199. How To Set Your Crypto Goals And Not F**k This Cycle Up

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring in world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of our scaling, the leading crypto research company here in Australia. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a subscribe if you're on YouTube or follow us on your favorite podcasting app. Now today we're talking about I stuffed up that intro twice now how to set and achieve your in crypto. This is a big one that a lot of people struggle with and we've got a process that we take every one of our clients through and members at Collective Shift. And we wanted to talk a little bit about how you can set your goals and also to share how we think about it and some of the mistakes we see people make. So Bergs, I hand over you mate. Where and how do people start thinking about goals and when to take profits and how does that even start to occur?

Yeah, so we've had this question a lot just from our members, but I'm getting it a lot on Twitter as well. Cause you see people say take profits if it's life changing money, but what does that really mean? And it really depends on your goals and your timeframe. So is your timeframe short? Is it within the next six months? Is it longer term? Five years, 10 years? You need to figure out what that is and how your goals fit into that. So if you, if you're like well I need $10 million in the next six months you're gonna have to go hyper risk and you're probably gonna lose all of your money. So you need to be realistic with your goals. But some of the goals that I've heard and I want to give people examples of what to think about, some of them are it can just be a holiday. I want $10,000 to go on a holiday. It could be taking a few months off work, it could be working three days a week instead of five days a week. And the way you calculate that is okay, I'm earning $100,000. If I'm working three days, it'll be like roughly 60k. I need to make up that 40k difference. So let's say I want to do that for three years, that's 120k. When you hit that number, sell and your life will be changed for the next three years. That is something you absolutely want to lock in. Changing jobs, that pays 50k less per year. Let's say I'm in a corporate job, or let's say it's $100,000 less per year. I'm earning 200 grand, 300 grand, I'm a high flyer and I want to change jobs. I'm at 300,000. If I change jobs into a different industry or something I like more, or something, something that's more time flexible, where I'd have to work 80 hours per week, that's 100 grand less. And let's say I want to do that for four years, that's $400,000. That is the total you will need to get to which will change your life for four years. Taking six months off to travel or reskill. A lot of friends that I talk to have got themselves into a lot of debt with their mortgages and their lifestyles. And I can't change jobs. And to change an executive job can take up to six months to find an equivalent position in another company. So if you figure that out, the other question I ask you is what if you got fired tomorrow? How long would it take you to then find another job, work out what that amount of money is, sell your crypto and change your life. Another one is paying off your mortgage. You might have a half million dollar mortgage. You hit that number, sell that, your mortgage is paid off. Think about how free you are going to feel if that's done rather than just having crypto sitting there. And another one is, it can be your fire number. So financially independent, retire early. And this is how you calculate that number. You work out what your monthly burn is going to be. So this is everything you spend in a month. It's your subscriptions, your bills, your mortgage, everything you do, all your travel rolled up. And let's say you spend $15,000 per month over a year, that's $180,000. So to work out your fire number, you get $180,000 times by 25, which is $4.5 million. Once you hit that number, you can invest that money and using the 4% rule, which is essentially after tax, you will get 180k per year. Couple of things to note with this, that doesn't account for burning down on that four and a half million that never goes away. This is in perpetuity and you're going to get significant gains if you just invest that in something like ETFs. It doesn't include superannuation. Roth IRA, 401k or a pension. So that number is actually a lot lower than people think. And when you're actually not working, you actually spend a lot less because you got more time on your side and really think about when do you do this? So this is a question that we get particularly among people that have a bit more money. When do I do this? I've got a goal. I've hit my goal, I need to sell, but I don't want to sell. This has happened to me personally where I wanted to purchase a house for my child and I'm very close to hitting that number and I haven't sold well. Why is that? Well, if I did that now, they're going to need that house in, I don't know, 10 years when, when they're, you know, older and I will have to maintain that house. How much is that house going to go up in 10 years versus and all the headache around, you know, managing it, taxes, all that kind of thing. I can't be bothered versus holding bitcoin. I believe that will appreciate more in that 10 years and I'll be able to buy a lot more house in those 10 years. So my strategy has changed from selling bitcoin when it hits a certain number to keeping that bitcoin selling my other coins. And that goal is now delayed where I'm going to make a trade. But you have to remember if my goal was I want to spend more time with my wife and child and I've hit my number, I will be selling tomorrow because that is a time based goal. And this is time is your most valuable, non renewable asset. You're not going to get more time as you get older. So you need to do that now. I would be selling and if you do time based goals or if you bring your goals forward, you also have to remember that these will be paying memory dividends. So the whole thing is a marshmallow test. I can go on holiday this year or I can wait two or three years and go on two holidays. But if I take that holiday this year, I've got extra years of memory dividends, of remembering time with my friends, my family, the fun that I have. And it could also change me as a person. These are the things that you need to consider in your goals. So go through all of those and work out what is meaningful change to you. It might be not having debt over your head, it might be changing jobs, it might be going somewhere, go to South America for three months. Whatever it is to you, it doesn't have to be Ben, we Hear this all the time. I want to retire my bloodline. What the fuck is that? No, you don't want to have $20 million and then no one's ever going to work again. That is the beginning of your problems. Right? There's like, I don't believe in like people actually retiring. Like I don't know anyone that has a lot of money that is retired. They are also working in some way using that part of their brain, building teams. Like people generally high achievers need to have that as part of their lives. And you've got some lessons here. You've done a lot of these strategy sessions. And what are some of the challenges that people come across when they're trying to set these goals?

