Two things, One, he is talking about getting a 100x return and I know people who have done that in Crypto -- you do not get those returns from a lottery ticket but you get it by discerning an opportunity and seizing the opportunity with a meaningful investment. Two, for a long term squiring away a few extra bucks a month (for a long term dollar cost averaging investment), Crypto is far better than SPY in my opinion. Especially if the world financial system runs into some kind of systemic problem.
Spend way less (75%) than you are making for 5 years. Think of it as an austerity program, Soviet style or 3rd world peasant-surf. If you eat all food that you make and buy at a restaurant supply store in bulk, and share housing and eliminate all non essentials, you costs can drop a huge amount. But it would take huge discipline for 60 months. But it is the same discipline that would be required to kick ass trading. It probably put you in the 5% of the population in terms of ability. OTH if you don't have the discipline, or think you only need to apply it occasionally to trading and not LIFE, your plan is probably not robust enough. It is disheartening to do a "life" plan and undermine yourself in another area. If you are going to do it, go full effort, not just enough until you get "uncomfortable", imo. You wont be in a real prison or jail, a third world slum. It is only 60 months. Then reassess. BTW: the number is about 3-5 Mil. (post tax) to live in a reasonable place and live Middle-Upper class, sustainably. But you cannot get to 3-5 until you get to 1. Everyone is different though and it depends upon your risk and cash flow methods. Once a person said to me "what would you do if you make a million (pretax)?" I actually did not really understand the question in term of spending. My instant response was, "Try to make 2, of course". I was on the above austerity program. I would forage twice a week for clams and crabs, buy 100 pound bags of flour, to make bread and pizza and caught hell from my wife for the "no beer" rule. My daughter knew nothing different.
Agree with the goal of having a high savings rate, it is hard to get wealthy without this. Agree with the spirit of the post. Have a life plan, take it serious and go full effort. I would disagree with the idea that saving money on something like food is a good way to achieve the goal. Sure, don't buy extravagant stuff and don't eat out all the time. But generally speaking food is already super cheap, so if you spend your time foraging and baking bread this is equivalent to working a low wage job. (If you enjoy doing it for its own sake, that's ok, but don't pretend you're making good money) Best way to increase your savings rate is making more money in the first place. Figure out what's in demand, become skilled and get a high earning job. After that, look at big ticket items and make sure you are getting the best deals. Housing, insurance, cars (don't even have a car if you don't need one), etc. Don't drink alcohol. Don't smoke, don't do drugs. All these are expensive and unhealthy. Cut unnecessary expenses, but only if they are really unecessary, e.g. cutting them doesn't actually create more work for you that's just equivalent to another low earning job. And don't make yourself miserable to increase your savings rate by 0.01%, this is just pointless and masochistic. It gets a lot easier once you get > $300k income or so (post tax). You should be able to live well on $30-60K (ymmv depending on location) which gets you 80-90% savings rate. Being in a low tax location makes it easier to achieve the high post-tax earnings.
My wife is Asian and it's written in here genes to find a bargain. She'll buy because its a bargain even when we dont need it, eg, 2 x freezers so full of food you can't fit in an extra icecream stick. Meanwhile, I buy $5 cup of coffee each day. And my share portfoilo often swings in thousands of dollars a day, so really, the $2.50 saving my wife made today is meaningless. The important thing is, at the end of the day my wife is happy with the savings and her contribution to the kitty, that's all that matters, she's happy and contented. Our kitchen is so full of cooking gadgets so that she can potter around all day cooking, but she's happy. I think to myself, doesn't matter about inefficiency in her department, my responsibility is to be as efficient as possible because the large portfolio is important and not so much important the lifestyle, that is, when you can afford it and more $ comes in than goes out.