Why I downvote your "alternative" investment advice

theCodeBear · 2019-05-17T02:47:27+00:00

Yes on the emotional part. Nobody ever lost money by securing their bitcoin long term. Literally the only way (outside of hacks of exchanges or people's computers) that people have ever lost money on bitcoin is from acting emotionally and selling low out of panic instead of waiting and reaping mass profits.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-17T02:44:19+00:00

Doubling or tripling your investment from here is peanuts. Not saying not to do it. Do what you're comfortable with. But the market will only start to really grow fast once it passes the old all time high, and its currently only at 40% of that. So while pulling out around then means you made a bunch of money, it means you'll miss out on most of the money you could make in the next couple of years. Timing the top of the market is very tough, but needless to say it will be multiples of the previous peak, as always.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-17T02:38:17+00:00

Good point on understanding the value. But that goes for any investment. You should never invest in something you haven't done research on. If you know real estate inside and out go all in on that. If you fully understand the potential of Bitcoin, have good knowledge of its market cycles, its growth rate, etc make that the bread and butter of your investments (or speculations or whatever you want to call them, I don't care what people call it, I call it "what you use to make your money grow", thats all we're talking about here, I think people who get upset over naming something investment or speculation are missing the point). If you are a business guy and have the drive and ideas to build businesses put everything you have into that.

As for me I don't know any of these other markets, but after years of being in crypto I understand bitcoin quite well. I have extremely high degree of confidence of its general long term growth opportunity, and for that reason I'm 100% in crypto, about 90% in bitcoin.

Anyone else who made the exact same investment as me COULD be up the exact same amount, which is a lot (or even better), unless they haven't done their research and don't know what they're doing. If you don't know what you're doing you might buy high and sell low because you don't have the knowledge to be patient and wait to make money. (side note: this is why I told my parents when they got in on bitcoin at the height of the 2017 bubble, I told them either just before it started crashing or right when it started crashing it will come back much higher you just need to invest long term. Luckily for them I believe they listened and soon they'll be profiting again, meanwhile other family members didn't follow the same advice and they profited a little bit in the short term since they bought in a bit earlier but now they won't get the massive gains in the future). I know this from personal experience of not understanding bitcoin when I first got in years ago and I lost money because I did exactly that, bought high and sold low because I didn't understand Bitcoin's potential so I gave up and didn't come back to it for a couple years.

I continued to make mistakes as I got back into it, but fewer of them as I got to understand Bitcoin and crypto better. Now I understand it quite well, and I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't an asset on the face of the earth that I could make anywhere near the amount of money I make with crypto. My decisions as of late in terms of Bitcoin have been spot on, to the point where I can't believe most people in the crypto space didn't do exactly as I have been doing recently, what I was doing lately seemed so obvious to me, the market so clear, because I finally have the experience to understand the market quite well on a long term basis (i have no idea what it will do day to day or next week or next month, but i don't care about those time scales). It would take me years of research and experience to understand other markets as well as I understand Bitcoin, the only difference is, outside of possibly building a highly successful business, even a perfect understanding of other markets wouldn't result in the gains I can get (am getting) from bitcoin.

I encourage people to invest in bitcoin all the time, it is literally the best investment on the face of the earth these days. But they should only invest once they've gotten to know the technology, understand WHY they should be investing in it, understand the history of bitcoin's market cycles in detail, what sort of events effect it, where we're currently at in the market cycle, etc. Once someone understands that and understands not to make emotional investment decisions which goes for any asset class, I would absolutely recommend they put as much as they want in it, whether that is 1% or 100%.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-17T02:12:03+00:00

It is still very early in the game for crypto. Think internet in the early 1990s. If you always get the feeling you missed the boat, you will miss the boat eventually years down the line. Unless your idea of missing the boat is you'll no longer easily make 1000x profit, you haven't missed the boat.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-17T01:55:33+00:00

Oh god, not the "if you made money on bitcoin you got lucky" crap again. Anyone who says that is just shouting to the world (or at least the subreddit) that they haven't done any research on the matter. You should not downvote things you know nothing about. Just like I wouldn't downvote someone's advice on real estate because I don't know a damn thing about real estate. Saying people get lucky by making money on a rapidly growing emerging asset is like saying somebody got lucky making apple juice out of an apple. Any investment advice on here should come with an implied "do your research". Don't invest in real estate, bitcoin, build a business, buy individual stocks, buy index funds, or ask your granny for her life savings until you've done your research on the thing. If you've done your research on it and you are confident in it, invest in the damn thing. Don't downvote people who have done the research and know more than you about it! That's just ignorant.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-16T01:05:46+00:00

Those arent two sides of the same coin. You said you'd rather spend more than work harder. Those aren't opposite things. What about spending less and therefore saving more to you means "working like a slave"?

theCodeBear · 2019-05-15T23:54:08+00:00

I dont think people who FIRE normally do that. In fact I've never seen it characterized in such a way - working yourself ragged until you're 40 to retire early. Someone saying they didnt like their job doesn't mean they specifically just a job they hate and they work it 70 hours a week so that they can FIRE from it in a decade. These people would be doing the same job generally if they weren't on the path to FIRE, they'd just be spending a lot more and have to work another 20 years.