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head like time based goals and memory dividends. I love the memory dividends thing. Like people are not setting goals based on living a better lifestyle. It's all about make X dollars, become a millionaire, do this, do that. It's like, well why, like why do you want to do that? Why is that important?

You need to go deeper. That's just lazy saying I want X number. Because when you get to the number you'll just increase the number. But if it's, and you taught me this where it's tied to something specific like getting your folks a house and changing their lives or spending more time with your family or not being stressed out every day at work and being fat and sick and having like burning in your stomach because you hate going to that job. That is life changing.

So it's spot on. So I think a couple of things that I find. People make mistakes. One is they don't know what's realistic and they get too crazy with their expectations. And this is across the board. Someone will want to turn $50,000 into a million or they'll turn actually their, their good portfolio of a couple hundred thousand to four hundred thousand and now they reckon they can make two million. So they move the, the, the goals and, and that's kind of the next step. Next component is like moving goal posts or changing goals. Is, is the reason why people round trip so much. They get greedy, they change their goals, they set expectations too high. Like no other industry or no other sector are you making these sorts of returns in crypto. But yet people want more and that's why they stuff it up.

You lose, you, you suspend reality. In crypto you see all these crazy screenshots that people have. You only see the winning ones, you never see the losing ones. It's like your mate that gambles on horses or goes to casino or plays poker. I made this, I made that. Never ever tell you about the losses. And the whole thing is you want to get rich slowly over time. That a benefit of crypto is that happens a lot faster. But if you want to turn 400k to 2 million, you should be looking at least 1 to 2 cycles to do that. You should be not doing it within a cycle, which is you need to.

Be realistic, which is the next thing. Burgson, now again too short term thinking. People are only thinking like, I've got to make this money in the next six months. Why? How?

What?

Like what? Like, you know what I mean. You, you have no ability to change what the market does. The market doesn't give two flying about you. Why do you need to make that within this period of time? And what happens if you don't? Now what's your plan?

You know, like it's, it's so crazy. Like in a traditional market, you're making 7 to 8%. It's going to take roughly 7 to 10 years to double your money with crypto in bitcoin alone, you're making 45% compound annual growth rate. That is insane. You're doubling your money every two and a bit years and yet you're still dissatisfied. And you need to get there faster. What is the rush? Where is the fire? You're way more wealthy than you were two to three years ago. You can do so much more with that wealth. You can change your life. You can sell down portions of it. I don't understand where the fire is and why everyone needs to do it in one cycle. There's this whole on off mentality in the world. It's like you're either incredibly right wing or incredibly left or you know, you're this supporter or that supporter. It's like, no, you're either all invested or you take all of your money out. That's not reality. You take some of it out when you need it. You change parts of your life and you change as you go along.

Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. The next one on that as well is, you know, passive income. A lot of people want to make passive income. Well, that doesn't really exist in crypto. Crypto is not a cash generating asset. It only generates a yield. Sorry, you can generate a yield through staking some of your assets like Ethereum, but even then, okay, you earn 4 or 5%. What happens if Ethereum doesn't go off for the year? You're back to Square one again, like, it's very hard to create a passive income to replace other areas of your life with crypto. What I think is a better idea is create wealth through crypto, through the growth of the asset, and then go and buy other assets that generate income, whether it be property or, you know, dividend, creating stocks or whatever that might be. But the. The goal of owning crypto is asset growth, not cash flow. So, yeah, I think people like the idea of passive income, but. And some people might sell the dream that you can do that in crypto, but it's very, very risky. You'd have to do it with defi and do some crazy stuff that you don't know what's going on, you don't understand, you have time for. And you're probably going to lose the.

Two words that whenever I hear from someone, passive income and financially free, I run for the hills. Like, whoever is talking like that does not have money. I guarantee it. Yeah. Like, you and I have never said passive income in our lives because we know that's just. And we would be. We'll be a lot more specific. So if you're investing in crypto, think of it as your savings.

