so much time wasted in you twenties.
at least from perspective it was, i was working for the man, making a good stable wage, got on the property ladder with the help of my father. i made money on that apartment, flipped it and paid of my debts and even setup a business, rudder less but for a while it worked out.
during all that time i was not thinking of investments, that was my downfall for my later years. if i knew what i know now life would have become much easier — that being said, hindsight being 20/20 you always have today to fix tomorrow, that’s the upside of perspective.
i had many opportunities in my younger years, some i took advantage of, some i managed to flip around from the dark depths of depression and into something positive and useful, oh all of them i’d say the most takeaway thing i can say is that it was an internal determination to push forward knowing that better times were going to come — they always did.
when you have disposable income available in your twenties, from birthdays and family and that part time or full time job it seems alien to invest in the future, because you live for that day, you wanna fill that day out, twenty four hours can feel like forever — it’s all fresh and brand new, massive discovery comes with liquid funds spend, it’s like a river.
the word “compound” never really entered into my mental hemisphere until the last five years. i’ve only realised the power of the compounding effect and how that works, saving was never explained to me properly, this unsexy notion of just not using the money, zombie state — stuck, parked.
i never realised that money can do things for you, that it can be an asset that makes more of itself, crypto taught me you can even have these additional tokens that are emitted, governance token rewards for holding an interest, a stake in a project. It’s a motivation for sure to be involved, that’s why the concept of DAO’s is so attractive to a modern digital working world.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members and not influenced by a central government
compounding for a future you
i wish i’d been given the heads up in the early twenties about compounding interest and just general saving past the notion of holding it in an account in the same currency as the country i’m from, there is so much more wealth (in line with inflation or more) that you can be earning on top of what you already have, through arbitrage and generally putting into things that can take your asset and make it WORK for you giving you more back, the more you HOLD.
don’t get me wrong i DISLIKE the notion of HOLDING anything, savings for a future version to me were alien when i was a teenager/in my twenties — like you feel like you will always be full of energy, have a perfectly working body and brain and infinite time. Also i was always a BUY NOW person so i can work TOWARDS more. In practice, unless you execute at the same time often times those PROJECTS just sit in the background and collect dust.
Everything has a cost, once they start collecting dust, they go down in price, you are actually losing money on your INVESTMENT, you end up spending more than you are earning — obviously in the wrong place, if you can, short term, use services where you can lease/rent them instead of straight out buying them, a lot of them are popping up now.
I forget the URL right now but it’s like a transparent wall of products and you can go to a website and hire the thing out for as long as you need it. Like why buy a drill or a saw when you can rent/hire it for a short time to get a job done and put it back, this keeps you minimal and nimble and you can start to build out a really quick capsule kit of clothing and travel light.
compressing for a minimalism mindset (using assets interest to maintain yourself)
take here on hive, did you know that you can invest into HBD (hive backed dollars) and earn nearly 20% APR on it? even binance launched a stablecoin recently that even competes with something anchor protocol, most of these are around 20% at the moment and while crypto is hugely volatile, it’s a world away from the paltry less than 1% that banks are offering.
i’ve been trying to purchase less and STACK more, what i mean by that is everything i’m buying, every brand, i’m asking myself if i really need it or want it, will i use it to generate me more income or i’m a self soothing by gifting myself rewards for things i’ve not achieved yet.
The more things i have the more i have to plan to be able to move them — with digital, my portfolio and assets that i carry can traverse borders. I can invest into blockchains that have smart contract ability to them which come with added benefits, like d.tube for instance that has the ability for me to earn more voting VP the more DTC that i hold, it recharges
time is compoundable, digital involvement is a stackable future token (but volatile)
green goes up, red goes down. candles. trading. meh. absolutely none of that interests me if i’m honest. maybe it should, maybe there is more funds to be made (or lost) if i learned how to day trade from a stack that i save up to work from — but i have a feeling it’s not for me. I’m more interested in the day to day, month to month, year to year UTILITY of a chain or token. What can it do for me that i need or don’t have that i can add to my digital arsenal or tool belt?
