information that we then know, but then later down the road, we come to realize that we over did it, and then we end up getting emotional about something that we could have had avoided (or at least minimized that kind of a later experienced emotional impact).
That is why balance is so important. Maybe it is 50% or 60% of your discretionary income into BTC, or something that works best for you, and the rest set aside to keep life moving. I believe this way, will help not to be emotionally or financially cornered. Can even decision to keep buying if choose to, i think it is best to be in control emotionally and all, that would help in the long run..
In the end, each of us chooses our levels, and surely most of us likely can see potential problematic aspects of aiming to invest (or even investing) 100% of our discretionary income into bitcoin, the exact level still does end up being a personal choice, and people can do whatever they like, even seemingly problematic things, but if they at least recognize the trade offs, then they might still end up coming to some kind of a balance that is similar to what other bitcoin investing aggressive guys are doing, even if they might just be labelling the categories of money differently... which sometimes might help if we are attempting to work with some hypotheticals so we might be able to specifically point out some of the trade offs if a guy might engage in one kind of conduct as compared with another kind of conduct, and even when we get into detailed hypotheticals, we still might not be able to capture various aspects of reality that involve ongoingly changing circumstances and even various kinds of factors that some guys might have to deal with as compared with other guys having different factors that might deal with their family life or their job or their personal health and/or other various kinds of income versus expense matters that they are dealing with. And so surely there are some guys who have relatively straight forwards income versus expenses and other guys who have a lot of complications in their income versus expenses, so guys should be creating their systems to attempt to account for those kinds of matters and for sure a guy who has way more complicated (perhaps erratic?) income versus expenses, then he likely is going to be way better served to keep larger quantities of back up funds on hand as compared with guys who might have fairly straight-forward (perhaps simple and regular?) income and expenses.
we can also put emergency funds together while buying btc with the dca system and of course that way we will have peace of mind because emergency funds have been owned. but it would be better if we prioritize emergency funds first when we are going to accumulate btc, but of course rather than not buying btc at all while collecting emergency funds, of course it is better to collect btc while simultaneously collecting emergency funds. .
It's true that emergency can happen anytime, and it can happen a day after you just start you Bitcoin investment, but that doesn't mean that you must have it before starting, if you can't put your emergency funds in place while simultaneously accumulating Bitcoin just as you have rightfully said, their is no point waiting, just start, along the line you can start fixing that lapses that may come back to hunt your investment on the longer run, so in essence of what am trying to say is that is very good if you can be accumulating Bitcoin and be putting your emergency funds in place at the same time, but if you can't do that simultaneously, then it's best to start accumulating with the little you can afford, in a few weeks time you can start putting your emergency and reserve funds in place for safety purpose.
Setting up a emergency funds is corner stone of smart financial strategy. If they can afford to pay attention to separate funds while they are starting their investment then its good somehow they create an early safety net for their selves towards unforeseen situation.
But if they can't afford it for awhile due to financial capabilities they can still set aside this for awhile and they can pay attention first on starting up their investment. They could pay attention to set up their emergency funds later on. Lots of people doing this and we could see that they are pretty fine with this kind of set up. What's important is we have goals to have emergency funds aside from having lots of Bitcoin since we don't know what's going to happen in future. Its good for people to be prepared on future issues so that they won't do any crazy decision that can affect their investment.
Of course in the early stages of building up both a bitcoin investment and cashflow management systems (that include emergency funds and hopefully later reserve funds too), there are going to be various risks that the bitcoin might be vulnerable because they might be serving also as a kind of emergency fund if there are no other funds available and an emergency actually ends up happening, so however we choose to approach our building of our bitcoin investment and our emergency funds, we are likely striving to strike some kind of a reasonable balance that makes sense to us and the kinds of challenges that any of us might have in regards to our income and/or expenses that constitute the extent to which our discretionary funds might be regular/consistent/large or whatever they might happen to be, and if we are not used to investing, we may well need to learn various ways to invest and to build cashflow management systems that account for our learning how to improve our situation by building now for the future, and realizing that at the same time, we are not guaranteed to put ourself into a better place, even if we are trying to accomplish our investing into bitcoin and our building up and maintaining our cashflow management systems to the best of our abilities.
I agree with you on the fact that aggressive investing is not harmful for everyone, and you also Said about making sure that we have backup funds, and reserve funds available. And yes, is very important to make this above mentioned funds available before one should be looking into aggressive buying of bitcoin, one more thing that need to be added is that we should not be over aggressive because excessive doing of everything is not good, so while investing aggressively we should do it within our boundaries and not to think of crossing boundaries.
