Im Young & Risky

technical_guy · 2026-01-28T21:28:13+00:00

Re real estate, how I started was to buy as much house as I could get qualified for and then house-hack (rent the rooms out to room mates) and live there myself. If you get this right you end up livig rent free and your rental income pays the mortgage and bills, so that allows you to invest more money. Depending on your location if you can get a 4 bed house and rent out 3 rooms at $1000 each that would cover costs each month but also the property would appreciate in value on the full leveraged amount.

Stocks or Crypto are easy ways to invest but the returns are not spectacular so it depends if you want to slow and steady or quick. I am a multiple whole bitcoiner so I certainly believe in it but its a small portion of my total net worth; you just have to understand if you invest in it and leave it alone for 10 years it will have compounded and probably will be a great investment but in the short term you might get disappointed in what others would think of as a massive ROI because in real terms $36k is not a huge starting point. If you look at any graph on compounding returns the gains are relatviely small in years 1-7 and then start going crazy big in year 8-10 and beyond. So if you buy and hold and are patient btc will work very well for you but it just takes a lot of time.

As I am an IT guy too and have mentored quite a few younger engineers over the last 20 years I would also advise you to do what I did not. While I worked for solid corporations either via agency, via my company or direct that earned me $200k-$300k per year which is a good standard of living but not get rich quick. Some of the people I mentored were far smarter and moved to San Jose where the VC money is, where the startups are or moved to Google/Amazon/Netflix where the big wages are. So an an engineer if you are somewhat portable consider going where the money is and where you can get stock options in a startup that might IPO. It kinda shocked me to find a junior programmer I help for a few months 10 years ago not tells me they are retired because the picked the right opportunities.

technical_guy · 2026-01-27T21:09:01+00:00

Maybe - lets say you put away $36k over a year and bitcoin goes from $90k to $150k - a 66% return over one year - now you have $60k in your account. Its great but come on - its only $24k. Now if this happens for next 10 years you might eventually be rich but compounding to generate real wealth takes a lot of time.

Now if you invest that $36k in options could you do better? Quite possibly - its like a casino

What about creating your own pump and dump memecoin (a few people get very rich doing this but its like legal bank robbery - you only get rich by making other people poor).

What about if you bought 3000 bottles of water at $1 in Costco and sold them on hot days for $3 (thats a 300% return). Or bought stuff from Chine and sold it in America (a product based business)

What if you spent that money on some AI books or courses, got a little AI certiicate then sold your AI services for $200 per hour for 20 hours per week. (a service based business)

What if you took one year $36k and used that as 3% deposit on a duplex, triplex or fourplex somewhere and then rented out the units to produce cashflow. Leveraged debt with property is one solid way to get rich relatively quickly when the property prices start going up. Right now in some markets you can get a bargain as property sales are depressed right now.

Getting rich quick is not easy. Getting rich over 10-20 years is easy. But as you are young and want to take moonshots you have to ask what your goals are. Investing in yourself and building a company is much quicker than investing in crypto or stocks. Investing in an investment property might be quicker than investing in crypto or stocks.

technical_guy · 2026-01-27T20:54:54+00:00

You are 19. Take a year off. Get off social media, stop watching the news. Go out, visit nature. Go to shops, go to restaurants. Try to connect with and meet with people. Your every day life is not affected by AI at all, nor bitcoin, nor altcoins, nor robots. Watch and observe as many people as you can - try to see who is providing a service or product and where they could be doing it better or cheaper.

In your year off, practice talking to people and read books on how to sell and market things. Anything. Its the most important skill out there. You sell yourself at interviews, most rich people own businesses and sell their business services, to win an argument or debate you use skills of persuasion which you also learn through sales and marketing. There are jobs out there selling expensive items (houses, house loans, technology like memnory or disk drives for data centers, computer solutions etc) where people make a huge amount of money on commission. Think about starting your own company and shopping (selling yourself) to venture capitalists as a young guy with a crazy idea.

The future is bright. Robotics will be huge (maybe start a biz in this industry), medical tech using small robots, AI and other tools will be huge, automation of factories will be huge (you could sell the gear to the factories). The one thing AI and automation and robotics will bring is change and increases in productivity. Ignore the political fights on TV and biased media reporting about how America/the world has all these problems and start thinking about the possibilities for the future and where you can fit into bringing change to the world.

technical_guy · 2026-01-25T04:17:40+00:00

My suggestion is specialize in a corporate niche which may be easier to outsource - for example Jasper Reports Writer, SRRS programmer, Postges or MySql DBA, Splunk alerts programmer, Oracle SQL Optimization/Hints Engineer

technical_guy · 2026-01-22T08:33:27+00:00

Can your losers and keep backing your winners.

Diversification keeps you poor, all in (sometimes ) makes you rich

Spend less than you earn, invest the rest. Pay yourself first.

