10 years ago, I graduated Uni with no debt and about $1,000 net worth.
My first job (engineer) paid $100k/yr. After taxes & expenses, I saved $70k per year for 3 years.
With $200k net worth, I lived on $5k per year and for the past 7 years, I worked only 30% of the time – just enough to cover my expenses without dipping into my savings.
This year I sold bitcoin (bought for $7,000. sold for $1,000,000). My target to retire-retire was $800,000, so I’ve finally reached my goal.
The sell orders executed so fast that I don’t know where to put it. I already stuffed every US bank that I have to the $250k FDIC max, but my last sell order exceeds that. I’ve applied to open bank accounts with maybe 100 banks in the US, and I’ve only succeeded in opening 1. My requirements:
[1] No monthly fees
[2] No inactivity fees
[3] No phone or phone number required
[4] Online Banking with 2FA support (TOTP, Webauthn, or email)
99% of the banks that I’ve tried to open with auto-deny me. My credit is great. When I call and ask why, they say something about the information I gave them not matching their records. The ones that have an appeal process told me “the system” denied me, and there’s nothing they can do – even supervisors.
My long-term plan is to buy a small condo in a city and a lot of land in the country. But it’ll probably take me 6-24 months to find and finish those deals, and in the meantime I want to keep my money somewhere safe.
I’m also a bit worried about the USD tanking. I’ve looked into banks in Europe and Canada, but Canada requires a tax ID and I only speak English. Can anyone recommend a very stable bank abroad (with English language support) that a US American can open remotely that meets the above requirements?
Where would you put your money if you were in my situation?
Wow, that’s a very interesting take. One I’m very skeptical-of…
I try very hard to avoid investing in anything unethical, and when I look at the holdings of VTSAX, I see Apple, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, JPMorgan Chase, Exxon, Walmart. Fuck, they’re even holding stock in UnitedHealtcare.
You got rich off of Bitcoin which destroys the environment just as much as Apple.
The money you deposited in the bank isn’t sitting in a vault. Banks don’t just loan out the money deposited. The bank is putting part of your money in the market.
My biggest concern about Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Walmart is their history of abusing workers.
Bitcoin uses magnitudes less energy than the financial industry companies, it doesn’t use any additional energy as it scales-up, and most of that is renewable energy. So bitcoin is definitely the ethical option for the environment when it comes to non-physical money (despite the disinformation on the net about this).
I prefer to put my money in credit unions (non-profit banks in the US) that do not invest in war, animal exploitation, or fossil fuels. Most credit unions loan out their money to their local community to support small business. That, bitcoin, and buying stocks in other ethical companies has been my approach to ethical investing.
No, Bitcoin uses 100,000 times the energy per transaction compared to credit cards.
https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-mining-statistics/
It absolutely does use more energy as it scales.
It is currently using 2% of all electricity in the US.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364
The carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining are significant.
https://unu.edu/press-release/un-study-reveals-hidden-environmental-impacts-bitcoin-carbon-not-only-harmful-product
“To offset this footprint, 3.9 billion trees should be planted, covering an area almost equal to the area of the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Denmark or 7% of the Amazon rainforest.”
“During this time period, Bitcoin’s water footprint was similar to the amount of water required to fill over 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, enough to meet the current domestic water needs of more than 300 million people in rural sub-Saharan Africa.”
This is misinformation.
You sold the Bitcoin, you’re free of the HODL mentality, and can think rationally again. You don’t need to dismiss information because it is critical of cryptocurrency and is counter to your financial interests anymore.
Do you also think smoking tobacco doesn’t cause lung cancer? Or that burning fossil fuels doesn’t cause climate change?
I am the one thinking rationally. You seem to be incapable of detecting junk science published by big corporations.
It’s the same government and university research institutions that say tobacco causes lung cancer that also says Bitcoin uses more energy per transaction than a credit card.
You trust their findings that tobacco causes lung cancer yet you don’t trust their findings on crypto.
The key to your misunderstanding is the “per transaction” part. It’s a common misconception.
Now look at how much energy the whole financial industry uses. Put it on a line graph next to bitcoin’s energy usage. You can almost not even see the blip of bitcoin’s energy usage compared to the harm that the financial industry is causing.
Then learn how the energy does not increase as the transactions increases. This is a fact. The difficulty increases. It’s mathematical. Read the white paper.
Then maybe you can finally see the lie perpetuated by the financial industry, which is a disaster to our environment compared to the greener alternative of bitcoin.
Even in the recent Silicon Valley credit union failure. Where companies had 10s of millions in their accounts, it all got covered. It’s literally been decades since the government let account holders loose money in a bank failure. The PR is just too bad to let it happen.
Now in investment banks that’s a different story. You control the investments. Not the bank. The value of your account isn’t at risk if the bank goes down. Your assets can and would simply be transfered to another investment bank.
Investing isn’t condoning. Avoiding certain companies will only cost you money. It won’t effect them at all. A broad total stock market fund is the simplest option to start with. After you do more research, you can spread out to more places.
And the BTC network burns massive amounts of energy for no practical purpose.