We’ve been grinding for years to pay off debt and are finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Husband knows absolutely nothing about the stock market. I just started investing within last couple of years and trying to educate myself. I started by opening a Robinhood acct (I already know), and it has around 10k in it. Most is in big stocks (Amazon, Google, Walmart, HD), and about 2-3k is in Bitcoin that I know I don’t “own”)
We are maxing out IRAs for both of us with fidelity (going on 2 years) and all of our kids have 529’s going. We have 3 kids under 8. I’m confident we will be able to continue to save and invest.
I’m thinking about cleaning out the Robinhood acct and putting the 10k all into bitcoin and self storing. My husband doesn’t care what I do with this account because it’s mostly money I’ve saved on my own. But I’m nervous! And some of my stocks were purchased when market was tanked. I will do all my research and practice with small amounts first. But is this a good idea? We don’t have tons saved yet so losing it would hurt. But we’re also 40 yrs old and I think it’s a risk that could really pay off for us. I’m just so nervous! I grew up poor so it’s a lot of money to me. I didn’t post in the beginner Bitcoin thread because I want the advice from this group.
Posted by Silver_Monitor_7619
11 Comments
You will have to pay capital gains tax on anything you take out. Just keep your money in the stock market and start allocating to bitcoin when you have a little extra.
I’m a retired boomer, so I can’t afford to lose money/value, at this stage of my life.
I have enough money in stocks and cash to comfortably survive the next four years.
The total remainder of my retirement savings are in bitcoin. If I had the slightest doubt about the long term value of bitcoin, I wouldn’t have dreamed of making the decision to do this.
If you’re sure that you won’t need that $10k for the next four years then, in your situation, I would obviously put it all in to bitcoin 🙂
I would put it all into bitcoin. Everything is going to 0 against bitcoin long term. I don’t believe diversification is the best tactic to generate wealth, I do however believe diversification is a good way at protecting wealth.
You will need to pay tax on any conversions/sales as per your countries capitol gains tax regulations, so bear that in mind.
Congratulations on destroying that debt! I’m a yes vote.
Yeah, whatever you decide to do, don’t use Robinhood, I know you know, but honestly you’re much better off using Fidelity or something of the like for stocks, using an exchange for buying and selling crypto (Coinbase or Kraken) and then for long term storage using some sort of hardware wallet, from Bitbox, to Trezor, to Ledger, whatever fits right for you!
Your main task should be to learn good security practices before jumping into self custody. Being your own bank means that you should be capable to safeguard the funds as safely as a traditional one.
A safe strategy would be:
– Buy a hardware wallet and generate a new seed
– Backup the seeds words using offline methods (paper, metal plates, etc) Never store them on any type of digital medium.
– Reset the hardware wallet and restore the seed from backup. Check if the first address generated is the same as the one in the original setup.
– Safely store your seed backup. That’s up to you, should choose a wise balance between being a safe place protected from an accidental 3rd party exposure, and not being to complicated to retrieve in a undetermined future.
– Beware of scam attempts. Never ever reveal the seed words to any type website or support person. The only use of the seed should be directly on your hardware wallet, not on any other type of device connected to it.
You should be investing in low-cost index funds instead of picking individual stocks as amateurs. You’re much more vulnerable to market swings the way you’re doing it.
Not “owning” your BTC is fine. You have much more liquidity and are not vulnerable to UTXO issues. If you had this BTC at an exchange, the right move would still be to leave it on the exchange’s books instead of moving it to self-custody until you had quite a lot to move.
Gambling $10k on any one asset at your age is a big risk no matter what the asset is. Do you have ample cash (fiat) savings?
You didn’t mention what type of debt your carrying…throwing cash into a RH account when your carrying 30k of credit card debt is dumb.
Making sure to get your employer match while paying on a low 30yr mortgage is not dumb…..both are debt, both are “bad” but one is waaaaay worse than the other.
I did almost same as you with my “individual fidelity”
In case you did not know, you can get an individual fidelity account and it works somewhat like robinhood.
Anyhow, I sold off my entire portfolio at a $3k LOSS when bitcoin was in the $25k ish range. Bought bitcoin and moved it to a cold wallet.
Boy do I feel like I am a genius! My loss recovered. ☺️
I have no idea what advice to give you.
Good luck!
You’ve got the right idea. Dump all those useless stocks, put it into bitcoin, then move it off Robinhood and into a self custodial wallet. Get a solid hardware wallet, like a Coldcard, Foundation Passport, or Seedsigner (self-constructed). BTCSessions on Youtube has several great walkthroughs that will explain this step by step. Then just HODL through the bull runs and bear markets.
Theres a sub r/bitcoinbeginners. Has alot of good info