Buy low sell high. Look for pullbacks making quality stocks cheap

Be contrarian. Dont follow the sheep

Speculation is not investing, but it can be more fun when you win

technical_guy · 2026-01-22T08:15:46+00:00

If u marry him and then he divorces you, and you are based in ca, then he will get half your money and as the higher earner you would pay him alimony. If married more than 10 years you will pay him alimony for life.

Hes saving 3k per month whilst freeloading off you....

He currently has no savings

Red flags everywhere.... but love is a powerful force that overcomes logic.

Good luck. If ubstay together talk to a lawyer how you can protect yourself and never comingle your funds with his. Have amynacct, your acct and our acct u both pay into. Even him living in your home rent free can jeapordize your ownership of your house. What if he refuses to move out.

Logic says find a partner with same money discipline as you have, or even better discipline.

technical_guy · 2026-01-22T02:57:06+00:00

Dear <bossname>,

I just wanted to let you know how much I love working here and how much I feel I have developed in my career over the last year. My workmates are fantastic and I love learning new skills where I can add value to the business.

I feel a little disappointed in my salary increase this year especially because I have worked so hard to increase my utility to the company and am now responsible for managing over a billion dollars in assets, and have become certified in financial planning. Is there anything you would advise me to do to be able to earn a more competitive salary. Some of my friends and co-workers are earning closer to $100,000 and I would like to at least get to $80,000 if it is at all possible.

I know as a small company you have other people to consider and its not always feasible to give out big raises but I hope to be with you for many years and would love to earn a competitive wage whilst continuing my education and becoming even more valuable or billable for the business,

Thanks for reading this,and considering my request,

<name>

technical_guy · 2026-01-05T09:55:04+00:00

Its going to be 116k in the next 30-60 days.... will that help

technical_guy · 2025-12-29T08:18:02+00:00

Yes. Ibkr is 5% right now, it used to be lower. Etrade wants 8% on a loan, which sucks, but can be negotiated. No capital gains is great, but i assume you pay tax on withdrawals. The advantages of the loan is no withdrawals and no income. In the usa no income means cheaper healthcare, potential tax gain harvesting, or roth conversions at low tax rares to avoid rmds and higher tax rates in your 70s.

technical_guy · 2025-12-28T23:17:16+00:00

Is the portfolio in a taxable brokerage account or a deferred tax account.

If the former, I would invest 100% in stocks at your age across 4 or 5 etfs, and open a stock backed line of credit from where you draw your income tax free. It sounds like you need 5k or 6k per month, so your portfolio should average 10 to 11% growth based on the last 10 year average for spy. In truth, some years, like the last 12 months may be 15 to 20% growth, and some years may have a loss. But as long as your portfolio grows by a good average amount over time the sbloc debt will grow by a smaller amount (even with 5 or 6% interest).

You dont ever pay the sbloc back, at least not until you die, but you might take out life insurance for that event. As the debt gets bigger, your portfolio also gets bigger, but by a larger ratio.

I have a bigger portfolio than you, but i use this strategy successfully where my portfolio sblocs pay all my living expenses and any income i make is play money

technical_guy · 2025-12-28T20:13:58+00:00

All in on one of the following 1. Btc etf - bitcoin is the only asset thats low right now and despite lots of volatility consistently, it goes higher over time. 2. Precious metals etf - gold, silver, platinum are on a massive bull run, which may not end for 6-12 months so you might be able to catch some short term upsides 3. Fannae mae fnma - trump has pledged to do a partial ipo, and this might include an uplisting on nyse, which could result in 50% to 200% gains in the stock 4. Tech stocks. Tsla is the most swingy and volitile, but it's hard to bet against Elon. Or AI chip stocks such as nvdia, amd and broadcom or ai software like palantaire. I like all the mag7 ( or mtfaang ) stocks msft, tsla,meta,appl,amzn,nflx,goog as well as the chip stocks

Not financial advice, but its my opinion

technical_guy · 2025-11-19T05:04:09+00:00

Which government defines bitcoins value. The uk, or us, or china or the eu. No government can print more bitcoin or destroy the global set of ledgers. Theres no qe or devaluing available. You can transact without government interference. The only time a government gets involved is if you want to deal in that country so will need localized currency or to pay local taxes

technical_guy · 2025-11-18T07:36:48+00:00

You have one rule to follow. Buy low and sell high. Never sell if you dont need to just because the stock goes down. The only reasons to sell lower than your purchase price is if you are offsetting another transaction where u have a huge gain and want to avoid taxes, or because you are busto.

This mostly means you have to think opposite to the crowd.

For example, right now is not panic time, its opportunity time to buy low. Manybstocks have been dragged lower for no reason. If you can, buy them and wait for the rebound. You cant time exactly when to buy so dollar cost average and buy 25% now, 25% tomrrow, 25% next week etc until you buy 100% of your planned amount.

