How to Save Your First 100k

This content represents the writer’s opinions and research and is not intended to be taken as financial advice. The information presented is general in nature and may not meet the specific needs of any individual or entity. It is not intended to be relied upon as a professional or financial decision-making tool.

Holding 100k in cash? Okay then, ask yourself these questions – If I have 100k USD, what is going with the US economy, what are the interest rates, inflation, and how much USD is devaluing? Unfortunately, you will likely find out that most if not all currencies are globally losing value over time. However, if you compare USD to the Japanese Yen, it was better to hold USD in 2022.

We invest to grow more value. What investment is and what is the future value you expect can be very broad. But if we speak about 100k dollars, we think about what today is fiat currency, the most liquid form of capital. It may be out of your attention, but we need to play defense too, think about how can we save our wealth and not just grow it, especially if we have fiat. 

Knowing What You Have

Interestingly, we can generally know what is on the horizon if the inflation indicators start to go higher. Also, when central bank interest rates are suddenly shifting, we know it will trigger a shift in investors’ sentiment. It is relatively easy to evaluate the best options when you know what type of capital you have and what is going on with your local or global economy. 

When you hold cash like $100k, you aren’t holding anything physically valuable, it is a paper your government is setting a value on. When you hold a silver or a gold coin, they have intrinsic value, no government can do anything about that. They do not like having any control over its value so sometimes the governments even ban gold holding. These assets both represent value from another perspective, but your wealth will be exposed to different risks depending on what it is comprised of. 

So we compare USD to other currencies but we also compare currencies to other assets that we need in order to sustain our quality of life. You can hold 100k USD and still have the best-performing currency, however, prices of various commodities such as gas and food went up so much that our 100k does not seem such a valuable sum anymore. 

Buying gold coins worth 100k USD looks like a good idea now, we have inflation, global interest rates are lagging, massive fiat printing, and the global economy is in a downturn, not to mention many other indicators. You might find out that physical gold is in demand and that your 100K could buy a coin or two, for example. If you ever need some cash in an emergency, you would have to sell it and you will still have a lot of USD change. You are back with the same problem. 

Considering all the above, holding cash in so-called safe haven currency like USD might be a good idea despite the devaluation and inflation risk, you can always convert it into other assets of value (liquid), transfer it and it is divisible (unlike gold coin). But know if you hold it for 10 years, your 100K is probably to lose half of the purchasing power. Consider your time horizons, today economies are more volatile and can go out of recessions more quickly. 

Therefore, holding cash in the strongest currency still creates urgency since we are facing devaluation. Most portfolio managers hold it for future quick redeployment into other assets after the economic downturn. That is the best time to get back into growing your wealth by investing in growth stocks or other, riskier assets. But do not hold cash for too long. 

How do we solve these specific risk problems stemming from each asset? Also, what if your local currency is not as convertible as the major ones? One of the ways is diversification.

Save 100k by Splitting

Where do you put your 100k cash or 100k worth of gold coins? Your house needs to be fireproof and also safe from theft. Do you trust your bank holding 100k? Or you can also have multiple stashes, mitigating that you will lose all 100k in one event. So, diversification does not only mean having a bit of gold, currencies, bonds, or ETF investments. 

Location risks are real and most of the time you will find more articles about choosing different assets and rarely about the location risks. For example, if you are in Nigeria, you are facing more risks than if you are in the US. Just recently, Nigerian banks have reduced how much cash you can withdraw per day, to about $50. If you had 100K split into many local banks it is not going to help, that’s 2000 withdrawal days to get your 100k back. Now your 100k is also locked with the devaluation risks. As mentioned above, governments can even decide to ban USD accounts or prohibit gold. Although, the latter is harder to shake out of citizens’ pockets. 

