While every investors does need an emergency fund available for obvious reasons, you don't have to save up for emergency before you start investing, you can start with your investment first and then start saving for emergency situations later or you can do them simultaneously, and both funds should come from your discretionary funds so as to not disturb your necessary and basic expenses.
Emergency funds are like a fail-safe that helps to ensure your investment isn't disturbed during accumulation, it also makes provisions for situations like you losing your job, it helps keep an investor going until they secure another job and get their income flowing again all while keeping their investment intact.
I'm sure there are situations where investors had to sell the bitcoin stash early to take care of emergencies, it could be an accident and your insurance isn't coming early enough or it's not able to cover your expenses, it could also be a serious health condition that requires alot of money to treat, your emergency income accounts for and helps take care of these situations.
In this case, people's choices may vary. Some prefer to set up an emergency fund before they invest, but there are also those who immediately choose to invest and save up for their emergency fund while at it. However, this should not be an obstacle for someone to start investing in Bitcoin, because they can also invest in Bitcoin even before having an emergency fund. But they need to create an emergency fund as soon as possible because they just don't know when the situation will become unfavorable to themhaving an emergency fund will greatly help them face unexpected situations without having to sell bitcoin at the wrong time.
An investor without an emergency and backup fund will find it very difficult to invest for a long-term, therefore it is important to have your emergency funds, not necessarily very huge amount in as much as it can meet up your needs when the need arises for it, its an extra fund, which you need to save within 3-4 months so that it can save your investment from being sold off before the time that you wish to sell it within your long-term journey.
Many people save some money before starting to invest, while many do not. So, you earn $200 per month and after deducting all your expenses, you have $50 left to invest. But you do not have an emergency fund. In addition to investing, you need to create an emergency fund. In that case, you can invest $25 and keep $25 for the emergency fund. And what if you reduce your extra expenses and keep them for the emergency fund or invest. For example, eating out at extra restaurants, smoking too many cigarettes, etc., you can reduce all these extra expenses and put money in the emergency fund. In this way, you can very well fulfill the amount of money you want to put in the emergency fund. Try to put 3 times your stable income in the emergency fund. When you are able to create an emergency fund, you can create different types of reserve funds if you want. It is completely up to you. For example, if you have a son or daughter, you need to pay for their education expenses. You can create some reserve funds to meet such financial risks.
You just need to have a good money management skills to be able to invest in Bitcoin because even though you have a source of income, if you cannot manage your finances properly, you may be caught in a very difficult situation in the future which might result in you tempering with your holdings, that's why a good money management skills is required in Bitcoin investment, so that from the little you are earning either weekly or monthly you can still keep your emergency funds out of it, and possibly a reserve funds, because in other to be able to hold successfully and on the longer term, all these needs to be in place, so that you wouldn't have to temper with your holdings if a serious emergency situation arise in the future.
Yes, you need to have a consistent financial system to continue investing. Because as we all know, Bitcoin is not for short-term investment. It is an opportunity to build a wealth by investing for the long term. There may be many obstacles in front of you while investing for the long term. You have to ignore all those obstacles and continue investing. And during all those obstacles, funds will come in handy. Emergency fund, reserve fund and sufficient cash flow.
If you have sufficient cash flow, you will not need any other funds. But if you do not have cash flow, then I think it is very necessary for you to start any fund. It is not only investors who need to use the fund. Anyone can arrange funds for them if they want. A fund will help you meet the needs of your family. The investor does not have to break the invested money before reaching the target.
So if you are an investor, in my opinion, you must have a fund or sufficient cash flow.
Most of the reason to have back up funds (emergency fund, reserve funds and float) is to have back ups in the event that cashflow gets cut off for some reason or another. Having a cashflow (even a strong cashflow) does not necessarily get a person out of the need to keep back up funds. Some folks are surely sloppy with their cashflow management and do not keep back up funds (or emergency funds) based on their having decently strong cashflows - yet such people might still end up getting themselves into a bad situation based on their lack of preparedness for a loss of their cashflow.
I understand Bitcoin is the bedrock, the foundation. Value flows through Bitcoin first then goes into altcoins. You cant expect altcoins to do well without Bitcoin doing well. Wait, be patient. Let Bitcoin do its thing first and then youll see money pour out from there. It takes time.
Why wait for altcoins to do well after a price increase in Bitcoin when everyone can immediately take the option to buy Bitcoin before the price increase occurs in Bitcoin. Because people who are smart in taking advantage of conditions will always move according to the rhythm of market conditions without ignoring opportunities by waiting more, especially if what is being waited for is altcoins. Obviously that is not something that is suitable to wait for because by buying Bitcoin at the current price, everyone can also benefit when the price of Bitcoin increases again in the market. So don't wait too long for something uncertain if you can still make the most of every opportunity through Bitcoin, not others.
