What a Bitcoin Standard Family Means
For our family, being on a Bitcoin Standard means that we save whatever we can in bitcoin and intend to hold it forever. We don't want to go through the process of buying and selling every month to cover normal operating costs, but anything extra (normal monthly savings, bonuses, xmas checks, etc) goes into bitcoin.
Some people might look at our system and say it is not a real Bitcoin Standard, while most people in the world will look at our system and say we are crazy.
Do what works for you and your family.
Why a Bitcoin Standard
My wife and I have been "aggressive savers" for many years now. Our friends could not understand how we bought an income property after 4 years of saving on 2 incomes, and then bought a single family home after 4 more years on a single income.
How We Got To a Bitcoin Standard
When I got into Bitcoin, my wife was not interested and was happy to let me do my thing as long as number go up. As we have aged into adulthood, learned about bitcoin, inflation, and the financial system, it eventually became obvious to me that we should put as much into bitcoin as possible.
In parallel, my wife began to see inflation kick-in and we kept hearing the repeat conversations from people around us ("Can you believe how much this thing costs?!?") - This environment opened up opportunities for me to explain more to her. Eventually, I had a very straight-forward and powerful financial conversation with my wife, where I walked her through the basics of inflation and bitcoin, and she she jumped to the conclusion herself - "So, should we consider buying more bitcoin?"
How We Run a Bitcoin Standard
As I said in the intro, there are several "rules" we have in place that make it easy for us to stack sats.
- Any bonuses, windfalls, gifts, etc, go into bitcoin
- Monthly retirement savings automatically goes into bitcoin
- Monthly rental profit automatically goes into bitcoin
- Roll any 401k, etc, into BTC ETFs (as soon as possible)
- In addition to putting money in, we take steps to decrease expenses
- Quarterly family financial meetings
- Agreements about timeline & reassessments
- Be grateful for what we have
Things to Keep in Mind
- Everything in this plan is flexible. If you need your $100 to buy food because you lost your job last week, you should probably cancel your DCA purchases.
- Extend your time horizon. Our goal is to store/grow our family's wealth over time. We are currently on a 10-year plan (more than 3 Halvings from today), at which point we will consider shifting to a new life phase.
- Have checkpoints. You may not want to update your spouse every day or week, but being open about what is going on in the market will go a long way to build trust. We do quarterly meetings.
- You always could have had more bitcoin, but starting now and building for your kids could be an amazing gift to pass on to them.
- Assuming that the bitcoin price increases over time, you will get less and less bitcoin per dollar. If you believe that bitcoin will continue to appreciate, it may be that you want to continue to buy even as the price goes up.
- Halvings are now a major milestone for our family. We're going to make it fun, have a halving party for the kids, etc.
- With kids, make them part of it but think first. I don't want my kid going to school and running their mouth about how much money the family has - bitcoin or dollars. Not anyone else's business.