Live data from Hacker News

Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

harrybrowne.org

21–30 of 118 posts

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#21
post #17

#13 - Keep some money overseas How exactly is this possible? I am a german citizen and resident, and after hours of reaearch a few months ago i couldn’t find ONE bank in the world I could open a bank account with. I always have to be at least a resident. Did anybody figure this out? My partner is from Canada and I would love to park some money there, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do so.

Why not store the money in Bitcoin instead? It's outside of government control and you should get a nice return on your investment.

Or lose it all, make sure to weigh the benefits and the risks.

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#22
post #17

#13 - Keep some money overseas How exactly is this possible? I am a german citizen and resident, and after hours of reaearch a few months ago i couldn’t find ONE bank in the world I could open a bank account with. I always have to be at least a resident. Did anybody figure this out? My partner is from Canada and I would love to park some money there, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do so.

Why not store the money in Bitcoin instead? It's outside of government control and you should get a nice return on your investment.

Yeah, interesting. So far I have plenty of crypto, but foremost as a high risk investment and not capital storage

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#23

#13 - Keep some money overseas How exactly is this possible? I am a german citizen and resident, and after hours of reaearch a few months ago i couldn’t find ONE bank in the world I could open a bank account with. I always have to be at least a resident. Did anybody figure this out? My partner is from Canada and I would love to park some money there, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do so.

Plenty of banks that don't need citizenship. I'm an Estonian, I live in Estonia, I work in Estonia, but my banking is done via N26 (German bank) and Monese (UK bank), both of which I opened within a day with simply proof of ID.

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#24

Just for context, this is from Harry Browne, who was famously (and perhaps not entirely fairly) labeled as a "gold bug" throughout his career. He was something of a hero figure among those who subscribe to Austrian economic theory, and actually the candidate for the US Libertarian party for president several cycles back. Off-topic (?) from that article, I'd be interested to hear what he would have made of the current…

Regarding Bitcoin, Rule #3 might apply:

"There's nothing wrong with speculating — provided you do it with money you can afford to lose. But the money that's precious to you shouldn't be risked on a bet that you can outperform other investors."

Edit: Rule #12 addresses it more directly: "Speculate only with money you can afford to lose."

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#26
post #8

He missed rule #0: Wealth is what you save, not what you earn or what you spend. There are many people with very high income but spending as high (or even higher!), so they have little or no wealth.

Agree, I'm a software engineer with naturally pretty good pay, yet I'm always broke. It's 99% to blame on my spending habits, which have increased equally with the increase of my salary over the years. A problem I am, and everyone should, aim to fix.

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#27
post #17

#13 - Keep some money overseas How exactly is this possible? I am a german citizen and resident, and after hours of reaearch a few months ago i couldn’t find ONE bank in the world I could open a bank account with. I always have to be at least a resident. Did anybody figure this out? My partner is from Canada and I would love to park some money there, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do so.

Why not store the money in Bitcoin instead? It's outside of government control and you should get a nice return on your investment.

A benefit of using a foreign bank as opposed to bitcoin is if my home country's bank accounts get frozen for whatever reason, I will need money to keep myself from being homeless.

Bitcoin isn't liquid enough for me to trust it for emergencies. If I needed to pay for a hotel or a plane ticket, the process of translating that to cash, then a pre-paid VISA card is way to complicated and probably expensive.

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#28
post #8

He missed rule #0: Wealth is what you save, not what you earn or what you spend. There are many people with very high income but spending as high (or even higher!), so they have little or no wealth.

Actually, cash flow beats cash. Cash is also a liability but a large enough steady source of income is very hard to beat. That's one reason why so many people that have cash try their hardest to turn it into a stream of recurring revenue that they can then live of without hurting the principal.

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#29

> Rule #1: Your career provides your wealth. I mainly disagree with the first rule. Your career should not provide your wealth. Your career should keep your bills paid, provide security for the future, and allow you to live a comfortable life. Investments in financial endeavors like real estate, businesses, stocks, etc, education, and family is what provides wealth. Update: Not sure why this post is getting downvoted…

Where does the money for those things come from, if not your career?

Re: Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)

#30

Just for context, this is from Harry Browne, who was famously (and perhaps not entirely fairly) labeled as a "gold bug" throughout his career. He was something of a hero figure among those who subscribe to Austrian economic theory, and actually the candidate for the US Libertarian party for president several cycles back. Off-topic (?) from that article, I'd be interested to hear what he would have made of the current…

Another relevant rule:

`Rule #9: Don't ever do anything you don't understand.`

I feel like this could apply to a lot of cryptocurrency evangelists (not all of course).

Post reply on HN