In terms of investing in Bitcoin, everyone can do it more casually because
everyone already knows their own abilities so that the things they need to limit can be set by themselves in order to keep themselves enthusiastic and not forced to invest. Because the goal of everyone who invests in Bitcoin is also quite clear, namely to be able to make themselves more financially independent in the future. So the arrangement of funds and methods that they need will definitely be sought and also carried out carefully because when we have invested carefully in the right place, I think the results will definitely be there and also more satisfying because we do it carefully without any sense of being forced.
I doubt that people know everything, even about themselves, when they start to invest into bitcoin, and sure there are some folks with more investing experience and more cashflow management systems than others, but I would not presume that everyone is "in-touch" with their own circumstances, even though they are in the best position to know their own circumstances as compared with the extent to which someone else would know their circumstances.
I would consider it safer to presume that bitcoin investing and/or cashflow management is a learning process in which guys likely will learn more about themselves along the way, and the ones who are open to learning rather than thinking that they know everything are likely going to be better off than the ones who think that they already know everything that they need to know.
I will grant that many times people (normies) will have the ability to know or to learn various skills to both invest into bitcoin and to build up their cashflow management systems, but they also likely need to figure out their abilities and what they need to learn and how to make tweaks to what they know or don't know along the way.
Once we are able developed a strategic plan for our investment in Bitcoin, things wouldn't fall apart for us as we continue to hold, but many ran into unforseen situations because of their negligence to adequate and effective planning ahead their investments, also, it's important in putting this in place for those who are just getting into the system as newbies, they may have to learn on putting things in order for themselves.
Dunamisx you are right, if you are investing in Bitcoin and you don't have a particular strategy that you are using that is comfortable for you it is a problem, however when you come across a strategy that you are using and you are comfortable with it, things will fall in place for you and you will succeed.
Planning yourself when you are investing in Bitcoin is very important, if you don't have a good plan in place you will fail in your Bitcoin investment journey, Bitcoin investment is a long term investment and in other to keep your investment going for that long term you need to make good plans and then execute it.
Some plans that an investor needs to put in place and then execute are.
1.
Having a backup funds: have a backup funds is very important as an investor because it will help you during emergency period, instead of you to dip hands into your Bitcoin investment, you dip hands into your backup funds and settle any financial issues there by leaving your investment untouched and running.
2.
Develop a good management skill: as an investor you need to develop a good management skill, you don't have to be spending money on unnecessary things anymore, because if you keep spending money anyhow you will discover you won't have enough discretionary income to accumulate Bitcoin.
These are not needed to get started investing in bitcoin. Sure we build our various skills, including cashflow management skills, but we don't need to have all of our exact plans in advance, especially when it comes to bitcoin, one of the most important things is to likely get started as soon as possible and work out the details as you go.. The main thing you need to get started is to figure out if you have an extra $10 or not.. if you have an extra $10, you can get started.
I agree with you on the fact that aggressive investing is not harmful for everyone, and you also Said about making sure that we have backup funds, and reserve funds available. And yes, is very important to make this above mentioned funds available before one should be looking into aggressive buying of bitcoin, one more thing that need to be added is that we should not be over aggressive because excessive doing of everything is not good, so while investing aggressively we should do it within our boundaries and not to think of crossing boundaries.
It's normal to be aggressive as long as it's within your discretionary income, then I totally encourage anyone that is far behind from his own perception of accumulation hence be aggressive investing in bitcoin as long as you have the capital.
To buttress, we have four major types of expenses that runs our life, one is the disposable income; basically income after tax has been deducted. Secondly, is our essentials expenses; this is where our mortgage (rent), food, transportation, clothings etc are included. Thirdly, we have the Emergency, Reserve or any kind of funds that are meant to keep us going in a long run. And lastly, we have discretionary income Which comes after you must have separated out every of the categories of funds hence whatever you decide to do with the discretionary is basically not supposed to harm you that, some use it for pleasure even though investment is included in the discretionary income hence one can decide to use 100% of their discretionary income to be aggressive in investing in bitcoin, with that I full encourage being aggressive since it basically not going to harm you but be of benefit in the nearest future.
I find your description to be confusing.
I think that expenses are basic expenses and discretionary expenses.
Of course if we have income, then we likely would take care of our basic expenses first, and so then whatever is left is discretionary income.
So then with our discretionary income we can consume or invest (savings might be considered as a kind of investment - even though maybe our back up funds would fit in such category and so any amounts we are keeping in cash might not earn any yield or interest).
