I have been thinking about this dilemma lately, but I don't think it is a dichotomy. I have been on vacation in the past week with my wife, it was our honeymoon, for those that don't know I just got married in June this year. So I have been making money mostly this year and I have not spent enough time with my wife. I did spend a lot of time with her, especially in the weekends but I feel like it is not enough, I spend more time looking at charts and chasing money than with my wife, so maybe I need to change this.
You know the saying that money doesn't bring happiness. I kind of agree, but then you also need the money to be able to buy happiness with it. This honeymoon of ours cost me about 9300 EUR, I was not cheap on it, but you have to get the money from somewhere to be able to spend it. So it's not a love or money argument, it's more like you need the money itself to be able to spend it on thing or people you like.
What better way there is to spend your hard earned money than to go on an exciting vacation with your new wife. And trust me it was amazing, we went to a very nice wellness hotel in Southern Europe, and basically chilled in the beach all day long or in the swimming pool in the hotel, we went to very nice restaurants had romantic dinner at night, it was just awesome. Maybe I should post some pictures here, but I'd rather not, since I just like my privacy.
But trust me it was amazing, one of the best vacations I had in my life, and it cost me over 9000 EUR, it's not that expensive if you consider the amount of fun we had, but it's still a large sum since the average net income, you know after theft (tax), in this zone is about 1000 EUR, so we spent almost 1 year worth of theft-free income on our little vacation. Of course it could have been cheaper if not for 20% VAT theft applied to every service or product we consumed.
Actually I planned a 20,000 EUR cruise ship tour initially, but it was kind of expensive and I am not sure I would enjoy the company of the kind of people that go on those kinds of trips, but we didn't get our visa in time, since the Government is just so good to tourists. I mean here I am ready to contribute 20,000 EUR to their fuckin’ economy, and the immigration bureaucrat is just so lousy that he can't even prepare my visa in time, so that plan got scrapped eventually. Tough luck.
We also planned a full Europe tour, but that plan got scrapped too due to travel complications, of course again due to Government. On one hand they strictened the border policy in several places we wanted to visit, so I couldn't bring my cryptocurrency wallet with me due to these key disclosure laws, I mean the border guy would literally force you to reveal your Bitcoin private key or else you are a terrorist. So fuck that, again the Government making our lives hard, and I have heard rumors that they have setup checkpoints at several border crossings where they literally force you to tell all your passwords. Totally Orwellian.
So obviously I could not bring my computer and my Bitcoin hardware wallet with me, so I had no access to my money while I was out of the country, we were relying on our debit cards, which trust me is very bad policy, but of course we had some cash too just as emergency since one restaurant had their card readers malfunctioning so it's good that we had cash too.
So at the end we settled for a cozy wellness/hotel/beach type honeymoon. And I didn't have access to my cryptocurrency stuff the whole time, since I left my stuff at home. But I did see the massive rise in Bitcoin's price during this time and I did lose money with the alts.
Now at this point I had 2 options, either worry about my money, since I didn't have access to it, I could have spent the whole time worrying and fuck up our honeymoon, or I could have just ignored it and enjoy the moment. Well I did choose the latter.
Although I really hate helpless situations, where I have no control over the outcome. I really won't fuck up the joy of the moment for some money lost.
And really this is what most people have to learn, just stop worrying about money some times. It is really not good for health and for mood to always chase the money. I have learned this now. So what if altcoins are down? I have invested in them because of their potential, so they should bounce back in the longterm..... THE REST OF IT IS NOISE.... SO WHY WORRY ABOUT IT?
Look if my investment strategy is fullproof and my risk management is good, which it is, then why should I worry about temporary price moments, and also destroy the joyful experience of our honeymoon for this? It makes no sense, both rationally and emotionally speaking.
It's not that you have to choose between "Carpe Diem" type of hedonism and rational empiricism, I think you can have both. You can have both fun and also be rational, if you organize your time and your life in this way.
So I have really learned this now, after all what is all the money worth, if not for spending it on pleasure. It's the experience that matters that you buy with the money. So it is rational to alternate between making money and spending money on pleasure afterwards.
Sources:
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Good post. I think that money are important BUT there's more important things like Love and that stuff. My boyfriend also sitting with his computer and analysing all that crypto, but I know He's doing it for our future and not to worry about money, and also we want to create something like fundation where we will help others people. :)
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Yes absolutely the thing is to find a balance between personal pleasure and work, it would be good if we could just have fun every single day, but before that can happen, resources need to be gathered. So it's a work<>have fun cycle. With good creativity you can even make your daily job fun to do.
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Love should be first in your tags! <3
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Oh some people are lucky enough to married another trader, so they can travel and trade together without feeling remorse :) But of course, honeymoons are different, like yourself, I think you did good by not spoiling it while worrying much about every tick movement. Cheers
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I am more like an investor than a trader, but you are right, I think it's my personality, I just don't stress myself a lot about the market, especially when I know that the stuff I invested in are solid.
I don't just put money in stuff based on rumors, I need solid proof before I invest in something, I think this is where the success is. And the variance in the price is just noise, you just have to sit through and not stress your life about it.
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Well said. I'm slowly becoming an investor, while I trade on the side. An investor has a different mindset than a trader, one can argue which side is better, depends on how much of loss each investor/trader can stomach. Cheers
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I think in the crypto world there is no difference, an investor invests based on valuation and usually holds and plans longterm, a trader usually invests reactionarily based on news and recent events to gauge the price.
Well you can't short in most exchanges here, and even if you could I would not go into margin trading, it has too many risks by itself. The crashes here are very soft, and you have to be a big cowboy to short a bullish market overall.
So a trader here basically just buys at dips and sells at the top, while an investor just buys and holds. So a trader is hunting the variance in the price, an investor the longer trend.
But it's all in the same context since it's an overall bullish market, both profit from rising prices.
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