Yeah.

And your savings just appreciate over time. You would be much better off to just have your money there and sell a portion of it and use that cash when you need it. Compared to putting it into another asset. You would only do that for diversification, for safety, if you want to remove some risks with the way that crypto is going.

Right, spot on. And that was the last bit here, which sort of leads into some of our goals, which we'll talk about in a second. But I don't think people are talking enough about stacking bitcoin. And that's the ultimate goal, is to build a really big stack of bitcoin. Like, that's one of my. And that's one of your goals. I think people are thinking too short term and not thinking about where bitcoin could be in the next five, 10 years. And I think stacking bitcoin is a huge priority for. Should be for a lot of people.

Exactly right. And remember why you're investing. Like, why are you going through the pain of investing and spending all your time, you know, researching and setting up your tools and thinking about it. You're doing it because you want more money or more assets. Right. And why do you want more money? Well, to change your life.

Yeah.

You want more money because it's just another tool. And you can then spend that money. You either want you know, comfort, security. You want more income to spend.

Yeah.

You want whatever it is that you need. This is why you are doing it. And don't just do the first part and grow that capital sum and have money, you need to do the second part and spend it or give it away or use it for something. The change that you want to see in the world, whether that's with other people, people you care about or with yourself.

Yeah, yeah, spot on. So let's talk about our goals. Burgs, how are you thinking about your goals in crypto? What are you trying to achieve? Just give me a few sort of top line things of what your, what your goals are at the moment.

Yeah. So definitely getting the house as investment property, but that will not be buying that. That's just holding BTC and trading it for a house. And always checkmates quote sticks in my head where he started buying Bitcoin in 2019. In 2024 he can buy roughly two times more house than if he bought it in 2019, which is incredible. Again, the marshmallow test. You leave it alone, you know, leave marshmallow for 10 minutes, you get two, leave it for 20 minutes, you get four. That's essentially what we're doing here. Other goals are 100 cash, 100k cash per year for spending. This is on top of my burn. So I still work, my expenses are covered by my wage, but I want an additional $100,000 per year to just spend on things that I want to spend on. That sounds like a ridiculous goal, but it is very, very achievable. I will achieve that through selling down my crypto, selling down my ETH and other shitcoins and that'll produce capital and then I will spend that capital because between the ages of 40 to 60 are your go go years. That's when you spend the most, when you're still mobile and you can do things. And I want to live a rich life and it's going to cost money. So that's what I'm going to do. Going to also stack bitcoin and spend more time with my family.

Love it. Yeah. I think like they're like, what do they call it? Lifestyle chips. It's great. Like it's the reason you work hard, right?

Yeah. There's this very like kind of psychology you have to undo where if you don't grow up with money and you're like, you say something, it sounds outlandish. I want to spend 100, an additional $100,000 of discretionary spending, which is $2,000 per week. It's a lot of money just on stuff, whether it's experiences or.

You know.

I don't know, new pinball machines, whatever I want. Like it sounds outlandish, but if you put the time and effort in and you've been investing for a significant period of time, those things are now available to you. And what do I do? Just leave that 100 grand in assets and then it becomes 200, 400, 800. At what point do you start harvesting that? And this is like, you know, it's a forcing function for me to actually change my life and do more things with it and just live a larger, more full life.

Yeah, no, all for it. All for it. So mine buy mum and dad a house, which I think everyone knows at this point. So I'm hopefully be able to do that in the new year, which I'm super excited about.

You're not far away, man. You're pretty close. You're like, you're getting your paperwork together and everything, mate.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's gonna be, yeah, hopefully, hopefully Q1 or Q2 next year. And I feel as though it's gonna be my first big diversification outside of crypto, which is super exciting. So.

And also it's great because, yeah, absolutely, man. And I mean, houses cost $4 in Tasmania, so it's taken Ben how many cycles to make four bucks.

Like too many cycles. Humble beginnings to $4 homes.

Potentially. Also looking at getting another rental, just depending on how my bitcoin and crypto portfolio goes. It depends on how large it can grow. My big goal is to stack a bunch of bitcoin this cycle. We've sort of been buying the dips both on the balance sheet and personally as well throughout this cycle. So I want to continue to stack bitcoin, also have a fair chunk of cash or slash stable coins to reinvest in the next bear market and then, yeah, that's pretty much it for me at the moment. So just stack bitcoin and get ready for the next cycle because that's where we can really compound it.

When you have cash and stables to reinvest, are you going to be selling down your altcoins and your bitcoin?

