Weekend Reflections: 1-17-2021

Weekend Reflections: 1-17-2021

 

Birthday Surprise

Last weekend my family threw a surprise birthday party for me in one of my favorite parks in San Diego. Of course we all maintained a safe physical wellness distance of at least 6 feet apart. It was so wonderful to see my whole family there and it is truly a blessing to feel so loved. I’m incredibly grateful to be surrounded by so much love. I wish everybody could be surrounded by love. If that was the case, so my of world’s problems likely wouldn’t exist.

My wife planned it perfectly. She arranged for my family to be there for the surprise party. And since France is one of my favorite countries to travel to and visit, she made it a French-inspired theme. She bought delicious vegan French pastries from a local pastry shop. We shared a vegan breakfast box that contained croissants, baguettes, and apple Danish. I’ve tried a lot of pastries in France and the U.S., and I have to say it’s among the best I’ve had!

 

Covid Vaccine

Interestingly, I received my second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine a day prior to my surprise birthday celebration. It’s common for people to have side effects. It usually means the immune system is working to build immunity.

Fortunately, I didn’t experience any side effects other than 24 hours of slight deltoid muscle soreness. And it really wasn’t that bad. I was still able to lift weights and workout like normal. No fever, malaise, lethargy, headache, muscle aches or flu-like symptoms whatsoever. And I’m 100% certain that I did not become a genetically engineered, micro-chipped, sterile person with autism. It’s unfortunate that some people believe that the vaccine will do all this and are skeptically hesitant (even among healthcare professionals).

There’s a lot of misinformation and crazy conspiracy theories out there. I’m here to report that I complete my two doses of the covid vaccine and I’m doing just fine.

Luckily I didn’t get any debilitating flu-like symptoms. Otherwise I would have messed up my surprise birthday party…

 

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

Speaking of parties, it’s been quite the party for Bitcoin enthusiasts and investors. BTC is all the rage.

While I’m far from a cryptocurrency and blockchain expert, I learned enough of it to feel comfortable buying some. Earlier last year, I put some money into Bitcoin and Ethereum. I usually allocate about $20,000 a year for travel. Obviously I wasn’t able to travel so I had extra cash lying around. Putting it in a savings account earning a low interest rate didn’t make sense. I could have invested more money into my index funds. But instead, I decided to dip my toes into Bitcoin and Ethereum. I figured that 1% of my net worth is a reasonable amount to own in cryptocurrency.

Since then, my position in cryptocurrency has ballooned up 200% and now is about 2% of total assets. If it continues to go up, it could be worth 10% of my net worth. I mean, geesh, if it goes up to $400k to $1.2M in one to five years (based on some log regression analysis that MD on FI/RE has seen), then wow. If that’s the case it may overtake the majority of my portfolio.

I’m not holding my breath though. If it happens, cool. And if it doesn’t happen, then at least only lost 1-2% of my assets which doesn’t set me back too much. To me, the upside potential is worth the risk. Nevertheless, I’m prepared for anything; just look at Ripple. Yikes, that’s not a party I want to be in.

 

Play Money

I admit, I do allocate a certain amount of my money as “play” or “fun” money. Essentially, it’s money that I can afford to lose and is often spent on speculative investments such as individual stocks, options, and cryptocurrency.

However, my friend over at Crispy Doc has a different opinion and explains why he doesn’t have “fun” money. In his portfolio, each dollar has a specific job and purpose.

I see his point. If you lose your play money, then you’re worse off compared to if you had invested it in a less risky asset such as a total market index fund. However, if you’re play money on speculative plays skyrocket and you 10x your money then that’s great. But there can be negative consequences.

It can quickly turn into an addiction like gambling. If you win big, you get a dopamine high and want to do it even more. So you put more money in because of the euphoric positive reinforcement of “winning” money and you go even deeper because you want to see how far you can go.  Then all of a sudden, your “play money” becomes real money that you may not be able to afford to lose.

I can see this being a big problem for some people.

Anyways, I fully intend to keep my play money only as play money and nothing more.