Never Sell - do the math for a Secured Loan.

tl/dr: Don't sell, do the math for a secured loan.

About 4 years ago, I capitulated that I was never going to get out of debt. As soon as one debt was paid down, an emergency would arise, and debt would get loaded back up. After food, nearly all of my payments were to meet minimum debt servicing. Any extra would go to the highest interest rate.

I looked to bitcoin, and realized it was money that couldn't be taken from me in the event I defaulted on these cards, mortgage, hospital bills, etc, which was a distinct possibility if my health failed for longer than a week or two. In a worst case scenario, if I had bitcoin, I would have some money no one could take from me in a judgment.

So, I sacrificed even further, and completely hopeless about the debt, I stopped paying more than the monthly minimums. I started putting all left-over money aside into bitcoin, seeing its meteoric rise in 2017. It wasn't a lot at first, thankfully, because I got burned when the bubble popped in December 2017, so after that, I picked a number that I thought bitcoin was worth, and I kept buying it weekly anytime it was below $10k. When it was above $10k, I would put that money to pay down one of the debts more than its minimum.

I initially had a plan to sell some of the bitcoin I'd been saving - at the end of 2020, I could sell what I'd bought through 2018 for the best capital gains rate, and then I'd pay my debt down even further.

Now that we're nearing the end of 2020, I've been forced to re-evaluate my plan, because my outlook on money and bitcoin has completely changed over the past 3 years. In addition to building my bitcoin nest egg, I've managed to to pay off 1/4 of my debt, refinance my house at a lower rate, build up an emergency fund, continue to DCA into bitcoin, handle multiple emergencies that have arisen, and survived the Covid lockdown. These are things I never would have been able to do without a changed mindset.

Bitcoin is currently 15% over my DCA, and if I were to re-peg a bitcoin value for the next 4 years, I'd put it's low value at $35k, with highs near $100k. So why would I sell, even to clear debt, when the future value is ridiculously more than any interest I'd save paying down debt? Even if I used the extra monthly liquidity from removing a debt, my DCA would still rise dramatically, because any more dips below $10k are becoming unlikely.

So I did some math; if I secure a $5,000 loan with 1 bitcoin, at 10% interest over 12 months, that's $500 interest to pay. The credit card it's paying off would be $800 interest over the same time, with ~$200/month min. payments, and it would take much longer than 1 year at those payments. Even if I can't do more than $200/month payments on the bitcoin loan, the margin call at the end of the loan would be for less bitcoin than I had planned to sell at the end of this year, which wouldn't have paid off the loan fully to begin with. Much less bitcoin lost if the price rises anywhere near predictions.

I have enough in my emergency funding to prevent a margin call before the loan is due (if bitcoin drops to $7500), and I have enough monthly cash flow now to make $500/month payments without further sacrifice. This way, I can spend my bitcoin and keep it, too. Roll that $500 total interest paid into the DCA, and it's barely anything at all. At the end of it, I've saved over $300 in C.C. interest, cleared more unsecured debt, and kept my bitcoin. This is the best of all worlds.

Then I can do it again to take care of my last unsecured loan, and be debt free (except mortgage) without selling any of my capital. I can almost see the light at the end of the debt tunnel, guys.

The math doesn't seem to work on the mortgage - not yet, anyway. But my plan-B has changed folks - so long as I'm capable of working, I'm not selling bitcoin, ever. When I can't work anymore, I hope to have enough bitcoin saved up to live off of, and soon I can get there even more quickly.