40 Pots Guides https://40pots.com/guides Guides on money tracking, the 40 Pots System, monthly budgeting and crypto trade journaling. en Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:44:17 GMT Dollar-Cost Averaging Crypto: How DCA Works and How to Model It https://40pots.com/guides/dollar-cost-averaging-crypto https://40pots.com/guides/dollar-cost-averaging-crypto Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Money tracking How dollar-cost averaging works in crypto, what it does and does not protect against, and how to model a DCA plan before committing capital. Dollar-cost averaging buys a fixed amount on a fixed schedule regardless of price. Its value is behavioural as much as mathematical: it removes the timing decision you were going to get wrong. Buying a fixed dollar amount means you acquire more units when prices are low and fewer when prices are high, so your average cost sits below the average price over the period. It does not prevent losses in a sustained downtrend, and it will underperform a lump sum in a straight-up market. Backtesting a DCA plan against real historical prices shows total invested, units accumulated, current value and return for your chosen start date and cadence. It also shows the long flat stretches, which is the part most people are unprepared for. The DCA simulator in 40 Pots runs this against historical price data for major assets so you can compare start dates and contribution sizes. Define the exit or rebalance rule when you set up the plan: a target allocation, a time horizon, or a value threshold. A DCA plan without an end condition quietly becomes an unbounded bet.

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]]> Tracking a Crypto Portfolio: Spot, Staking and DeFi in One Place https://40pots.com/guides/track-crypto-portfolio-and-defi https://40pots.com/guides/track-crypto-portfolio-and-defi Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Money tracking Track coin counts rather than fixed dollar values, value positions at live prices, and fold staking and DeFi yields into your monthly numbers. The most common crypto tracking mistake is recording a dollar amount once and never revaluing it. Track units; let price do the rest. Store the asset ticker and the quantity you hold in each position. Value is then quantity multiplied by the current price, refreshed whenever you open the app. A fixed dollar figure entered six months ago is fiction. Farms and lending positions need the same treatment: asset, quantity supplied, quantity borrowed, and live price for each side. Net position value and health ratio only mean something when both legs are revalued together. Crypto is a pot like any other. At month close, record its value, compare against your target allocation, and rebalance deliberately rather than because of a price move. 40 Pots tracks staking positions, DeFi farms and lending with live price valuation, and exports everything to CSV.

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]]> Win Rate, R-Multiple and Expectancy: Metrics for Crypto Traders https://40pots.com/guides/crypto-trading-win-rate-metrics https://40pots.com/guides/crypto-trading-win-rate-metrics Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Crypto journaling Why win rate alone is misleading, how to read average win versus average loss, and how to calculate expectancy from your trade log. Traders quote win rate because it is easy to say. On its own it tells you almost nothing about whether a strategy makes money. A 35% win rate is excellent if winners are four times the size of losers, and a 75% win rate is ruinous if one loss erases ten wins. Always read win rate next to the ratio of average win to average loss. Expectancy is the average result you should expect per trade: (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss). A positive number after fees means the strategy is worth repeating at size. A negative number means volume makes things worse, not better. Subtract fees and funding before computing expectancy. Leveraged crypto positions accumulate funding costs that can turn a marginally positive edge negative over a full sample. The Trades tab in 40 Pots reports wins, losses, breakeven counts, total fees and net P&L, with performance broken out by pair, month, and strategy.

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]]> How to Keep a Crypto Trading Journal That Actually Improves Results https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-keep-a-crypto-trading-journal https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-keep-a-crypto-trading-journal Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Crypto journaling The fields every crypto trade log needs, how often to review them, and the review questions that turn a journal into an edge. A trading journal is not a diary of feelings. It is a dataset you query later. Log the fields that let you answer questions, and skip the ones that just take time. A good decision can lose and a bad decision can win. If you only tag results, you will keep reinforcing whatever happened to pay last week. Tagging strategy and execution quality alongside outcome lets you find setups that are profitable across a sample, not just memorable ones. Weekly: scan open risk and any rule breaks. Monthly: pull win rate, average win versus average loss, total fees, and performance by pair and by strategy. Quarterly: cut or resize the worst strategy tag. 40 Pots computes win rate, per-pair performance, monthly breakdowns, and strategy-tag results automatically from your logged trades, and exports the complete dataset as CSV. Fees and funding are the quietest way a positive edge becomes a negative one. Log them per trade so your reported P&L is the number that hits your balance, not a gross figure.