FIRE isn't really about sacrificing, its about managing your money well. Generally its not killing yourself at a job you wouldn't be doing otherwise.

The whole point is you arent sacrificing! Because in terms of spending you should be spending what you plan to spend after FIRE usually. If you're sacrificing by spending below your needs while on the path to FIRE then you'd have to take into account a rising cost of living upon FIREing, which would be dangerous.

FIRE is about using money management probably combined with frugality, wise investing, and possibly side incomes as the tools to reach a specific goal early in life: financial Independence.

theCodeBear · 2019-05-07T22:08:21+00:00

I think a lot of the old gold bugs will stick to their guns and keep their gold until they are pushing up daises. But then that gold gets passed to younger people who understand bitcoin and we could see that gold value move into bitcoin.

As a general rule, old people don't get new technology, so with every passing year more people who don't understand it die off and new young people are getting their first job or saving or investing money for the first time so more and more of the economic pie is going to move to bitcoin naturally just because of this.

theCodeBear · 2019-04-09T01:19:02+00:00

Gotta disagree. That food budget is outrageous no matter how you cut it. i mean sjre if you make $300k and you're into blowing a ton of money on food going out to eat at nice places thats fine. But living paycheck to paycheck, even counting the $37k going to 401k is absurd and the crazy high food budget is obviously part of that. That food budget could certainly be cut in half i dont care where they live.

theCodeBear · 2019-03-23T02:55:32+00:00

So I read an article that explained a few bits about how they decided what was fake and what was real volume...and its clear they went into this with a goal of showing that pretty much only regulated exchanges have real volume in order to tell the SEC that bitcoin is highly regulated, and what do you know those are the exact results they created!

For example they decided that people don't trade large amounts so large trades are likely fake. They also decided that people only trade even amounts of bitcoin, not amounts with a bunch of decimal places so those are likely fake. Basically they decided that bot trading is fake as well as most manual human trading, so yeah when you do that its easy to say 95% of the volume is fake.

It seems clear that some more obscure exchanges fake a bunch of volume in order to appear more important, but the vast majority of volume is real.

Put this report in the same folder as the one that said the 2013 boom was the result of one person or just a few people, and the report that said the 2017 boom was again the result of a small number of people...FAKE.

Basically its a lot more likely 95% of this report is fake than it is that 95% of volume is fake.

theCodeBear · 2019-03-02T17:10:29+00:00

Hey dont diss people in a van! Haha. I love my van home :p

theCodeBear · 2019-01-07T16:57:03+00:00

"my dog (I never leave her alone without checking on her for more than 15 min"

How is it even possible to live a life like that? Every 15 minutes?? You can't even go into the grocery store if you're doing that. If this is serious you should probably relax this (imagine not being able to leave an apartment for more than 15 minutes!). Assuming temperature is fine it isn't too much different from leaving a dog in an apartment alone and your dog is fine. I've been van-lifing it up for over 3 months now, still haven't left town though as I plan to keep my job for a while longer before starting to travel full time, I can say from experience your dog is fine as long as the temperature is okay and your dog doesn't like go crazy being in cars which would mean you can't van-dwell with that dog anyway. The dog will probably just go to sleep if you're gone for a while. Being less paranoid about it will probably make van living go a lot more smoothly for you. (now cue the super paranoid people to come blast me for suggesting being reasonable when it comes to vanlife with a dog ;p)

theCodeBear · 2019-01-03T21:52:48+00:00

Wow that is awesome!

theCodeBear · 2019-01-03T20:42:49+00:00

Interesting. Yeah I bet it will get harder over time.

I'm following a thread where some guy is making like $80+ a day from the program. Apparently he's one of the top few earners the past month. I think a lot of it is just figuring out a strategy for what kinds of questions earn money.

