I think I might be the richest millennial I know, or at least anybody who is born in 1988, besides Mark Zuckerberg.
How and why?
First, I think I am the only millennial I know with literally zero debt. Like zero mortgage, which is debt, zero car payments, zero college loans etc. Actually if I think about this in retrospect, growing up poor might have been the most beneficial things: seeing the evils of gambling via my dad, and crushing debt bankruptcy through my mom… Was probably the best indicator or learner that I had in terms of real life experience, in terms of how terrible the evils of debt is.
And also, even going to college… Essentially being able to go for “free”, because my family was poor, I got all these scholarships and grants, and work-study loans, which essentially means that I still have to work, but at least, I had to take on zero debt to pay for my dorm apartment etc.
Voluntary loans
The Only money I borrowed was about $10,000, more for fun; I used that money to backpack through Europe, travel the world in between my junior and senior year etc. But that was optional.
And also, I think the really really big thing; never spending more than $2500 USD on a car? I think that was the sticker price for the last car I purchased which was a 1990 Miata, when I was 21 years old, it might’ve been $3000 USD, getting it used on craigslist, ironically enough because the man selling it had a child on the way, and sold it because it was no longer useful to him having to raise a kid. Funny that I am in similar shoes now, now that Seneca is 3 1/2 years old.
Mindset
I think the number one critical thing is to just change your mindset. One thing which I have learned after the almost 15 years of being self-employed, ever since I was 21 until 36… Is truth be told, nothing in the world is really worth it. No amount of money eating out at a restaurant is ever worth it; purchasing beef ribs at Costco and baking it at home is at least a 100X superior yield than any restaurant, or even all all you can eat Korean barbecue; currently, my favorite spot is Chubby Cattle, but even though they issue there is they have a 90 minute time limit, I think my current record is about 70 plates of beef tongue. I just went to the recent little Tokyo branch which just opened, and the servers, their jaws dropped; asking me whether I was a bodybuilder, given how much I ate, even on the last call I asked for 20 plates of beef tongue, they were skeptical, but I finished it all quite easily.
Spartan is sexy.
True insights ,,, take real risks:
Y’all niggas still taking advances huh? Me and my niggas were taking real chances huh! – Jay Z
The ultimate mindset I suggest is going spartan. Just watch the movie 300, think about King Leonidas. Would King Leonidas blow his money on a Tesla, cybertruck, Lamborghini or Porsche? No! He would know that these things were just for the Persian slaves, those giving fellatio to King Xerxes.
Do you want to be one of the 300 Spartan elite, or do you be one of the million Persian slaves?
There is a motto in the US military, freedom is not free. I would refine this saying; freedom is expensive, very expensive.
The price is sacrifice
True freedom is what you decide to give up, forgo, or sacrifice. This is embodied via the fact that you never eat out, you don’t drink alcohol, you don’t smoke weed or do drugs, you don’t go on trips to Vegas, you don’t watch pornography, you don’t watch any media, you don’t listen to music, podcasts, etc. You don’t watch YouTube, Instagram or TikTok.
People think that being rich means to have millions of dollars, and I want to just spend it all buying stuff. But there is a difference between having $1 million in the bank, and going out and buying a $1 million Bugatti. 
Even Kanye West had a funny quote about being a multi billionaire; you don’t want to be a billionaire because if you are worth $1 billion, you go out and you buy a McDonald’s hamburger for a dollar, and now you’re only a $999,999,999-aire.
Investing
You want real real exposure to risk and reward.
For me, certainly there is a great surge of power joy when you see your investments yield. To see the number go up is good and to see it keep going on is a good thing.
For example, very surprising, people are starting to know that I am an investor, or a trader because I walk around super happy, huge grin on my face, like Arnold in his prime. A boyish grin. And smiles all around!
I think people can smell and sense high testosterone, high power and energy. Even though I dress like a homeless person, half of the time I’m not even wearing a shirt, but people they know.
So essentially the first rule on investing is simple: don’t lose money. Never put your money into anything that you think will cause you to lose money.
