Financial security
With the end of the year near, I'm reviewing our finances and started wondering about our financial security while doing so. I believe everyone is hoping to find financial security in their life, and maybe even has this goal set in their younger years when studying and working hard as soon as their life in the world of working-class starts. But what exactly is financial security? It can be something different for everyone, and not everyone needs the same amount of money to go around each month, do they?
Feeling financially secure
Probably we should refer to the feeling of being financially secure instead. Having enough money to cover all monthly expenses and also being able to pay for other costs when they come to path. For example, if your winter coat suddenly tears, this can be costly to instantly replace, but you can't just wait and save up for this as it's needed. When you're feeling financially secure, you know that you can replace something right away without having to save up for it. I guess there's always a limit to take into account, the higher this limit gets, the more financially secure someone must feel.
Monthly savings
Personally speaking, I feel financially secure to a certain point. We're not where we want and need to be, but the level of financial growth in the past year alone has given me the confidence to not worry about this. I know and feel that we're on the right track and that things are going better each month. I can't overcome every financial burden that comes to the path with our savings, but I can overcome a lot more than a year ago. Which is good progress. If I have to buy a new winter jacket, or unexpectantly need 100 bucks for another reason, I could pay for it. This is thanks to the fact that I've been adding a savings plan into our finances as soon as it was possible. I have a spare change vault in my banking app, for example, that rounds up the money I spent, and even adds a little more, good for 15 to 20 bucks each month. It's not much, but it helps.
I also have intended higher monthly budgets for the car (gasoline, parking), internet bundles, accountant than I actually need. I rarely spend the full amount, but if I need it for one month, at least it's there. The remaining amount always goes into savings. Each month when the salary arrives, I start by emptying the vaults of the previous month, reviewing if anything needs change or not, moving the remaining budgets to a savings vault, and start filling the vaults again. I truly started to love doing the finances since I use Revolut Metal.
Savings are growing
I get a happy feeling each month when I'm able to move some funds there. It makes me feel secure knowing that I could overcome unexpected financial troubles to a certain amount without having to lose sleep over it. I have experienced that it motivates me a lot to do even better, as I would like these savings vaults in my app to be filled up to an amount that when the car would break completely, I'd be able to replace it. That's not the case yet, and I don't foresee this happening until at least a year from now. That has to do with setting priorities, and it's fine as I know we'll get there once we are settled in Spain. First things first, I'd say, but I'm very pleased to see my financial plan on how to save up, sometimes without even noticing, it is paying off. On top of the fiat savings, I'm also still saving up 25% of my liquid HBD earnings. I hope to be able not to withdraw that amount for a long time from now but only add HBD instead. I'm currently more motivated to write more content to get more liquids than to withdraw anything from the HBD savings.
Remaining calm and riding the waves when possible
I've seen good progress with our crypto holdings since I managed not to sell when the market crashed but to remain calm instead. Although sometimes it hurts seeing the portfolio dip thousands overnight, I remind myself that at the beginning of this year, that dip in value was probably the only value we had in total, now it's just a market swing that will recover. I learned to add more tokens if I had some liquids and not feel too bad when I was too late. It will be repeated, so just wait for the next wave to ride.
Dreaming of that big crypto boom
Sometimes I'm daydreaming that we receive another airdrop of that kind, giving our financial goal for the move to Spain such a boost that I can start planning in detail. If only. I can't rely on that to happen though, I can't just assume the market will be favorable for me to keep stacking and being able to withdraw funds when we want to go. Therefore I can't forget to take profits from time to time whenever the opportunity is there. I already noticed that it doesn't have to hurt as much as I always expected if I use the right moments to take these profits. I still have plenty of weeks left to stack up funds that we need in fiat, enough opportunities left.
My conclusion
Is that I will keep doing what I'm doing now as clearly it's working. We've made progress in our portfolio value in cryptocurrency as well as in fiat currency. I'm always on the look for new (better) ways to save/earn short and long-term to spread our funds some more. I have been able to let go of the thought that it doesn't make any sense to stake something earning lower yields on it compared to farming high yields. I now know that slow and steady without much risk is a good approach for part of your funds. It's slower, but also less stressful and it will pay off when using compounding.
I wish I could fast forward to mid-2022 to see where we're at! :)
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