Don't Lose Your SHIB Over It

Years ago I learned a valuable lesson about money that has thankfully stuck with me through the years and to now. It was a very simple lesson.

Getting rich and achieving absolute financial freedom takes time. There is no real get rich quick scheme out there.

There is another thing that I think is important to note here. When you thumb through the list of Forbe's Richest, beside each name it also says how the richest earned their money.

Nowhere on these lists does it say that luck was the source. But, there is one source that you can find very often on that list. The stock market.

The point is that how the rich get rich is through hard work, taking on enormous risk, and having the intestinal fortitude to weather it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But to get rich there is no getting around any of these things.

There are exceptions to every rule. There are also a large number of people on the list that inherited their wealth. The Mars kids from the candy empire and the Walton kids from the Walmart empire, for example.

The thing is, I have spent a lifetime from a very early age being frugal, saving my money, and investing almost all of it into something. Real estate, the stock market, and other various ventures. I did it with the desire to get rich. I did it with the desire to achieve absolute financial freedom. It is why I continue to do it today. And while I have managed to accumulate wealth, of course it will never be enough to satisfy me. To my mind there is no such thing as having too much money. In my philosophy "too much money" simply does not exist.

But there was a time when I thought it all just wasn't happening fast enough for me. There just had to be another way, I thought. And so I started to explore ways to speed things up.

I got into penny stocks.

I got into other things too. Very risky ventures. I invested in the private stock of a bank that went kaput. I got involved with a tilapia fish farm in Hainan, China that is now no more. And probably one of the worst investments I ever made was investing in a Chinese telecommunications company after I got involved with two characters, George Alvarez and Colin Tay. I did not lose all of my money on that one, or even a significant percentage of my entire portfolio. But I lost enough that it hurt just a bit more than other losses I had in the past. It was the valuable lesson for me that is still with me to this day, which I will repeat for good measure and emphasis.

Getting rich and achieving absolute financial freedom takes time. There is no real get rich quick scheme out there.

I revisit this experience as I dive into the cryptocurrency markets, where no doubt there are stories galore about people who struck it rich with little or no money down, and who did it very quickly. I think about a noise post I read recently that pointed out that if one would have invested $1 in 2009 in Bitcoin it would have bought 1,309 coins that would be worth nearly $72 million today as of this writing.

I revisit this experience as I dive into a coin that is getting a lot of hype right now. Shiba Inu.

I invested a very tiny amount of money. A mere $40 which got me roughly 1.8 million SHIBs. If it goes to a penny it could be worth $18,000. And that's a pretty hefty return to say the least. Not life-changing money of course. But who is going to frown on what adds up to about a 45,000% gain?

There is danger in this thought, though. Because Shiba Inu is a long way from a penny per coin. More than that, there is danger in considering other coins that produced massive returns for some people and assigning that excitement to something like a Shiba Inu coin as well.

Bitcoin being the main example. But Doge was kind of like that for some people as well.

Millionaires were made practically overnight.

Did luck play a role in that? I think in the case of crypto it very much did. Not unlike some people in the stock market got lucky when they picked stocks like Microsoft, or Amazon, or Google in the early days of those stocks.

No matter if it is crypto or stocks, one is always looking for the next big thing. And sometimes one can get a bit ahead of themselves dreaming that maybe they have found it, and are willing to go all in to cash in on the big prize.

If I make just one good pick in penny stocks it will pay for all the ones I got wrong.

The thought crossed my mind very briefly. With all this hype around Shiba Inu, what if I just dropped $5,000 into it. I could do it. It would not hurt me. But what if I did? I could buy 181,686,046 SHIBs. And then if it went to a penny what would that be worth?

Roughly $1.8 million.

Money like that does indeed change things up quite a bit. It's a massive return, and has more benefits than not. And it's the kind of potential return that makes the mind run a bit off course, just like I did when I got involved in penny stocks and other risky ventures.

What if went to a dollar per coin? My God, this is potentially $182 million. But could it be the next BCH? Then it would be worth $109 BILLION!!!

Look out Jeff Bezos, here I come...

As I said, this can be a very dangerous way to think. It can get a lot of people into a lot of trouble. It is this kind of thinking that got me in a little bit of trouble. The key takeaway here is that slow and steady wins the race.

Sure, there are stories of lucky people all the time. Someone wins the lottery. Someone picks just the right stock at just the right time. Some people took a whim on Bitcoin and made out like gangbusters.

But these lucky people are also few and far between. They are not the masses. Most of us got in too late or missed the idea altogether. Most of us did not get filthy rich. Most of us are still trying to get there. Most of us are still looking for the next big thing.

It could be Shiba Inu, or it could be something else. Or it could be Bitcoin all over again when it will be worth $1 million in the next 12 years.

The thing is that I think in all of this, and in any decision we ultimately make, it is better to keep a level head and think before we jump. Take it slow and steady, and be cognizant of the risks we are taking. And be satisfied that the level of risk we may be able to afford may not afford us that life-changing return. But it still puts us ahead in the game without losing our shirts in the meantime trying.

Without losing our sh*t, which was the play on SHIB I was shooting for when I wrote the title of this article.

If we lose our sh*t and lose our minds and get too ahead of ourselves and allow for dreaming to get in the way of making common sense decisions, we may lose our sh*t too in the form of empty wallets, and having to start all over again.

It is much better to proceed informed and with calculation and a common sense and realistic approach than to dive into an unfamiliar pool blindfolded, unaware if there's even water in it.

Lead image courtesy of Pixabay, user yen3456. Dog Shiba Inu - Free photo on Pixabay