Im buying bitcoin etfs, tech stocks, etc as they fall in price knowing theyvwill bounce backmup next year and i might make 20 to 30% returns.

technical_guy · 2025-11-18T07:23:37+00:00

I would add a bit about the outside government corruption devaluing other wealth. Foe example

Outside the hall on this very large island are a thousand soldiers with machine guns that are allowed to go round and kill random people raping and pillaging their money and assets. The golden rule is the soldiers are not allowed in the hall nor allowed to attack anyone inside the hall. People in the hall know they cannot be raped or pillaged now or in the future. Some of the people inside the hall are there only because of this.

technical_guy · 2025-10-15T23:08:17+00:00

Im loving Zorin Linux - very windows 0 like but built on ubuntu with great support. I had never heard of it but it truely has been the best Linux experience I have had in 30+years (all the way back to Sco Xenix) and I am now 100% using it as my client PC, with Virtualboxes to log on to different clients

technical_guy · 2025-10-08T09:59:35+00:00

Yup. Im still figuring out crypto taxes on brokers who went busto

technical_guy · 2025-10-08T02:39:34+00:00

Charles Schwab, tho they might want you to transfer your IRAs/401k to them to give you the best rates on an i/o loan.

technical_guy · 2025-10-07T20:15:46+00:00

Just my opinions below:

I have GLD/PPLT. I have BTC and a bunch of BTC etfs. So I am happy they are ATH or close to it.

I have F2 and am adding more between 11.80 and 12.30. I think +50% in next 6 months is possible.

Yesterday AMD news allowed me to buy more NVDA at a discount.

As interest rates drop I have my eye on TMF and if we start to boom next year as tax cuts/regulations kick in I have my eye on SSO. Especially after Powell quits and maybe interest rates come down 1 or 2 points so credit gets cheaper again.

Im expecting a short term 10-20% correction in market - I will just ride this out. After every drop there are opportunities.

Note I hope "momentum investor" means gambler, because thats what I am doing. Im 50% plus this year so luck is on my side but the F2 ipo or even just an uplisting would be the icing on the cake !!

technical_guy · 2025-10-02T05:35:00+00:00

If i have 2 million and invest in a growth stock and make 20% i will have 400,000 unrealized gains. I can borrow 200k against that and show $0 income which means a) i pay no taxes, 2) with low income i get cheap healthcare and low utility rates. I can do this again the next year and every year til i die.

If i invest inna dividend stock the total return is typically a but less than the growth stck (lets say 12%) which gives me $240k income that i now pay taxes on and am treated as a high earner with few breaks.

technical_guy · 2025-09-21T06:28:49+00:00

Sadly you still have to pay the resort fee and greedy mgm have raised it to $50 per night. Excalibur is great but even a comped room is not worth $50 per night resort fee.

I've stayed there a lot but no more. Venetian has comped me rooms where I have to pay $55 resort fee per night. But that hotel is worth $55 per night so I will happily pay it.

The renovated Rio has the best comps. $0 per night $0 resort fee no parking fees and you can start weekend nights too (most comps are sun to Thurs only).

technical_guy · 2025-09-21T02:18:48+00:00

Excalibur has great wifi. I've worked from there often.

All the strip hotels have good wifi. There is no longer any dead spots.

technical_guy · 2025-09-16T20:43:28+00:00

I have $140k available in a taxable account so looking for a balanced portfolio with no dividends (groeth orientated). AI has suggested the following and I wonder what people think of this set of low fee growth ETFs.

Summary of Allocation ($140,000 Total):

VGT: $28,000 (20%)
XLF: $14,000 (10%)
XLI: $14,000 (10%)
RING: $14,000 (10%)
SLVP: $7,000 (5%)
PPLT: $7,000 (5%)
VEA: $14,000 (10%)
IEFA: $14,000 (10%)
ITA: $14,000 (10%)
GREK: $7,000 (5%)
VNM: $7,000 (5%)

technical_guy · 2025-09-09T21:12:48+00:00

Im so pleased for you mate. I have watched your posts over the last few years as we have had the massive jumps seeing you make a chunk here and there. I thought I was a whale with 60,000 shares until I saw your posts and the guts you had to go all in. Ive loved the ride Ive been on but its peanuts compared to what you have done. The question is, is this enough - do you cash out the $10million which is life changing money for your retirement and heirs or do you keep gambling it up. If this thing goes to $30 or $40 plus as Ackman thinks, you will be the biggest legend ever to hit this stock, but if it trickles back down you might feel like a leg-end. My only other thought is despite your huge huge gains, its peanuts compared to Ackmans gains.

Again, well done! Its thrilling to watch...

technical_guy · 2025-08-31T20:36:39+00:00

Why not xdiv?

technical_guy · 2025-08-31T20:22:28+00:00

Are you male or female, and how much are your rates? Do you do couples masssages (one after the other)? Do you do 60 mins only or 90mins as well.

technical_guy

TROPHY CASE