NoStereotypeArt

Skin in the game - Part 1: Intro

Added 2021-11-12 01:04:42 +0000 UTC

OK, first of all I want you to know that I’m no pro by any means, some of you here might have more experience than me or even be professional financial advisors, so please take my words with a grain of salt. This is not financial advice. I just want to share what I do, why I do it and what worked well for me 😊🙏🏼.

Because I don’t want WOC to miss out ❤️.

This is intended for those who are generally interested in investing in assets but just don’t know how and where to start.

I have been investing for 10 years, I started with little amounts, and I currently live off the interest of my investments. I retired from the workforce in December.

Investing is actually not difficult at all once you break the initial barrier. And once you have your own money invested you will organically learn more and more about how it all works. You’ll notice and look out for news to do with your investment and gradually absorb all the information related to it and what might impact its performance.

And the great thing is that most of the information you need is available for free online. It’s actually fun and even a bit addictive. I will share some of my sources with you 😘

I was never really interested in finance and I hated math at school. I’m an artist! But I don’t come from money and I had to support my parents and siblings from a young age. Even to this day I pay my parent’s rent and car lease. I used to hate money, or the lack of it, as it caused so much pain and trauma in my family growing up. I remember many days without electricity or hot water and my mom crying each night not being able to make ends meet for her children. The debt collector showing up every other week, taking TVs and furniture. My mom having to degrade herself by begging for mercy. It troubled me deeply having to see my beloved mother suffer, so I made a choice. I swore to become the man of the house at age 16. And I did.

My dad was a jobless abusive alcoholic at that time. But that was then, he is a different man now. I love him and we all forgave him.

I don’t hate money anymore. You gotta love it to attract it. Not in a decadent obsessive way but enough to enable the universal law of attraction. I just see it all as being a game. A game you can win by playing it right. By understanding its rules. A game played by the privileged for centuries. And I’m not talking about a gambling game because I don’t gamble. Never have done.

Learning more about the markets and what impacts them was such an eye opener for me. It gives you a broader understanding of how everything is related. A lot of it, if not most, is related to psychology; to emotion. Even to the stars. Market sentiments represent the overall emotional state of the population. Euphoria, fear, uncertainty, greed… etc

And these are represented through graphs. Graphs that go up and down, ebb and flow. Just like our lives. You can break everything down in patterns. Life is a pattern.

And it’s important not to get caught up in the moment. Sometimes you gotta zoom out and look at the full picture which is difficult when things are on a downwards path. In life and in the stock market. But historically ever since the beginning the US stock or crypto markets have only gone up long term. And this is the strategy I use when investing. I look at the bigger picture long term. I’m a long term investor. I pay less attention to short term fluctuations and I don’t day trade for quick returns, I don't gamble. I’ll get more into my personal strategy at a later time.

Once you understand the masses, what events influence their perception, their emotion at the time (i.e. pandemic fears, presidential elections, general trends…etc) and how the general feeling is impacting certain things, you can make investment decisions that will benefit you greatly.

For example, historically, most wealth in the US was generated during and shortly after market crashes. That’s why I usually only invest on red days when there is a lot of fear in the market and people panic sell.

That’s when you can buy assets at oversold prices, bargains. Also referred to as “buy the dip”, in case you heard this expression before.

Be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”.

When the fear subsides and the market recovers, your gains will be exponentially greater than for those who bought at the top.

You just have to be patient and not let your emotions make you panic. And you need to invest in quality assets with great fundamentals and future potential. (I’ll share a list of assets I personally believe in)

Once you understand the markets better and how the money game works you will understand everything better. The whole system and how to beat it without being completely at its mercy. Which we, POC, always have been. Puppets to the privileged in power. But things are changing. People of color and the working class have access now as well, and us “retail investors” are impacting and changing the game in a big fashion.

But you gotta do it the smart way because the game is rigged.

Everyone with a bank account and a form of identification (i.e. social security number in the US) can now open a commission free brokerage account with no minimum deposit required. That wasn’t the case not too long ago.

Recent unemployment data shows that people don’t want to do hard labor work for minimum wages anymore in the US; many rather invest their government pandemic stimulus checks in fast growing assets and hustle on the side. Many people even became financially free by gambling on meme assets like Game Stop and AMC stocks earlier this year, or Doge and Shiba Inu crypto coins. Many also lost everything in the process. I’m sure you heard about these in the news.

As a matter of fact African Americans are adopting crypto assets at a faster rate than other demographics like Whites or Hispanics. Crypto I think will level the playing field and is providing an unprecedented opportunity to generate true equality in the years to come.

There is a reason why this is not taught in schools, because the 1% needs to keep the labor force intact if they want to preserve their wealth. The working and middle class are generating wealth for them by sacrificing their personal time working 9-5, just to receive a shitty pension at 65 when you are too tired from a lifetime of hard work to really enjoy and make the most of your retired time. Fake system promises.

“The upper class invests money”
“The middle class saves money”
“And the lower class spends money”

When your life is filled with stress and hardship you need to compensate. You want to treat yourself to feel better. I know that feeling too well. But it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. A vicious cycle.

The only way to get out is to gradually invest over time as much money as you can in quality assets that grow. Instead of buying things you don’t really need who just temporarily give you comfort buy stocks or cryptos instead. With a little bit of conviction and patience you could make great gains and possibly reach financial freedom.

Inflation is at record highs. Some people believe hyper inflation will come. Inflation reduces the value of your currency's purchasing power, prices of goods are going up fast. Gas prices, food, rent… everything has gone up drastically and money loses its value at a faster rate.

And many experts believe it won’t go away at all. In fact the currencies of many countries worldwide are collapsing as we speak. Just look at Turkey.

That’s why saving money in a savings account is like throwing it out the window. That’s why your pension will probably be much less than you might expect it to be.

At current inflation rates your cash savings will be worth about half the amount in 10 years or less. To hedge against inflation you have to invest in assets that grow at a faster rate than inflation.

Next I will share how I got started in easy steps and how to figure out what your returns can look like based on "compound interest", which Albert Einstein once described as the “eighth wonder of the world" 😊💰