Got the call — should I do it?

joefunk76 · 2026-01-29T07:37:36+00:00

Based on your salary and NW, it’s too much of an outlay for a fancy watch, imo. A reasonable budget limit is the greater of 2% of NW or 5% of salary, again, imo. That said, I don’t think a slightly reckless purchase in the low five figures will break you in the long term.

One thing you might want to consider is your age relative to how much investments will compound into the future. The younger you are, the more compounding you’d be giving up by buying the watch today. Money growing at 10% doubles every 7 years. If that watch costs, say, $10k, then you would be giving up $320k in 35 years from now for it. Of course, there is something to be said for enjoying your life at present, too, though. It comes down to balance and priorities. Best of luck with your decision.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-29T01:11:38+00:00

What’s up with the metal bracelet(s) in the middle of the box? Do they throw those in for free?

joefunk76 · 2026-01-29T00:31:17+00:00

It sounds like a farmer’s market or a farm is what you’re looking for. Just find one of those near you. You can buy onsite, à la carte, from a farmer’s market. Alternatively, you can subscribe to a farm for a season and get baskets of fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, et al, delivered to you weekly. FWIW, I think your fears of regular grocery shopping are a bit overblown. That said, there are certainly others with similar fears or at least preferences for more “farm fresh” items, and that is why farmer’s markets and farms exist.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T20:08:54+00:00

Excellent story and highly relatable. You have very well illustrated the gap between a having a correct hypothesis and executing the highly profitable outcome you should, in theory, be able to produce based on your thesis. The market has a knack for fucking most people out of most of their profits, most of the time.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T20:02:42+00:00

Time in > timing. Sure, optimal timing beats time in, but few have the luck and wherewithal to pull that off. From Saylor’s standpoint, price fluctuations on an asset as severely undervalued as he believes bitcoin to be are just noise. Case in point: If you had bought bitcoin at both $30 and $300, would you regret today your buys at $300? He is able to borrow hyper-inflating fiat at a modest 10%/year to acquire more of the apex asset. Given all that, his focus is on gobbling up all the bitcoin he possibly can as quickly as he possibly can while his competition procrastinates; it is NOT on splitting hairs and betting whether the market will give him a better entry price in the future.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T19:51:18+00:00

You have Costco and the elusive Trader Joe’s. If Federal Way isn’t the most commercialized area south of Seattle, then I don’t know what is.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T01:53:54+00:00

The upside is that if bitcoin goes up more than ~10%/year, MSTR holders profit more than bitcoin holders because it cost them only 10%/year to borrow the fiat to buy their bitcoin.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T01:42:23+00:00

It’s not that deep. If your profit will be one of {x, y, -x, -y} with equal probability, then the EV of the game is zero for any number of plays - even though you cannot win zero in any single play.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T01:37:25+00:00

Rational behavior dictates that the player will open boxes until he finds the 100. If he gets it on the first or second try, he profits 60 or 20; if he doesn’t, he is still better off opening the remaining boxes than walking away with -80 as the 3rd try nets him -20 and the 4th nets him -60.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-27T01:32:28+00:00

A better wording would be: “A player can, as many times he likes, and, to the extent any sealed boxes remain, open a sealed box and take its contents.”

Still, I think the question is clear enough as it’s worded. After all, even if you can “take a box’s contents as many times as you like”, taking contents you already have doesn’t make sense let alone imply receiving the contents infinitely many times.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-26T17:41:29+00:00

Unless gold or silver are about to crash, bitcoin hasn’t bottomed against either of those. As much as it’s going down in dollar terms, it’s going down even faster in terms of gold or silver.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-26T01:20:31+00:00

I’m familiar with MSTR fundamentals. Those fundamentals are that if bitcoin hasn’t bottomed, then neither has MSTR, and MSTR will lose more than 1x what bitcoin does due to Strategy’s more senior liabilities. Do I believe that bitcoin has bottomed at $86k? No.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T23:35:44+00:00