Saving 100k is much harder in such countries as Nigeria or Venezuela, and actually, this is a much-needed article for the people in unstable, low-trust governments. So It is not only about how to save wealth but about keeping the head above life-threatening poverty. Citizens in developed countries do not understand these problems, they could always have USD or EUR accounts to put cash from a home sale, for example. When the recession is over, buy back. But this is not possible for many and there is no guide to tell them what to do. Of course, there is always a conflict of interest between the elite who control monopolies and the ordinary, except it is more pronounced in developing countries.

Speaking of devaluation, ordinary, non-elite people in developing countries rarely set up a portfolio, they spend most of what they earn doing daily jobs. Saving accounts rarely have 100k, but even when they have something, it is usually not possible to have a foreign currency account in a local bank. Financial education does not mention what to do if your local officials are cornering your abilities to save 100k. It is time to think outside the box, about how can you diversify your savings and put them in a less risky environment.

Nigeria is not a small country, they have about 200 million young population. It is interesting the country has even developed CBDC – eNaira. Is it useful for diversification? No, it looks like it is more of a tool to control cash flows by the governments. Egypt is facing severe devaluation of their currency, however, only 24% of them have bank accounts. Evidently, there is demand for saving wealth in such countries, the black market unfair exchange is thriving and “legal” ways of money transfer are expensive. 

When you have a very limited space for diversification, you need to go for unorthodox ways of saving wealth. Luckily, there are advantages to living in an increasingly digitalized world. Egyptians may not have bank accounts but surely they have a lot of mobile devices. Having something in a “cloud” suddenly eliminates your location risk and also opens a lot of diversification freedom. If you are thinking about

cryptocurrencies and the crypto-related business you are definitely going to diversify your 100k without messing with your government or banks. Yet crypto space is considered risky, ask yourself is this risk lower than your location risk?

Saving 100K in a Digital World

Before you explore riskier investments or saving ventures like the crypto space, do deep research about your local economy and assets that could retain the value of your 100k. For example, some developing countries experience high demand for real estate, especially tourism-focused ones. Think about the worst-case scenario you could prevent. A natural disaster cannot be prevented but you still can diversify. A house you have bought also needs to be maintained to keep the best value in a few years. Real estate can also generate income with rents, so it is not only a holding value asset like gold.

Speaking about gold, did you know you can hold a gold-backed token following the price of gold? Yes, these are for example Pax Gold (PAXG) – a coin linked to the price of gold and allegedly redeemable for physical gold. It is based on the Ethereum network so this is an additional third-party risk layer. Even though the collateral gold is held in vaults, there is always a risk of manipulation, audit mistakes, and so on. Still, it is a much better alternative if your diversification into real safe assets is limited. 

Now you can also diversify the mentioned risk by splitting it into other gold-linked cryptocurrencies. Check out Thether Gold (XAUT), Digix Gold Token, or Circle USDC Gold (USDCG) – an interesting combination of physical gold denominated in a pegged dollar token. 

The USD is a go-to currency now, even though the sentiment is shaken in the last few months. It is still a global currency with the biggest share in investment accounts and the biggest denomination of emerging markets debt. The US seems to be a creditor again in violent times today. Bear in mind that the US is also in record debt and that the USD has been issued extensively during the COVID-19 crisis. If the USD is your currency of choice and you need a crypto alternative, (USDT) Tether is a good pick. It has some history even though blockchain technology is new, and also is Onmi Layer capable. A drawback of Tether is that there is central control over it, meaning the maker company Tehter Limited is controlling the supply of coins. The audits showed that Tether collateral in USD is sufficient, however, transparency is not great. 

A decentralized alternative is the DAI. DAI is also more transparent, its code is published on GitHub and it is also collateral backed by smart contracts. This combination of transparency, decentralization, and autonomous liquidity protocol made DAI very popular for those who want ultimate security from a USD token. 

Now, when entering the crypto space, there are so many options for your coins. There are so many ways you can hold them and also grow your 100k. To mention a few platforms:

Whatever your choice, be sure you understand the asset and the platform. To gauge secure platforms you can use defisafety.com as a great resource.

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