Living In Your Car

Some people live in their cars.  I think I would rather live in a house.  Sam the Inspirational Nomad lives in his car.  And it's not because he can't afford to live in his house.  I think he's got just as much money as I do and maybe even more.  I think he has no debt same as me.  And enough in the bank to buy a house if he wanted to.  I took my money out of the bank and bought a house.  I like living in a house.  I don't think I would like living in my car.

The bible says to be a good steward of your money and to invest it.

Matthew 25

14 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. 15 He gave five bags of silver[a] to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last—dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.

16 “The servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more. 

And investing means good investing.  Not wasting $3,497 on a day trading course and then not even be able to stay interested for even one year and never making a penny in the stock market.  I guess that would be considered better than the guy who spent the same on the course and then promptly went on to lose even more in the stock market with his day trading activities.

One might think that the absolute most conservative and safe investment would be to just put every extra penny into your savings account and never touch it.  Dave Ramsey says it is better to put it into your 401k with a good high growth mutual fund.  Dave says to shoot for 10% per year.  I'm not sure what my 401k is getting.  I don't even know how to calculate the return in order to come up with the 10% return figure.

And then I figure I need to be able to calculate my return and understand it.  So if I put $1,000 into something and one year later it has $1,100 I would say that is a 10% return.

But just as importantly as investing your money conservatively is not losing every penny.  So I am going to only put a small percentage into what I consider to be risky investments and keep the great majority in what I call conservative investments.  Then it is just a matter of working, saving, and investing from now until the cows come home.  And I haven't got any cows.

Coinbase is the first cryptocurrency exchange that I became aware of in 2021.  I had known of Mount Gox back in the day and the guys who went whole hog back then may have really struck it rich.  But many lost big as well I am sure.  Back then it was much riskier.   Back then I had no money to risk.  Back then I was putting every penny into a fund for a house while living in a small rented room.  Today I have the house paid for in cash and my income has gone up and all debt has been wiped out and my retirement account has grown to a comfortable amount and I have more money now to risk and crypto is less risky now than it was then.   I see Fidelity, who holds my retirement account, is looking at opening a crypto ETF.  I will buy in to it the minute they do, but this could take some time.

In the meantime I am researching all crypto currency exchanges.  What I understand at this point is that first I buy the crypto and then I am going to have to keep it somewhere.  They talk about security and having your crypto just disappear on you overnight while you are sleeping.  So it seems that security is definitely a big consideration in this game.

All these years with my retirement account at Fidelity, security has not been any concern to me whatsoever.  The money comes out of my paycheck, the employer matches a certain percentage, and that total is plowed in to a growth mutual fund.  Set it and forget it.  And that's exactly what I have done for the last 15 years and now when I look at it, there it is.  And security is of no concern to me there.  As far as I understand, the money is safe there.

And it is important for me to understand that the money is not there for my personal pleasure and worldly pleasure.  The money is there for the kingdom.  It will accumulate until the day I can no longer earn a paycheck, and then it will begin to decumulate.  That is the way of life.  The longer I can pull in a paycheck, the shorter time the decumulation period will be.  The trick is to not outlive your money.

Now this is all talking about just my base survival.  No new car, no new clothes, no new shoes, no new anything.  No new furniture, no traveling, no nothing other than work and study.  Same as the last 15 years but this time studying crypto investing.

So I did it before, so I should be able to do it again.  Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.  So this time around, instead of a small rented room in a boarding house, now I am living in my own private home.  Instead of not having a single spare penny to invest into anything other than my house fund and retirement account, I have a good cashflow that allows a little left over to invest in more risky ventures.  The trick is not to lose every penny.  Keep enough in the retirement account so that even if I lose every penny of my risky investments, I should still have enough to maintain this same lifestyle until the end.