Annnddd it’s Monday again! Another new fresh week is in front of us. It’s 6.50am and I’m seating in the basement fresh from the cold shower and I’m full of positive energy )) In about an hour my family will wake up, so I need to hurry up!
This weekend was amazing. We went to the Museum of Modern Art, watched some Picasso paintings and tourists, the giant spider on the wall and the small helicopter suspended in the air. My son loved the helicopter, it was hard to take him away from it.
Then we found a cozy coffee shop not far from Times Square and treated ourselves with some hot chocolate and cookies. I had to make an exception to my diet, because.. well.. I wanted to taste those cookies!
On Sunday we went to the farmers market (actually, we went to buy a bouncer for my son, but that’s a separate story…) and bought some pastured eggs and meats. By the way, don’t be afraid to ask the seller about the origin of the products.
I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that some of the sellers have absolutely no idea where those products come from as they just buy and resell the produce at the higher margins… Stay away from those products, no matter how clean and fresh they may seem.
Speaking of talking to people. That same day on the Lido beach I bumped into a guy named John Byrne who was playing with his dog. Turned out he was involved into pretty popular local surfing project (NySea.com). The conversation was flowing so well that we chatted for about an hour and exchange numbers in the end! That was pretty cool. God knows what will come out of it, but I have a great feeling that we will stay in touch in the future.
The main takeaway? – talk to people! Those shiny iPhones that we all have and love are great, but sometimes you need to put those aside and engage into a real human to human conversations. When I go to the beach, I usually leave my phone in the car so I can fully immerse in the moment and appreciate all the beauty of the mother nature.
Oh yes and we saw dolphins! A group of ten or maybe even more very close to the shore. I even saw one jumping very high in the air (my wife still does not believe me). Was it a sign of some sort?
Anyway, amazing weekend! Feel free to share your own weekend moments in the comments below, sharing is caring!
Zero minerals and gas is actually a good thing
Today I wanted to talk a bit about investing and money management. Strange topic for a technical guy? Actually not so much.
See, from my early twenties I was fortunate enough to have a high-paying job in software engineering industry, plus I had some side businesses running and generating income at the same time. As the result, I was able to accumulate some pretty substantial savings sitting in my bank account.
If you ever played a computer game called Starcraft, or any other real-time strategy (my brother and I spent a lot of time playing Startcraft at some point!) then you should know the best players in the world always try to keep their resources balance close to zero all the times throughout the game to effectively scale the economy and grow the army.
Excessive resources is usually a good indicator that you don’t expand fast enough and don’t create as many new building and units. At the same time, if your opponent is actively re-investing every dollar into building a stronger economy, he will easily crush you like a cockroach. It happened to us sooo many times during our online matches.
If you think about it, life and business work the same way. You can start taking money out of your business too soon and it may slow down the growth, while your competitors re-invest every dollar and expand. It’s true, you may get some short-term financial gains, but there is a great chance you will lose in the future.
On the other hand, you may have money sitting in your business or personal bank account and you don’t really invest them anywhere. Usually, those are the money kept for some unforeseeing emergencies (or that’s how I heard people and myself explain it).
It’s a balancing act.
While it’s definitely a good problem to have it is still a problem. In my mind, every dollar that is sitting in my bank account is a potential investment and should work for me instead of slowly losing value thanks to inflation.
To be honest I still have a lot to do on the investment front. There are just so many different options and so little free time required to gain deep understanding…
I’m making some progress though. Recently I applied for the Home Equity Line of Credit and if everything checks out, I should be able to get a pretty substantial credit line from the bank with my home being used as collateral.
Once I get the line, it will become my backup budget and I can focus on investing ALL of the money that is currently sitting on my accounts. The goal is to diversify with some index funds, individual stocks, cryptocurrencies and real estate.
I have no desire to speculate (buy/sell for profit) and only considering long-term investments. Active trading is a full-time job and I just don’t have enough time to give it 100% focus. I have a few friends who constantly check their phones for prices updates. One of them even wakes up in the middle of the night to check ethereum prices and do the trades if necessary. I don’t want any of those distractions at the moment.
The ultimate goal for me is to build the diversified financial foundation where I can channel additional income as it comes. Simple as that.
Later on, I’ll be reporting on my investments progress and strategies. Make sure to subscribe to my list if you don’t want to miss my updates. Also if you have any interesting long-term and passive investments ideas, feel free to share those below in the comments section.
See ya!
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