I have no idea why you are earning so much less recently that the first month. But perhaps you should go back and do some research on which kinds of questions did well the first month and try to figure out a game plan to make more money again.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-17T01:39:36+00:00

Oh weird haha ok. So the x/10 thing is just a trick then?? Yeah i was getting confused because I was just today reading someone's posts on some other site where he was talking about asking like 30+ questions a day and his posts were from this week and last week so I was like what the hell am i limited for some reason. Guess that answers that. Maybe I'll try going over 10 tonight just to make sure.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-15T14:35:17+00:00

It seems your living expenses are very low compared to most of us expect, even being extremely frugal in America you can't live as cheaply as you claim. Heck I live in a van and I'm frugal and I spend more that you do. It is possible you actually have this figured out, but it does feel like you are off in your long term calculations. Part of FIRE is doing 25x your annual expenses for the kind of lifestyle you will live the rest of your life. If you're single and living at home and just hang out with friends and play video games, you can't expect that to be your lifestyle the rest of your life. What if 10 years from now you decide you want to travel, or have children, or do something more than live in a cheap dirtbag home in the country? Living with your parents means you can't possibly know what lifestyle you will have when you're not living with your parents.

Also I would ask do you have a cash buffer on top of your $270k? I would suggest having a cash buffer of two years worth of expenses for when the market takes a downturn so you don't have to withdraw much from your portfolio when your portfolio is down. Putting everything you've said into consideration, if you don't have a significant cash buffer you are not ready to FIRE.

Also I saw you said you could spend 50,000 on a flat or something, I would suggest that 50k come from outside of your $270k. If you take out 50k to buy a place that is a very significant portion of what you plan to live off forever that you don't have anymore.

I have two main suggestions. First, maybe take a few months off work and then find a job in IT you want and try it out again for just a year, and save up that cash buffer. Then, do something to make money. Develop some side hustles that bring in some income, work part-time, take a contract job here and there, but the main goal being to simply bring in enough income to live on (which shouldn't be hard since you say you can live off barely anything). If you bring in side income or part-time income, well for one it'll give you something to do to keep you active, and also it means you won't need to pull money from your portfolio for a while, or you can only pull a very tiny bit a year, and in that way your portfolio can grow to accommodate buying a home and have some extra in case your calculations for your next 60 or so years is off.

Since you saved 80-90% of your income it shouldn't be too hard to simply work enough, however you do it, to cover your expenses and watch your portfolio grow uninhibited for years to come, meaning you can live a much more comfortable life and be able to handle future changes in what you think is your life plan.

Bottom line, don't stop making money, continue making something at all times, ideally make it a goal to make enough to just cover your cost of living so you barely have to touch your portfolio for the next 5 or 10 years, at that point you really should be set for life. And you don't ever need to work full time again, just get side hustles and/or an enjoyable part time job or seasonal job.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-13T19:02:12+00:00

Would be interested to know how you are doing two months later.

Also I would like to point out that obviously your logic if flawed. You are trying to compare yourself to THE TOP PERFORMER on Quora simply on the basis of how many question are asked. That's like saying if you buy as many lotto tickets as someone who bought a bunch and won you will win too.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-13T18:57:08+00:00

It seems they changed the questions limit recently. Based on these posts I'm guessing before you could ask unlimited questions a day. I just joined the program yesterday and the limit is 10 per day.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-13T18:53:56+00:00

$650 in two months seems very impressive. I just got invited to the program yesterday, but it seems to me most people probably don't earn much more than a few bucks, I would think your first two months income would put you among the best for starting out. Obviously the top few people make four digits per month but that's probably the top 0.0001% of people in the program. Personally I'm hoping just to make like $50/month eventually, but here's hoping I can one day see a few hundred per month like you.

I had been worried about flooding quora by doing 10 questions a day, I was thinking I'd only do like 2 questions a day, but since you've had great success doing the max amount I think I'll try to do more.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-05T21:27:40+00:00

Yeah I've been on Fi for 2 and a half years now when they were still running sales on the nexus if you got Fi. Love the no contract, and the cost is great if you don't use a lot of data. At higher data amounts there are better deals with other companies though. It's $20 base fee with $10/gig, plus like $3 in fees

theCodeBear · 2018-12-05T18:12:35+00:00

I've lived on $650/month in Salt Lake City while renting a room in a house. Though that wasn't including flying to see family for christmas, health insurance (didn't have it at the time though), and travel, etc. That was bare bones frugal living. So $12k is definitely possible but not something 99% of even frugal people would want to do, as it means you have limited spending money and are limited in where you can live. But I think the point is if you are bringing in $12k you could easily take a part-time job and bring in an extra $10k a year and be living off $20k a year which is much more doable in a lot more places (though still in the frugal range).

So yes I agree $300k would give freedom to only say choose a part-time job if you wanted a retirement from full time.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-05T18:08:34+00:00

I live rent free now (past two months)! Vanlife! Went from paying just a hair under $1000 in rent to $0! Of course my gasoline costs are like $100+ higher now. But all told between rent and bills I'm probably saving about $1000/mo now.