👍Plus during the current bull cycle, Bitcoin's DOMINANCE against shitcoins has only surged without stopping since the DIPs of the bear market during 2022 and 2023.
The wealth transfer that many of our plebs have been waiting for NEVER arrived. Although, there were some bids in shitcoins, but I believe those bids were not as bullish as the cull cycle during 2017 and 2021. Shitcoin holders have mainly underperformed against Bitcoin HODLERS.
With your bringing up of the arguments about wealth transfers, I am not sure if you are debunking shitcoin arguments or trying to refer to other kinds of wealth transfers.
It probably remains confusing to use the term "wealth transfer" in the context of shitcoins, since who gives any fucks about shitcoins. ... especially since we should be keeping our eyes on the prize, which is bitcoin, and largely in the past 10 years, wealth transfer has been ongoingly taking place in regards to bitcoin versus various fiat systems, and sure some of the wealth transfer may have had been slow and difficult to notice along the way, yet at the same time, those guys ongoingly putting value into bitcoin have been becoming more and more rich, as compared with if they would have had been putting such value into various fiat systems... .. so our ongoing wealth transfer into bitcoin has not really slowed down if we are able to zoom out in regards to our perspective, which truly I consider the 200-WMA to be a better way of attempting to monitor the ongoing wealth transfer from fiat systems into bitcoin.
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You are right, for me I think In other to fine out the expenses that are mandatory and discretionary in our daily life is by checking our income just like the example you gave one may become confuse as which to buy but your income will help you determine that, like the example you gave if your income can only get you a bicycle I don't think you will be contemplating again on buying a car or a motorcycle however the only time you may be contemplating is when your income can afford you all that you have mentioned and at this point one can get confuse on which expenses are mandatory and which are discretionary so meaning the more richer you become the more confuse you will be in knowing which expenses that are mandatory and are discretionary.
I think making decisions on this are some times difficult but what ever expenses you feel is mandatory should be essential for your basic survival.
If a person becomes accustomed to a certain standard of living, his views on mandatory versus discretionary will likely be based around the standard of living that he is accustomed to living. He might objectively have flexibility and ways to cut down on his expenses, yet he might choose not to and still label some of his discretionary expenses as mandatory. I have no problem with guys figuring out their own definitions, even though there may be some changes that a guy could make to his life that allows him to buy more bitcoin, but he chooses not to make such changes.
Let's say that a guy has a budget of $100 every week for "entertainment," such as going to bars and various kinds of night life expenses. This might not be unreasonable for one guy, even though it may well seem to be total luxury for another guy... another guy might have a budget of $100 per month or even $50 per month for all of his entertainment, even though the guy who has $100 per week for "night life entertainment." He might have another extra budget for other kinds of entertainment beyond just the nightlife, and surely some guys might consider such a high budget on "entertainment" to be discretionary, the guy might consider that he has to maintain a certain level of social activity, and he has come to conclude that his various kinds of entertainment are basic requirements that he needs to maintain (perhaps until he finds a spouse, and maybe he will even choose to continue with the same level of "entertainment" budget after obtaining a spouse?).
Guys have rights to make their own determinations about what they consider to be mandatory versus discretionary, and sure it is possible that upon further contemplation of the situation, some guys might reconsider their ways of categorizing mandatory versus discretionary, yet guys don't necessarily need to do anything that they don't want to do, even though some guys might consider the framework of other guys to be unrealistic and perhaps even keeping the other guys in a life of ongoing excessive consumption and keeping them out of a life of being able to invest in bitcoin or anything else.
There are some guys that no matter how much they make, they will come up with excuses to find ways of spending (and consuming) with any extra money that they make rather than investing into anything like bitcoin.
We might have differing definitions in regards to what is mandatory and what is discretionary. Many times we might want to live similar lifestyles as our neighbors, yet there still may be things that we have discretion over, whether we buy beans, hotdogs, chicken, pork or steak. I doubt we will necessarily agree which expenses are mandatory and which are discretionary, even though surely guys might even lie to themselves if they consider certain kinds of expenses to be mandatory when they are discretionary.. yet let's say that a person wants to have a flower business, and maybe there is delivery involved in the business, he might have discretion regarding how to deliver and whether he owns a vehicle, rents it or contracts it out and he might even have discretion whether to have a bicycle, or a motorcycle or a car or a van..and he might even have discretion whether to buy the 2002 model, or the 2012 model or the 2025 model.
You are right, for me I think In other to fine out the expenses that are mandatory and discretionary in our daily life is by checking our income just like the example you gave one may become confuse as which to buy but your income will help you determine that, like the example you gave if your income can only get you a bicycle I don't think you will be contemplating again on buying a car or a motorcycle however the only time you may be contemplating is when your income can afford you all that you have mentioned and at this point one can get confuse on which expenses are mandatory and which are discretionary so meaning the more richer you become the more confuse you will be in knowing which expenses that are mandatory and are discretionary.
