I know, I know. Bitcoin is savings, not an investment. I just wanna avoid anyone saying that in the comments.
What’s an investment that’s consistently brought you the greatest ROI?
For me, probably plane tickets
Traveling is incredibly healthy for the soul
My wife and kids. Better investment than bitcoin IMO.
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How sweet!
Top comment of the day one year ago!
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @gnilma 23 Jun
Pretty cool to be reminded of this.
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This is what made me realize stackers were my kind of people.
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Having kids and raising them right.
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My wife and I got crazy lucky with real estate.
We bought our first house in 2016 for super cheap. The down payment was less than the cheapest new car on the market. Sold in 2021 after the price more than doubled.
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Knowledge, skills
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cowboy hat for 75 days, damn :P
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Any benefit?
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Unfortunately, soon I will have to drop it. Others could take it.
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You found no padawan?
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Every minute I spend with my kids.
Besides that, I invested 300 bucks in 2008 to register a business and get some accounting software. 14 years later that business had reached 2M/yr revenue at its peak and last year I sold it (sadly not a its peak due to getting rekt in pandemic but I did ok). That was definitely not a passive investment but certainly my biggest financial gain.
The best investment I have made in myself was quitting drinking almost 9 years ago.
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Learning how to build Wordpress websites. It took about two years and a few hundred dollars of educational materials but it turned out to be incredibly useful for building online businesses so I can work remotely. Plus, I have fallback skills that are useful.
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I bought a house in 2011, and it's tripled in value since. While I have some philosophical issues with how much and how quickly it's appreciated, the fact is I've benefited from it tremendously. I was able to use the equity to remodel it, which then allowed me to rent it out for a decent price while I lived overseas last year. And after a refi, my mortgage is far less than rent for my area.
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Did your house really triple in value, or is it the currency that’s measuring it lost 67% of it’s purchasing power in the real estate market?
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Tripled in price.
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Value. My house isn't on the market so it has no price at the moment. However, my local appraisal district is all too happy to tell me the "value" of my home.
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That's fair. I just prefer to look at value on a relative basis. If something tripled in value you should be able to use it to purchase 3x what you acquired it for. If every other house went up by 3x is it really more valuable?
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The real value of your home is measured in bitcoin which means it has been adjusted down something like 50,000% since you bought it.
No problem- you have to live somewhere but I wouldn’t be so excited about fiat prices
Property taxes are theft
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The problem with this argument is that you couldn't have borrowed that much money from a bank in 2011 to buy Bitcoin. Even if you could've you'd still need to live somewhere and pay back the loan. It's not realistic to think that way.
The real value of a home is that a bank will give you a loan to buy it. This leverage shouldn't be underestimated. Yes, it comes with taxes and other downsides but it also gives you somewhere to live and build equity while you accumulate Bitcoin.
So realistically, the best strategy, with the benefit of hindsight would've been to buy a house AND start accumulating Bitcoin as savings. Not so different to now.
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That’s not really the argument I’m making but good point
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And after a refi, my mortgage is far less than rent for my area.
Don't forget it's only the interest component of it that you should be comparing to rent. The principal repayments is just moving money from one pocket of yours (your bank account) to another (equity). It's a commitment to invest.
Which makes the purchase an even better investment than most people think.
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That's a really interesting way of looking at it.
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If you pay $1000 rent and stay put for 25 years, your rent only goes up; at the end of the term you end up paying maybe 3x that and owning nothing.
But if you pay a $1000 mortgage with a 25 year term:
  • Your payments don't change (or only change slightly) in fiat terms; they go down in real terms.
  • At the end you end up with outright ownership of the property (wealth!), which has appreciated greatly in fiat terms over that period.
  • Let's say $300 of it is interest, $700 is principal. Your housing cost is $300, less than a third of what the renter pays at the beginning and less than 1/10 of what the renter pays at the end. The $700 is a commitment to invest in real estate on a monthly basis, BUT - and this is a very important "but" - at a price locked in at the beginning of the term. Towards the end of the term, those $700 monthly investments buy you ~$2100 worth of real estate.
As a renter, the lower the interest rates, the more the system steals from you. By taking out a mortgage you become a beneficiary of the system; you get closer to the money printer and claw some of those 'stealings' back.
This shows how the system benefits the richer - those who can afford a down payment - and makes the poor poorer. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.
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Excellently explained. I actually tried explaining this to my parents after buying an investment property. Even though I knew in my mind what I was trying to say you've really solidified some of the finer points in your explanation. Thanks.
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There is no second best!
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My house. It's more than paying for itself.
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going to echo @darthcoin on knowledge and skills, and include a bonus of investing in relationships.
hard to single out one of those three, all have been incredibly valuable to me.
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Family and knowledge.
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Going to USA & Australia to learn english.
Thanks to it, I got into BTC.
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Always invest in yourself
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Laptop to freelance. Learning 2 other languages. Acid to open my mind :)
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trusting my gut. opening my eyes to the world we ACTUALLY live in, not the world I THINK we live in
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When considering tangible things, I consider the Kindle reader to be one of the best investments. I have never enjoyed reading so much and the fact that I can store a huge number of books on this device and constantly gain new knowledge. I carry this reader almost everywhere with me.
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Spending my time more wisely.
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travel and spending time in nature
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Education for myself and kids.
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  • Learning computer skills, specifically infrastructure/devops/SRE related skills.
  • Learning about the FIRE movement, how to live without debt and not fall into lifestyle inflation.
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how to live without debt and not fall into lifestyle inflation.
Easy. You earn more, you buy more bitcoin
lol
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Climbing and mountain biking
Though financially, my startups. The "market cap" when I bought my shares was maybe $1000.
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While attending University in the mid 1990s, I had nothing but debt... student loans, credit cards, etc. I knew nothing about the world, yet some inexplicable force drew me into spending every free minute I had in the computer labs (between classes and late into the night) teaching myself how to design and build websites. My friends and family thought I was nuts. I couldn't even articulate what it was I was doing, or what the web would be good for. Today I still know nothing about the world, but that investment I made in myself 30 years ago bought me lots more time to learn. No other investment ever came close.
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https://youtu.be/e34sVe7JgNo Watching this Bitcoin university lecture on real estate
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Properties.
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deleted by author
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