Yeah, I'm going to be selling down most of my alts and yeah, maybe up to 50% of my Bitcoin depending on where it goes. Maybe I don't. Maybe I just keep stacking bitcoin too. There's definitely a world where maybe bitcoin doesn't have a defer A bear market as, as, as, as previous cycles. So, yeah, we'll see, we'll see how the market plays out. But, yeah, long term, stack as much bitcoin as I can and sell down a lot of my alts to reinvest.

Oh, and, bro, not financial advice, folks. Sold off all my shares in my personal holdings.

Yeah.

Bought MicroStrategy exclusively.

Nice.

Yeah. I went down the rabbit hole and I'm like, oh, I can't ignore this, mate. Like, I don't even care about the price.

Just jam it in there long only love it. Oh, just. And he's just so freeing. He's just going to keep buying. Well, how good.

Did you see what he put out? Where he wants to expand the amount of shares on offer from. I think it was like 300,000 to like 10 billion or something. Like, it's absolutely incredible. People, like, this is going to dilute the share price. This was going to happen, bro. He's just doing exactly what he said he was going to do. He's getting cheaper capital or equity wherever he can to stack as much bitcoin as he can and front run the entire world. Let's go.

He's the most bullish bitcoin buyer. It's ridiculous.

Giga, Giga Chad. And he's going to pump the price and he's not selling, so that's just going to sit there, which is going to reduce supply. I love it. You wait till. So my mates and I are at the pub and we're talking about how we're having a bit of a joke in 2016. We're talking. We're in economics class when we're studying business, doing our MBAs, and we talked about China, debasement of currency, all this sort of stuff. That and Brexit was happening at the time, 2016, and that is still happening today and there is no way out. And my friends, like, they buy bitcoin, they stack it, but they still give me a lot of shit about it because they're pricks, right? They're all MBAs, they're all pricks. And they tell me, they're like, oh, they're going to start selling currency and buying bitcoin and they're joking about it. I'm like, but, bro, what's the other alternative? And then they're like, oh, like, this is actually going to happen. People are going to do this because that is a way out of currency debasement. Correct. And I'm like, bro, finally you get it. And the first country that does it, a Lot of like big country that does it. A lot of countries are going to follow and we get to front run all that.

Yeah.

Which is incredible.

No one ever wants to be first. No one's be last. And if the US get on board, or anyone big, oh, it's go time.

This is why, like we actually deleted the episode because Ben was. He was a bit drunk. But in there we had our bitcoin predictions and I was predicting like previously it was like 150. Now it's like 250 to 300. 300 if we get a strategic reserve.

Yeah, I agree. We won't have to redo just the predictions episode. That'd be a good one actually.

Yeah. Ben wasn't drunk. He was just, how should we say, complacent in his duties.

Complacency, My duty. We were late to post it and it just didn't make sense anymore, folks. You know, I would. I have quite high standards. The quality I put out. Bergs was pretty happy for it to go out but I set a high standard for better Berg. So we didn't put it out.

Then Ben was just. He was ashamed that he let me down again. And he was like, no, we can't put her up, mate.

Nah, I used to be ashamed and now it's just too many things to count. So I'm not ashamed anymore.

He's used to it. Just keep, keep digging a bigger hole for me, mate. Just throwing me down. Hey, Bergs, check this out. Sparta.

Every time. Mate.

This is our 200th episode, mate.

That's gangster. How good's that?

We might have miscounted it, but.

I think it's our 200th, so. Wow. Thank you to everyone for. I don't know. I know. I don't know why you keep tuning in, but our numbers are growing. We're getting more and more people joining in. I think we're up to 43. No, we're up to. This is 199. We miscounted Berg, so. No, you gotta wait.

We. We is not me, we is you. Let's make that clear.

There's no I and we, mate.

There's no I team. I think we've had a few episodes. We've not put a number on it.

Yeah.

So probably. We're probably like 300. Yeah. Like four.

But how good is this? Like if you've been with us from the start. First of all, you're an absolute champion. Thank you for listening. Hopefully you've taken some of our advice and you bought some bitcoin you've been with us on the journey. You've seen a bit of growth happen with both Ben and I. The way we're thinking we're getting a bit more strategic and we're achieving our goals. Man it feels good. The company goals, the personal goals and the investing goals.

Yeah, very exciting. Very very very exciting and yeah we've got some some good things planned for for next year. We're going to try and bring on some some awesome guests and keep bringing some some great quality content con coming to you so if you've got any other ideas, topics you want us to cover, please let us know. You can tweet at us at Babyback Berg or at Ben Simpsonau or our what is it Ben and Bergs on Twitter as well. You can tweet us there and we'll make sure to bring to you next year but thank you so much again. Thank you Bergs. Good episode. See you next time.

Thanks Champion and happy New Year everyone.

Yeah, see you folks.

See Champions.