So for example, a lot of people think that bitcoin is super risky, but actually it is not. It is just very volatile. And funny enough, it’s a feature not a bug!
Higher volatility = higher returns
The volatility of bitcoin is a feature not a bug!
To quote Michael Saylor, volatility is vitality. The more volatile something is, the more energy they have. To quote the recent Bernstein interview that Michael Saylor had, the reason why LeBron James is the most potent force on the court is because he is the most volatile. Also, volatility is good when it comes to Tsunami because it has massive power. Look at the slides here.
Why are the traditional markets closed in the evening and the weekends?
And also, an insight I gleaned is the reason why bitcoin’s price goes up and down all the time, is that it is being traded 24 7, all the time in real time. Maybe the reason we see less volatility in the traditional markets is because they close! But imagine there was a Cuban missile crisis, Friday night, can you imagine the insanity; you’re not able to withdraw your money or sell your stocks until Monday morning?
“Why doesn’t the future look like the future?” – Elon
Currently we are in the year 2024… We are supposed to be so into the future. It still boggles my mind why in the year 2024, the markets close and open? I did some ChatGPT research on this, why this is, and there are some weird notions of work life balance, or maybe because back in day when stocks were actually traded on the physical floor, like the wolf of Wall Street, it is because they literally traded stocks like pieces of paper, and it was in the physical realm?
But now, because it is all digital… And half of the agents trading online are just bots and robots, there’s literally zero sense for anybody to trade anything that is not online.
Well let me give you a better example, we have all these hipsters telling us that film vinyl and analog things are better. But do they use an iPhone which is powered by gasoline? Or film cartridges?
Can you imagine living without the internet?
What’s more important, water or Wi-Fi?
Certainly water is more valuable, but I think the way that people treated nowadays is that Wi-Fi, having internet connectivity 5G is more critical.
I would actually say even with food; you could fast somebody for 40 hours, and even if they have water they will not die. But, if you try doing that with internet, I think the downsides would be much greater.
Easier to fast 40 days without food than to fast 40 days without Wi-Fi. 
How I became a trader
My first taste for investing was when I was around 15 years old, it was totally random, learning about stocks, mutual funds, etc. I remember buying about $900 worth of Adobe stock, in writing it up to around $1250, and then later buying some mutual funds. And holding it all in college, maybe it went up to around $1500 or something.
In fact, Dr. Ahmed my science teacher in high school first told me about aggressive mutual funds, and how I should become an emancipated minor and get into trading etc.
Financial freedom at the age of 16?
For me, I think the reason I first got into it was I wanted to feel superior, advanced, ahead of the curve. When most of the kids at school were still begging their parents for a PlayStation, I felt so advanced mature and superior,,, already knowing how to invest in the stock market.
In college, when I was hungry for my own financial freedom, I remember daytrading as a sophomore in college, waking up super fucking early to trade the markets, and note, this is me at around 19 years old. And feeling the hormonal rushes when my money would go up or down. And not being able to concentrate in class because I’m just thinking about the green or reds.
The best lesson of all time
Long story short, I ended up losing all of my money I think my senior year, maybe $3500 worth, because I accidentally misread some of the financials for this one oil company I was invested in (penny stock). I recall, I regretted this so much, and felt so saddened by this at the age of 21, thinking that I would never be able to recover. But now that I am playing with millions of dollars in investing and trading, I learned that it might’ve been the best thing that happened to me, with about 15 years of foresight. Why? I already got rid of the emotional roller coaster as a young child, and as a teenager, and a 21 year-old, which means now, as a 36-year-old man, I am far more calm collected stoic, and unemotional about it.
The stoic investor
My suggestion: don’t get too excited when your gains go up. Otherwise, you will become addicted to the gains. And you might lever up and take foolish financial risks, to see even greater gains.
Good greed, bad greed?
I personally believe there is a difference between good greed and bad greed.
What’s the difference?
Good greed is you’re trying to think 30 years ahead, ahead of the curve, see where the puck is going, not where it currently is. Chasing at least a 10X yield. Or even 100x, or 1000x. But over 30 years.