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]]> Monthly Budgeting: Planned vs Actual, and What the Gap Tells You https://40pots.com/guides/monthly-budget-planned-vs-actual https://40pots.com/guides/monthly-budget-planned-vs-actual Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT Budgeting How to build a monthly budget you can measure: set planned amounts per category, track actuals, and interpret the variance without guilt spirals. A budget without an actuals column is a wish. The value is entirely in the comparison — and in what you change because of it. Set a planned amount for each expense and income category at the start of the month. Copying last month's plan and adjusting two or three lines is faster than starting blank, and it keeps your baseline stable enough to compare. Track the opening balance, planned inflows and outflows, and the projected closing balance. The projection is the part that changes behaviour mid-month, because it shows the consequence of today's decision before the month ends. The Budget tab in 40 Pots shows start balance, projected end balance, and planned-versus-actual bars for every category, with inline editing so adjustments take seconds. Roll the closing balance into next month's opening figure, carry forward the categories that worked, and reset the ones that did not. A budget improves through iteration, not through severity.

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]]> How to Allocate Income Across Pots: Percentages That Hold Up https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-allocate-income-across-pots https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-allocate-income-across-pots Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT 40 Pots A practical framework for splitting income across savings, investing, tax, and trading pots, with rules for irregular and variable income. Allocation percentages fail when they are copied from someone else's income shape. Build yours from your obligations upward. Add up the non-negotiables: tax set-aside, housing, utilities, food, transport, insurance, debt minimums. Express that total as a percentage of your average monthly income. Whatever remains is the pool you actually get to allocate. Define the order of cuts in advance: discretionary pots pause first, growth pots reduce second, reserve and tax pots never get raided. Deciding this while calm removes the negotiation you would otherwise lose in the moment. Run windfalls through the same percentages rather than treating them as free money. If a bonus meaningfully changes your position, revisit the percentages deliberately at month close instead of improvising.

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]]> What Is the 40 Pots System? A Complete Guide to Pot-Based Allocation https://40pots.com/guides/what-is-the-40-pots-system https://40pots.com/guides/what-is-the-40-pots-system Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT 40 Pots The 40 Pots System splits every dollar of income across purpose-built pots. Here is how the allocation works and how to set your own percentages. Pot-based allocation replaces a single balance with many named balances. Instead of asking 'can I afford this?', you ask 'does the pot for this have money in it?' — a question with an unambiguous answer. Every time income arrives, it is divided by percentage across pots before anything is spent. Each pot has one job: taxes, emergency reserve, investing, trading capital, education, giving, living costs, and so on. Because the split happens at the top, saving is no longer whatever survives the month. Coarse buckets hide decisions. When 'investing' is one pot, you cannot see that the crypto allocation quietly grew to three times the property allocation. Granular pots make drift visible, and visible drift is correctable drift. You do not need all forty active on day one. Start with eight to twelve that describe your real life, and split them as your income grows. A pot is healthy when its balance matches its purpose and its funding rate. Once a quarter, check which pots are chronically empty (percentage too low, or being raided) and which are over-funded (money that should be working elsewhere). The 40 Pots app tracks each pot's balance, goal, and progress, and shows the allocation preview for every new income entry.

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]]> How to Track Your Money Every Month (Without a Spreadsheet) https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-track-your-money-every-month https://40pots.com/guides/how-to-track-your-money-every-month Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT Money tracking A repeatable monthly money tracking routine: log income, categorise spending, review what's missing, and close the month with real numbers. Most money tracking fails for the same reason: it depends on remembering. A system that survives busy months has to be quick to log, obvious when data is missing, and honest about what it does not know. Income is the anchor for every allocation you make later. Log each payment on the day it lands, with the source attached — salary, client invoice, dividends, trading withdrawals. If two income sources arrive on the same day, keep them as separate entries so month-on-month comparisons stay meaningful. In 40 Pots, income entries feed straight into your allocation preview, so you can see what each pot receives before you move a single dollar. Retrospective logging is guesswork. Add the transaction while you are still standing at the counter — amount, category, and a one-line note if the purchase was unusual. The note is what makes a category review useful three months later. A blank month is not a month where you earned nothing. Treating missing data as zero is how people convince themselves they spent less than they did. 40 Pots marks untouched categories as out of date rather than showing a false zero, and the Catch Me Up flow walks you through each gap so you can confirm 'no activity' explicitly. Set a recurring 20-minute slot on the last day of the month. Compare planned against actual, note the two largest variances, and decide one adjustment for next month. One adjustment — not five. Systems die from ambition.

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