🧵 How to make smarter money (and life) decisions using a poker player’s mindset:
Most people chase certainty. But in the real world, especially on the road to financial independence, you’ll never have it.
That’s where Expected Value Thinking comes in.
Let’s break it down: 👇
🎲 Life is a series of bets.
Every decision (buy or rent, save or splurge, hold or sell) is a bet on an uncertain future.
Expected Value Analysis (EVA) gives you a framework to make the best bets, even when outcomes are unpredictable.
🃏 The poker analogy:
Say you’re holding a 20% chance of winning a $600 pot, and you need to call a $100 bet.
Your EV: (0.2 × $600) + (0.8 × -$100) = + $40
You’ll probably lose the hand… but if you keep making this bet, you come out ahead over time.
🚀 Bitcoin is the most asymmetric trade on the planet.
If you think there’s even a 25% chance BTC hits $1M from $100k today, then a $1k investment has an EV of $2,500.
In poker terms: you’re buying $2.50 for every $1.
That’s a bet worth repeating.
⚖️ FIRE (and life) is all about tradeoffs, and EVA helps you weigh them.
Rent vs. buy? Take a sabbatical? Start a business?
Running the EV forces you to factor in risk, reward, and flexibility, giving you clarity in uncertain decisions.
🔁 Process > outcome.
Don’t judge decisions by whether they worked out.
Judge them by whether they were smart bets.
EVA helps you make consistently high-EV choices.
Over time, those add up to financial freedom.
📈 Want to level up your decision-making?
I wrote about using Expected Value Thinking to strengthen your FIRE + bitcoin plan.
Check out the full post here, and subscribe if you dig it:
🧠 Expected Value Thinking
FIRE BTC Issue #29 - Making decisions like a poker player
