We did a podcast recently called Married to Bitcoin (and each other!). I’m going to further elaborate and explore some of the ideas that we discussed on the podcast.
As you may already be aware, my wife, Mrugakshee Palwe, is also a bitcoiner. She is just as into money and finance as I am.
Admittedly, this makes making financial decisions easier in one respect and more challenging in another. My hope is that you can take away some of the lessons I learned, and apply them to your own relationship.
By the way, if you have a moment, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We’re currently trying to increase our subscriber list to 1,000 subscribers. We will then be able to import our channel onto a Crypto-YouTube site called Odysee. Thank you in advance!
Also, you can listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your podcast app. Just look for Go Full Crypto.
Lesson #1: It’s “The” Money
When I met Mrugakshee, I thought of mine and Mrugakshee’s money as separate. Makes sense, we were not yet married. With that being said, I had no intention or even a notion in mind that our finances would someday be combined.
I thought that I would always have a pool of money that was exclusively “mine”. We discussed this at length and Mrugakshee explained to me that in her family, there was just “money”. There wasn’t really her money, her parent’s separate money, or her grandparent’s money. There was just “money” that was owned by the family.
I rejected this idea at first… After all, I really like the idea of having financial independence. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea of having a single pool of money that belonged to the family grew on me.
I saw 2 benefits to adopting this worldview.
I can save time/energy by not segregating mine and my spouse’s finances in my head
I live closer to the ideal that me and my spouse are “one” in a spiritual/emotional sense
I am all for creating psychological efficiencies with the aim of keeping more of my time. Thinking of my wife as part of me accomplishes this. Thinking of our finances as one, also accomplishes this.
Lesson #2: Going Full Crypto Together
We were asked the question “Were you both on board making the decision to go full crypto? Was any convincing required?” and "Keegan, did you have to convince Mrugakshee to believe in Bitcoin and Going Full Crypto?"
The short answer is no. We were both on board fully and completely.
This is because we share all of our financial experiences together anyway. So when we were rejected for a mortgage multiple times in 2019/2020, we were rejected together.
When the bank clerk refused to execute a wire transfer for us in 2020, we experienced that refusal together. When the local Credit Union wouldn’t open a bank account for Atlantic Blockchain Company for us, it was our company that they rejected.
It was clear to both of us that the world was not ready for the way we wanted to live our lives financially. So we made the decision together to opt out of a financial paradigm that didn’t want us to begin with.
Lesson #3: Together, but Separate
The last question I want to address is “Do both of you play an equal part in managing your portfolio?”.
The answer to this is yes, and no.
We make large decisions together, but for the most part, I do most of the day-to-day managing. Mrugakshee also edits every one of my newsletters (including this one), so she knows exactly what sort of experimenting I’m doing with our money.
She might not know the nitty gritty details and the amounts, but she knows generally what is happening.
Since the money is not exclusively owned by me, I feel a sense of responsibility to clear any large decisions with my wife before making them.
But this understanding of clearing large decisions didn’t come overnight. For example, I didn’t exactly clear the decision to risk $10k on a trade that could result in a total loss.
That resulted in us losing $10k. I am a person that generally learns from my mistakes. That being said, if the mistake is not “big enough” for it to cause me real pain, I sometimes have to learn the lesson twice.
As Mrugakshee and I covered in the episode, we’re both glad that I was able to see where I went wrong with this one so I don’t have to repeat the error.
While I might take the initiative on some risks separately, Mrugakshee handles mishaps with grace and we come to resolutions on these financial turmoils together.
Request for Content
Mrugakshee and I had a lot of fun answering the questions of our audience. Furthermore, nothing makes me happier than when my newsletter readers reach out to me and want to further discuss the ideas and concepts I write about.
I’m not saying I’m running out of things to talk about, but we definitely love having direct dialogue and a backlog of ideas to pull from when creating content.
So if you want to see something covered in the letter, or on our podcast, reply to this email, leave a comment, or send us an email to ready@gofullcrypto.com.
Regards,
Keegan