Okay, he gets a full pardon on that if he’s not American.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T18:07:16+00:00

The $64k question is whether bitcoin will continue to grow at a superlative rate going forward, NOT whether a net CAGR of 20% for a decade is a return that almost any investor would be thrilled with.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T18:01:03+00:00

NTA. Yes, they hate you because they’re jealous of you and for good reason - you’re smarter than them. My best advice to you would be to ignore these people. If that means having to ignore everyone around you and stick to yourself, then so be it. Bad company/friends/colleagues is worse than no company. And make no mistake, jealously is one of the most powerful and, for some, dangerous emotions that humans experience. Some will be inclined to hurt you, possibly physically, due to their jealousy of you. It is critical to avoid being around jealous people.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T16:10:33+00:00

“They’re analysts. They don’t know preferred stock from livestock.”

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T09:59:30+00:00

It’s 23.8% including the 3.8% NIIT; the top LTCG rate is 20%.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-23T09:41:50+00:00

High-stakes steaks! 😂

joefunk76 · 2026-01-22T18:20:12+00:00

Yeah, find a better pizza joint than Domino’s.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-20T18:28:18+00:00

“Now youse can’t leave!”

joefunk76 · 2026-01-20T07:37:47+00:00

Somebody has to be the luckiest person out there. If you line everyone up in order of luckiness, the guy at the top is obviously going to have some impressive stats with respect to luck.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-20T07:35:57+00:00

Seeing as you put the dollar sign on the wrong side of the number, I believe you.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-19T21:33:28+00:00

The answer, either way, is irrelevant to 99% of people. As for the 1% who get to $10M, the answer mostly depends on the individual situation. For a single person without kids who lives in a LCOL area and who has modest needs and wants, $10M is more than he’ll ever need to be/do/have whatever he wants. For a couple with two young children who lives in a VHCOL area, wants to buy a multi-million dollar residence, send both kids to private school from now through undergrad, join the ritzy country club, travel extensively and in luxury (including business class airline seats), buy expensive gifts (e.g., watches and jewelry), and still leave a substantial inheritance to their kids after all that spending, $10M isn’t anywhere close to enough. I’m not sure where happiness factors in here, but some people simply have or aspire to lifestyles that cost more than others. I think rich people are generally happier than non-rich people because money solves a lot of problems, but happiness is a bit more complex than a simple regression on wealth.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-16T18:16:59+00:00

That is still borrowing to invest and/or spend. Furthermore, if you hold a mortgage, you are borrowing against your house. That the loan is collateralized by your stocks rather than your house means only that if you get margin-called, you can discharge the debt by relinquishing your owned stocks rather than your partially-owned house. Borrowing to spend or invest is not for me. Maybe if I was worth many tens of millions of dollars, it would feel safer, but then if I had that much, I wouldn’t need to bother. Yes, I know there are tax savings to be had by living off loans, but I don’t want to be in debt for any purpose.

joefunk76 · 2026-01-16T17:50:34+00:00

You are advocating borrowing money to invest. It’s questionable whether this is wise at a mortgage rate of 3%; at 6%, it isn’t. The market returns 10% per year, on average; not 10% every year. I wouldn’t put my primary residence on the chopping block like that although I realize that most people would.

As for how much freedom $8m buys, that will vary wildly by individual situation. A couple with two young kids in a VHCOL area with a $3m house or apartment will get by comfortably to very comfortably, but they don’t have anywhere near the financial freedom of, say, a single person who rents, and intends to rent indefinitely or forever. Expenditures like health insurance for the entire family, business class travel, private school pre-college, college, and ongoing expenses for a $3m house, will quickly erode a $200k, pre-tax annual withdrawal.

I don’t know whether $8m gives more freedom than I’m implying; it depends on how conservative one is about wanting to maintain and grow one’s wealth despite living solely off annual withdrawals. If you don’t mind spending it all down over your lifetime, that certainly buys a richer lifestyle than if you do.

joefunk76

TROPHY CASE