A foolish greedy person is into professional sports, sports betting, counting cards, playing poker and blackjack, and trying to “time” the market. And make gains in days, weeks, even months.
Michael Saylor and microstrategy has purchased bitcoin 40 times now, every quarter for the last 4 years.
30 years is the reason
If you think 30 years ahead, this cuts through the noise. This is the ultimate razor. ERIC KIM’s razor.
Certainly nobody likes to think 30 years ahead because they want immediate hedonic pleasure right now, through sexual and mental pleasure, physical pleasure, travel and exotic experiences, Omakase sushi, and the pleasure associated with driving a fast high-powered car.
But think about it, even if you have a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, or a Lamborghini with scissor doors, even a Tesla model S plaid, you have no skills. Any skinny fat loser can simply wedge his right foot all the way to the floor, and obviously it will be loud and go fast. This takes no courage besides the foolish fact that you might kill yourself or you might kill somebody else in their car with their kids on board.
Buy weights & bitcoin
My thought is the only true courage is physical courage, weightlifting, powerlifting, one rep Max lifting. The risk of physical injury is high, which motivates you to warm up, be cautious, and set up safeguards. I think one thing that people don’t understand is that weightlifting could actually be the safest activity out there because you could control all of the variables. For example if you’re tired and not in a good mood, the wise thing to do not is not do it. Compare this to professional sports, even when the players are exhausted, they are whipped like cattle to perform, apparently there are stories that back in the day in the NFL, it would be common for lineman to sniff lines of cocaine, before applying to hype themselves up. 
One day of victory is not worth a year of pain
For example, one foolish decision that I made doing an extremely heavy floor bench press, six plates, caused me to injure my wrist which has plagued me for a year and a half, the wise thing to have done was just to take the day off, one day of success is not worth a year and a half of misery. The only reason I did it was because it was my “off day”, and I wanted to stunt on other guys at the gym, very foolish.
Whenever you try to impress yourself, you shall succeed. Whenever you try to impress others you will fail.
I also think this is the wisdom of thinking long-term; nobody wants to be a Ronnie Coleman and be a cripple for the rest of his life, even if you win all the accolades.
What I learned from the book “Pumping Iron”
I think this is also where Arnold Schwarzenegger was very wise; he was on the juice and all of his buddies were, but he had the wisdom of getting out of the bodybuilding game in order to do more interesting ventures, like acting business etc. Because he knew that maybe, all of the bodybuilders taking steroids were doing irreversible harm on themselves.
People sometimes talk about the golden days of bodybuilding… But all these guys were on steroids! Now, it is kind of disgusting, the average female women’s Olympia might have been even buffer than Arnold in his prime.
Who is richer?
Talking to some homeboys from the Toyota dealership, when I ask them what is the difference between me and you? One of the guys said, genuinely, “You are free.” Possibly the best compliment of all time.
Even now, people do this big dick measuring contest, like who is richer. But, this is the wrong measurement.
Let us say you are a straight man, and you sell your soul in your butt hole for gay pornography, and you get paid $1 billion a year. Would you do it? Obviously not!
Certainly there is something sacred and profane here; there are certain things that one does not even for trillion dollars.
For example, if you could give me $900 trillion, but I had to sell my firstborn son into slavery would I do it? Obviously not. Not even if you took that $900 trillion and multiplied it by $1 trillion.
NASSIM TALEB Has this funny quote, to the person who says that they cannot be bribed, you’re just not offering enough money.
And I suppose this is the ultimate test, whether your ethics morality and your personal beliefs matter more than money. Or even the approval of your spouse, etc.
And I think the negative risk, the sacrifice, or the potential for downside is what truly dictates your real beliefs. And what you are willing to forgo.
How to get rich with bitcoin
Very simple, just opened up account with the Coinbase app on your iPhone or whatever, link it with your traditional bank, and just keep buying bitcoin, until the end of time. And the goal is to give it to your kids kids kids.
Become insanely Spartan and frugal, sell your second car, maybe remortgage or refinance your house to get more cash on hand, buy the bitcoin, and ride the 55% ARR until the end of time!
ERIC