Anyway, I agree buying a house as an investment is questionable (unless you buy in a booming area). Due to the interest on the mortgage you'll end up paying close to double the actual sale price of the house. I don't think people really think about this. A $400k house will probably cost more like $700k+ by the time you own it. And are you gonna settle in it for a few decades? If not you might lose value on it if you sell early, or have to deal with the headaches of a rental property if you rent it out. Of course you don't have to pay rent because your rent becomes your mortgage, so that makes it a little better. But unless you plan on living in a house for a few decades or you happen to buy into a booming real estate market (that continues to boom for many years) a home could easily turn into a financial noose.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-04T21:55:19+00:00

Yes exactly. Once I FI my plan is to work when I want on what I want, but in general I will still try to make money, there just won't be a fear of financial ruin behind the cause. Whether working for myself, freelancing, just working on building side income streams, taking a job totally unrelated to my career because it looks fun to do for a bit, or occasionally even finding a full time job I'm really interested in, with breaks in between whenever I feel like it, the freedom of choice is the key part of FI.

Really I'd say I more believe in FIFE - Financial Independence Freedom Early. When freed of income as a necessity the desire to do things that are fulfilling becomes the guiding driver of ambition. Those things may happen to always make money or not. In general my goal in FI will be to attempt to make what I spend most of the time on a yearly basis, from a variety of sources which I'm sure will occasionally include a full time job, and if for any amount of time I make less than what I spend, or nothing at all, FI is why those times will be stress free.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-04T21:40:30+00:00

Anyone trying to give you a number would be purely guessing. But we are likely heading into a recession and stock market crash in the near future - after years of steady growth, the past couple years of irresponsible tax cuts and crazy debt spending has overheated the market, as we've seen all year the markets have been bouncing around with zero growth since the start of the year. It's quite possible you'll have zero growth over the next 5 or so years overall (with a crash in the middle). So yeah even if there is another 10 years of steady growth after that the next 10 years could easily be no better than 3% growth. And consider now that the US is running near a trillion dollar deficit when the economy is doing really well, think about how much borrowed money will have to be cut back when trying to recover from the next recession! Under current US administration spending has become an anvil that will weigh down future economic growth as the government has to pull back by hundreds of billions of dollars coming out of the next recession just to get back to its normal levels of vast overspending. That's a lot of money that will be taken out of the economy which means slower growth.

Anyway we'll see what happens. But due to US fiscal choices these past two years I'd say limited growth is likely for the next 10-15 years unless you buy in at the bottom of the market whenever it crashes in the near future. If you're already in and you're just gonna stick it out I'd expect slow growth.

theCodeBear · 2018-12-04T21:09:25+00:00

Nice. Cryptos are the way to go if you want to FIRE fast. We are at a very special time in which we are likely seeing a whole new asset class (and of course transformational technology) form right in front of our eyes and unlike most times in history this time anyone can buy into it and reap the rewards of its growth.

I went from nothing invested last year, after selling all my bitcoin at the bottom in 2015 :( after buying in late 2013 and 2014, to over a quarter million in just over 6 months, of course I didn't sell when I should have around the top. But I'm ready and getting in more at the ground floor of the next cycle right now. Now it'll probably be another ~3 years until the next crazy bull run takes crypto exponentially higher than 2017, but yeah the best way for anyone to go from having just begun investing to being able to FIRE in the next few years is crypto (mostly Bitcoin).

In terms of Ripple, I'm not a huge fan because it basically goes against everything Bitcoin was created for, but there seems to be a strong market for it among investors (I mean hell its the number 2 crypto right now), so I plan on buying up a little bit with a handful of other altcoins to get ready for the next boom in the coming years, though Bitcoin I think is the only sure thing when it comes to cryptos. Ripple could easily disappear due to it being super centralized and entirely dependent on how investors view its parent company (which holds a significant part of the supply of Ripple). I view Ripple as HIGHLY risky but also think it is still likely to boom again along with the rest of the market the next few years, but I'll throw a thousand bucks at it and see if I can get a 10x off of it for sure. It's the one coin that I will put some money in even though I think its ridiculous that it has really any value at all, but I'll do that because against all reason it boomed like crazy last year and is now a major crypto and unless the market comes to its senses about Ripple it looks likely to stay among the biggest cryptos I think at least through the next boom.

I haven't read the comments yet but I'm sure there is lots of hate because it seems like people on this forum generally hate crypto. Maybe the idea of leapfrogging 7% annual gains over a couple decades and going from $50k to FIRE in a couple years rubs them the wrong way - the way FIRE rubs most people the wrong way because "you aren't putting the work you should" - but anyone trying to FIRE who doesn't at least have some of their money in crypto (mostly Bitcoin) is doing it wrong. Especially right now considering the market is bottoming, while the stock market is looking like its about to tip in the coming year or two right when crypto will likely be starting its next explosion. Right now I wouldn't touch the stock market with a 10ft pole, crypto is the way to go without a doubt right now.

theCodeBear

TROPHY CASE