Day 226 on FIRE: Adding Crypto and NPS to investment portfolio

I finally bought Bitcoins! 0.04 BTC to be pricise! I have also added NPS to my investment portfolio and got an awesome deal on a new Laptop from Amazon!
Adding NPS National Pension Scheme and Crypto to my investment portfolio

Hey there! It has been a two weeks since my last FIRE update. It has been quite an eventful two weeks.

We have still not got Netflix. Life goes on without it. I reported my May’20 finances a few days back, check it out if you haven’t already. For the past month or so I have been saving money for some major investments. As the first of that, I have put in Rs.50,000 into National Pension Scheme.

NPS to investment portfolio mix

National Pension Scheme (NPS) offers better 8% to 10% of growth. It is locked in till I turn 60. I could write separately detailing the pros and cons of investing in NPS. But for the moment, this is purely in order to save taxes. Plus, last year I did not have surplus funds.

Recently, with the Finance Minister extending all investment deadlines for 2019 to 2020 financial year to end of June, it made sense for me to put in the money saved from the last 2 months into NPS.

For the Rs.50,000, I will be getting a tax break worth Rs.15,000. This and the touted 8+% of growth makes it worth my while. And I used ET Money app for investing. It took me 10 minutes to open a new NPS savings account and invest the Rs.50,000. Simple as that!

Got some bitcoins when the prices went down

After months of waiting for the right time to pick up some Bitcoins, I have finally got some. I now own 4% of a Bitcoin. Not much, I know. Ultimately, I hope to keep picking up Bitcoins during dips to finally have 1 full Bitcoin some point of time in the future. Just a whim of mine!

For this time, transactions costs etc included, I paid about Rs.30,000 to get the crypto into a wallet I own. Now, I am experimenting on a few ways to put the crypto to some use and generate me some passive income. More on this later.

Savings% and Increasing Income

Recently I was checking out my income to savings ratio. As of now, I am saving a bit over 60% of my income. While that is great, my friend Bhavesh (@cabhaveshjain) says it can still be improved further.

Interestingly, he does not say that I need to reduce my expenses. Rather, he is pointing out to increasing the income, which happens to be one of the key principles of FIRE.

I am working on a few side hustles that will in the near future help boost my income. All of them are in the infant stage and I can’t comment much on it at the moment. But, once thing is very clear, like I pointed out when setting my FIRE goal, simply saving from my salary alone will only help me get to about Rs.3 Crores. If I am to reach my stretch goal of Rs.5 Crores, then I need to have a steady stream of income from side hustles as well.

ULIP Season

My ULIP and ELSS policies are due, I need to add about Rs.1,00,000 to them this month. I have been scrounging and saving up for this too. And the best part, Paytm is allowing me to pay using my credit cards for this. So I get to pay back the cards at the end of next month.

A new laptop at a bargain. Thanks Amazon!

Had to get a new laptop for Rs.33,000. Went for a refurbished Asus from Amazon Renewed. i5 processor, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD, 2GB NVIDIA graphics and a somewhat decent build quality. What was surprising was that I got a BRAND Freaking new laptop. Not a scratch or dot in sight. Looks like someone bought the laptop, saw it was slow and returned it.

I knew the laptop is slow BTW. It is running on the older mechanical hard drives. All I need to do now is to buy a SSD from Amazon (not renewed this time) and add it to the laptop to fire it up.

A SSD would cost Rs.3,500. Together, for Rs.36,500, this is a pretty damn good deal, I’d say! And, before you say anything, Yes, I used Cashkaro to get an extra 2% cashback.

This is the laptop I bought.

5 3 votes
Rate this article

Wait!


Before you go, take a copy of our detailed Finance Planner worth $39 for free

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Abhi

Abhi is a 29 yr old Indian, on FIRE to retire by 40. He has been investing and learning Finance for the past 12 years. After completing Mechanical engineering, he started working in a multi-national Bank and grew to become an AVP. Currently with an IT MNC as a VP. He lives in Bangalore with his wife and their 1 year old daughter. In his free time, Abhi loves to game on the Xbox, watch movies, read and blog.

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
wpDiscuz
Exit mobile version