Beginner10–15 minLesson

Your Crypto Roadmap — Spend Smart, Save Safely

Consolidate everything into a simple, repeatable routine. Define spend vs save, choose payment rails, set review cadences, and produce a one-page Crypto Roadmap you can print and follow.

Lesson Progress%

What You'll Learn

Separate spend vs savings with clear thresholds and transfer rules.
Choose your default payment rails with fee/timing rules.
Define an operating routine (daily/weekly/monthly) you can actually follow.
Schedule security and documentation reviews with simple reminders.
Export a one-page Crypto Roadmap PDF and bundle your course checklists.

Lesson Contents

10.1

Spend vs Save: simple rules that stick

Convenience lives in a small hot wallet. Safety lives in your hardware wallet. Make the split explicit.

Set Your Hot Wallet Cap

Hot wallet spending cap: $200

Recommended: $100–$500 for everyday spending

Summary: Keep max $200 in hot wallet. Move excess to hardware wallet weekly.

Hot wallet (spend)

Keep only what you plan to use in the next 1–4 weeks. Example cap: $100–$500. If balance > cap → move excess to savings.

Savings wallet (hardware)

Long-term holdings. No daily spending from here. Outbound transfers are rare and planned.

Reconciliation

Once per week, top up the hot wallet if needed; move surplus back to savings.

Right approach

'Hot' cap set (e.g., $200); automatic top-up/sweep rule
Savings on hardware wallet; seed stored offline in secure location
Weekly reconciliation: check balances, move excess
Clear transfer discipline: plan before moving funds

Risky behavior

Using one wallet for everything — no separation
'I'll move funds later' — no discipline or schedule
Screenshots of seed phrases or private keys
No transfer rules; keeping large amounts in hot wallet

10.2

My rails: coin/network defaults and thresholds

Decide your default 'payment rail' now, with fee and timing rules to avoid guesswork later.

Configure Your Thresholds

Fee threshold: $1.00

If network fee exceeds this, switch to fallback rail or wait

Test transaction amount: $5

Send this amount first to new payees before full payment

Your rules: Fee > $1.00 → switch rail. Test tx = $5 for new payees.

Default payment coin/network

e.g., USDT on TRC20 or SOL; fallback to ERC20 if required by recipient.

Fee thresholds

'If network fee > $X, wait Y minutes or switch to fallback rail.'

Test transaction rule

'For new payees or large amounts — send $5 test first, confirm, then full.'

Timing windows

'Avoid peak congestion; prefer 10:00–16:00 local time' (adjust to your context).

Quick examples:

Everyday payments: USDT-TRC20, max fee $0.80, test tx for new payee.

Subscriptions: Crypto/virtual card with balance cap $100; top-up monthly.

Business payouts: USDC on SOL, confirm address on-device, request invoice with 15-minute lock.

10.3

Operating routine: daily → weekly → monthly → quarterly/annual

Routine checklist progress0/8 (0%)

Daily

Verify domains from bookmarks only; 2FA ready; no remote-access support
If paying: checklist — network match, address check, fee estimate, test tx, confirmations

Weekly

Reconcile: keep hot wallet near cap; move excess to savings
Review approvals (DeFi) if you experimented; revoke extras

Monthly

Security review: confirm 2FA, review allowlist/anti-phishing code, refresh bookmarks
Records: export exchange/wallet CSVs; file receipts in your Records folder

Quarterly (optional)

Rotate public receive address if privacy matters; check bridge/card fee changes

Annual

Hardware wallet audit: test a small outbound and inbound; verify backups; update the 'what if' plan

10.4

Fast-track recap cards (always accessible)

Exchange wallet vs software wallet

Exchange wallet: convenient but custodial; buy with card/bank if allowed; P2P if restricted.

Software wallet: you control the seed; usually no direct buy; fund from exchange or exchanger.

How to buy crypto (summary)

Direct: Register, KYC if required; buy by card/bank; funds arrive to exchange wallet; copy address for later.

P2P (Binance/Bybit): Escrow; after trade funds land in your account.

BestChange route: Prepare your own wallet; pick fiat → crypto; verify exchanger; copy address carefully; optional small test; use only BestChange links; watch emails.

Global safety reminders

Never share your seed or allow remote access.

Verify URLs; use bookmarks; ignore 'unlock fee' scams.

Double-check networks and addresses; test transactions for new payees.

Educational only; crypto is risky and volatile.

10.5

Practice: Fill your one-page Crypto Roadmap

Complete the template below. It should fit on one page and define your operating rules.

Enable local save (persist data in browser between sessions)

Spend vs Save

Top-up day

Sweep rule

Savings wallet

Access plan

My Payment Rails

Default rail

Fallback rail

Timing window

My Routine

Daily tasks

Weekly tasks

Monthly tasks

Quarterly/Annual tasks

Reviews

Security review schedule

Hardware wallet audit

Notes

Providers used

Records location

Support contact

Do not enter seeds, private keys, or sensitive data in this form. This is for your operational workflow only.

Preview (fits on one A4 page)

MY CRYPTO ROADMAP Generated: 12/12/2025 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPEND VS SAVE Hot wallet cap: $200 Top-up day: [not set] Sweep rule: if > $200 → move to savings Savings wallet: [not set] Access plan: [not set] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MY PAYMENT RAILS Default: [not set] Fallback: [not set] Fee threshold: > $1.00 → switch or wait Test tx rule: $5 first for new payees Timing window: [not set] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MY ROUTINE Daily: [not set] Weekly: [not set] Monthly: [not set] Quarterly/Annual: [not set] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ REVIEWS Security review: [not set] Hardware wallet audit: [not set] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ NOTES Providers used: [not set] Records location: [not set] Support contact: [not set] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Educational only. Never store seeds or private keys in this document.

10.6

Deliverables: Final PDF + checklist bundle

Bundle all your course deliverables into one downloadable folder. Everything is generated locally in your browser.

My Crypto Roadmap.pdf

Your one-page operating plan (printable)

Security Playbook.pdf

From Lesson 5: exchange, custody, phishing, approvals

Payment Rail Decision.pdf

From Lesson 6: fee calculator and network guide

Documentation Checklist.pdf

From Lesson 7: compliance and tax records

DeFi & NFT Risk Checklist.pdf

From Lesson 8: approvals, red flags, risk checks

Payment Checklist.pdf

From Lesson 4: send safely checklist

Purchase Path Checklist.pdf

From Lesson 3: how to buy crypto

Wallet Backup Plan.pdf

From Lesson 2: wallet types and backup strategy

Add Your Own PDFs

Drag & drop PDF files here, or click to select

Max 10MB per file

Suggested folder structure

/MyCryptoKit/ My Crypto Roadmap.pdf /Security/ Security Playbook.pdf /Payments/ Payment Rail Decision.pdf Payment Checklist.pdf /Records/ Documentation Checklist.pdf /DeFi_NFT/ DeFi & NFT Risk Checklist.pdf /Wallets/ Purchase Path Checklist.pdf Wallet Backup Plan.pdf

All bundling is done locally in your browser. You can also add your own PDFs via drag-and-drop; nothing is uploaded.

Downloads a bundle info file. Organize your deliverables using the folder structure above.

Compliance Notice

Educational only, not financial/legal/tax advice. Networks, fees, tools, and policies change. Never store seeds or private keys in your Roadmap or PDFs. Practice with small amounts and verify domains.

Final Quiz

Test your understanding with 4 questions. Pass with 3/4 correct.