Most of the things i put a little bit in are for things that might 10/100x in a years time, the other stuff, the smaller 5x stuff are things that i use. i can’t track or physically use 100’s of the thousands of systems / blockchains out there but i can learn/research ones that provide the world with a real utility, don’t impact the environment in negative ways and genuinely solve a problem that people have using technology or internet of things device data.
I might buy something incredibly cheap and hold it for years and be SURPRISED by it when it increases in price, if i’m using that platform and stacking that platforms token just by my usage i’m adding to the TX (transactions) of that chain then i’m active member of that ecosystem. My involvement is paid for in a digital token. Learning to stack these, flip them, taking out my initial investment, putting it into something else or earning inline with inflation of fiat in the real world (not like the altverse that crypto feels like)
. .. that being said, the true outcome is not to CONVERT back to fiat, the truth is you wanna be in a situation where your digital stack can get to amount that you never need to convert it. If you can compound enough, work with partners that accept crypto for payment, i’m talking like your living expenses, food, fuel, everything but instead of fiat, digital — and you can live of the interest then you can just keep rinse and repeat.
buy less, store less, multi function & multi utility devices
seems pretty obvious really but the less you are spending on “stuff” the more you get to save on the long term — also, something my grandad always said to me “buy cheap, buy twice!” and he was right. When i’ve cut corners with purchasing something it’s always failed me, not only that it’s failed at the time that i needed it most, call it sods law. Always pay the extra, go for a family owned business version, something with a lifetime return policy or just good recommendations from the older peers in your family!
devices that do one thing are a thing of the past. i forget the ted talk but i remember him telling a story about the “single function device” of a watch he spoke about. We should have devices and tools that can act as a multi function device, mainly as a rollover capacity and redundancy and backup but also, we live in a world where we need the things we “everyday carry” to do more for us. It makes no sense for us to own something that does one thing anymore, but be careful of the 10-in-1 brigade, sometimes a tool like a shovel should do that job incredibly well and nothing more!
travel light & edc ready
the older i get, the more freedom i crave, less stuff, backpack and capsule life, same look and feel, minimise the confusion, pack light, travel with less, simple things, non complicated but hard wearing and tuff, comfy and warm, late night dumpling walks in the cold rainy nights, stuff that will protect you and the engine that is you.
edc (everyday carry) is a term i’ve know about for a long time, i’ve even had the hive account for @everydaycarry but never actually posted on it (yet) it’s something i wanted to be doing from the road. I think once i’m using this stuff on the daily, living in it, wearing it, using it for little daily chores then i’ll end up posting more (of course i’ve gotta load up the account with hive power to make it worthwhile posting)
i don’t think there is a one size fits all thing with edc either, there is always something else to buy, upgrade or replace. Not that the “buy cheap, buy twice” mantra does not work it’s just you end up wanting the product to do that little bit more of you find yourself with wanting it to perform better or you find a regular use case for it. As a product nerd, upgrading is always fun.
in conclusion
i realise this was terribly written, i’m not a writer and this feels more like a brain dump but these are the abstractions i see when i think about myself as a twenty year old and now i’m nearly fifty. some lessons that i’ve learned are detailed above, some to hopefully remind my daughter if she ever reads this what to do with her money/time if i’m not her (if you read this, i love you!) or maybe just spread this message if you are a father to your own children.
help them invest in a future version of them
keep them ahead of inflation
give them the mental fortitude to use money/value as a platform
and not to flounder and use it as a crutch
for a fix to a short term solution!
the long game.
future you.
future them.
not focused on luxury.
fuel for all your future iterations.
humble x
pinterest epic wins pinboard → brand advocate for nokia, 1000heads, verisign → won vloggie for node666 (san fran 2006) → television for time team history hunters 1999 → sold me.dm to evan williams in april 2011 → went to phil campbell, alabama to help raise money after tornado (was on sky news, bbc news)→ CNN for sxsw 2013 about austin sxsw → video chat with robert scoble → music video can you spot me?