I don't think that there is anything too difficult about knowing which item is mandatory for you to get and which is not. From elementary knowledge of finance and economics, the concept of
wants, needs, and opportunity cost can easily be applied here and you can easily identify which item falls under what you just want, and which falls under what you need knowing fully well that your wants are insatiable in the first place. you can always push your wants to the future when you will be financially strong enough to get them while you meet your needs since they are part of what keeps you going as a person.
You are not following the discussion and the example JayJuanGee gave, there are some situation where you will find your self and you will become confuse on which expenses that are mandatory and are discretionary an example is the one that JayJuanGee gave if you are in that situation you can't just make a decision because you will think about the advantage and disadvantage of each item that comes in your mind which is that of the car, motorcycle, bicycle etc.
I never said anything about the guy being confused, even though I mentioned that a guy may well have several options for achieving the same objective, and he has to choose which option fits his purpose in light of how much it will cost and how much utility he will get out of it. Surely guys will sometimes choose more luxurious (and costly) options out of their discretion, even though part of the base expense may well have had been mandatory, they may choose to upgrade to a version of the expense that has discretionary components that were not needed in order to achieve the more base objective (whether it was to deliver flowers or some other objective(s) might have had been the reason for the need to choose between transportation options). Some objects or the purchasing of goods and/or services may well have both mandatory and discretionary components.
And this will make it a difficult situation especially if you have the money to purchase any one you want however one of the things that limit someone is the lack of funds if you have only money for bicycle you won't have to think or find it difficult in making decisions because you have been limited by lack of funds.
You do seem to be getting matters mixed up, as Marvelockg pointed out.
Your budget surely might determine how much you can spend, but your expenses regarding what you need versus what you want may well come prior to you having a budget... so you likely need to figure out what you need and what are your expenses, and once you figure that out, if you have any money left in your budget, then maybe you can choose what you want after paying for what you need.
Sure, you are not differentiating between what you want and what you need because you are first looking at how much money you have and then you are determining what you want to buy with that money, and surely hopefully you are making sure that you have what you need covered prior to spending on the things that you want.
If we can be honest to ourselves there are sometimes we get confuse on what we really want or need, it happens to me sometimes, if you feel is very easy for you then that's good for you everyone is not the same.
Just like JayJuanGee said we might have differing definitions in regards to what is mandatory and what is discretionary.
We might have different definitions of what is mandatory and what is discretionary, yet I still would think that each one of us should be able to differentiate between what we have decided that we need from what we have decided that we want (according to you, how much money is left after spending on what we need first..and if we don't have any money left we cannot buy those additional items that we want to buy)..
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Maybe you don't understand me rightly because obviously, there's no difference between the points I raised on identifying what's your wants and which is what you actually need when relating it to the context of the example both you and @jayjuangee highlighted. All the instances given are means through which we can decide to spend our discreational income in a modest way that suits how much of a fund we have as our income and suggesting an alternative that can still help one achieve same goal is nothing out of the range of discussion we are having. Understand that the main issue is all about effectively managing of ones finance just so you can invest effectively in bitcoin. Foregoing an expensive item like a car and going for a motorcycle just because you want to have reserved income for your investment is still in the same line with making proper budgeting such that you spend or get items based on the allocation you have set out for your expenses.
I think that I was also distinguishing between kinds of motorcycles, too... since depending on the purpose it may be more economical to buy one model versus another, and it may be more economical to buy a van rather than a motorcycle, especially if there is a need to carry BIGGER kinds of items, the van might end up paying for itself, and including bringing in extra money (contributing to extra income). I would not proclaim to know the answer in regards to choosing which goods/services are mandatory versus discretionary, especially if there might be a certain context in which they are justifiable... yet a person might have a really dumb idea in regards to various aspects of his flower shop, so he might not even justify his decision properly, so he might even erroneously conclude one purchase of a good/service is superior to another in regards to serving his needs, but he miscalculates the value of the whole project.
And... we're below it
What do we think? hell breaking loose tomorrow once the markets open?
I think that markets are expecting to be down tomorrow, but it can be difficult to know.
At this point, I am thinking down is more likely than up, but it is not like I trade any of these kinds of matters, since I buy if it goes down.. at least bitcoin. For me, the rest of it is "whatever" even though many of us know that various markets relate to one another in the short term, even though they don't necessarily move in the same direction at the same exact time. Bitcoin's currently going down seems to be anticipating general markets continuing to go down, at least tomorrow, on Monday, absent some kind of reason for possible reversal or slowing the current DOWNity pressures.
